Be It, Say It!

When I was a kid, I used to play a role I wanted. I remember wearing my mom's heels and bag and impersonating her, I would act and speak the way she is. I felt like playing a role play helped me to create the continuous dialogue between me and my peers in the act we played. I don't think the kids nowadays will ever find that experience as excited as I did until I found Voki! It is an online platform that will allow you to create your own avatar! you can customize your avatar in various ways. Voki will let you be whoever you are, you can present or express yourself however you want. Moreover, the voice recorder feature enables your avatar to say what you meant to say! You only need to create an account and then you will be able to create your Voki! Z generation kids might find it interesting as they can play the role with the assistance of technology. 

Creating a Voki is a walk in the park! After creating an account, you will have access to choose which character you want to have. The icons in the right column are the available tools to set your avatar. The face icon will lead you to the choice of the avatars. Once you find the one you want, you can customize their look by clicking the clothes icon. You may also want to set the background by checking it in the picture icon section. Finally, the speaker icon will bring you to the voice recording options. You can record your voice or you can type what you want to say and choose the robotic voice to speak the words you write. 

As an English teacher, finding this tool for me is like finding an oasis in the middle of my students' speaking activity drought. I am aware that speaking has always been considered a challenging skill in foreign language learning. It is understandable since we need to get through the stages of conception and formulation before we finally can articulate what we want to say. So, motivating the students to keep on trying to speak and practice their speaking is not that easy. Not only that, but the anxiety to speak also sometimes hinder them from the ability to articulate what they have in mind. In an extreme situation, I might find some students unwilling to try to speak. Voki then can be an escape way to minimize the anxiety and the unwillingness in speaking. 

Referring to my teaching context which includes telling a short story, describing people and animals, using daily expressions, and doing self-introduction, I can picture how Voki can facilitate the learning. The students can describe their own avatars. The appearance of their avatar will cover their learning of adjectives words. They can also use their avatar to practice the daily expressions they learned in the class. They can introduce themselves using their avatar.

There is a surprise for you (teachers) who teach in a multilingual class! Voki has avatars representing people from different places in the world! your students will be able to show their identity. It is a great chance for teachers to promote diversity and multilingualism in the class. Check the video below to see how many international avatars they have in the options! 

Please stay and read more because I haven't done yet mentioning what Voki can facilitate in the class😎. The various avatars can function as a characterization tool for students in delivering a story. I tried to create two characters in the famous tale of  "Red Riding Hood". Please click on the picture of each character to listen to their piece of dialogue in the story!

I believe the students will enjoy the process of their speaking activity as they have this tool as a space to express themselves. They no longer need to prepare properties in their storytelling performance as they can create the characterization using this tool. 

Bear with me just a bit more 😁

You might find it interesting to create your virtual class with the avatars you and your students made in Voki! It is possible for you to assign a task to your students and give your feedback in the virtual Voki class. You and your students can also create a presentation using Voki.  Even though I have not explored the function of Voki presentation and classroom, I can tell this will be worth trying! 

BUT

There is no such thing as a free lunch

Unfortunately, I need to say that the basic account in Voki has limited access to the features. We need to upgrade our Voki account into premium if we want to freely use all provided avatars. I will also disappoint you because almost all accounts you might use for the diversity promotion are not for free. You will only be able to create 3-slides-presentation and 1 virtual class with up to 5 students in the class. 

Apart from the limitations, we still can encourage the students to speak using their avatars. Let them try to accept the challenge I put on the title: Be It, Say It!

sources:

Images: https://www.pexels.com/

Screenshots: Voki.com