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From: Voki (education@voki.com)
To: fabs1970@yahoo.com;
Date: Wed, September 8, 2010 5:52:56 PM
Cc:
Subject: Back to School with Voki
Back to School with Voki
It's the first day of school for many parts of the world and the Voki team would like
to extend our warmest wishes to educators around the world!
May this upcoming year be rewarding and stimulating, and exceed your expectations
in every possible way.
To help welcome the new school year, we are offering advertising-free Voki for a
limited period. We hope that you embrace our gift and use Voki in your classroom to
inspire your students and enrich your lessons!
Coming Soon: Voki for Education
The New Voki for Education will include:
• Voki Lesson Plan database: Find out how other educators are using Voki in their
classrooms
• Teachers' Corner: Communicate with like-minded educators around the world, inspire and
get inspired, share Voki tips, join relevant educational discussions
• Community: Get to know educators and students from other countries, use Voki to start a
conversation
• Newbie's Corner: Savvy Voki users will have the opportunity to support our new users
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with their first steps
Voki is being used in classrooms around the world in every grade level for every subject. There
are endless ways to use Voki for education. The use of Voki in the classroom stimulates
students, mixes things up, and helps bridge the gap between students and teachers. Our new
site will be the perfect platform for the creative teachers to connect and inspire one another.
Need ideas on using Voki in your classroom? Here's how some Voki Ambassadors are
using Voki. Thanks for sharing!
"As a teacher, one of my favorite ways to use Voki in September is for 'getting to know you'
activities. Students can create a Voki telling 3 fun facts about themselves. Then other students
can listen to their Vokis and try to guess who 'owns' each Voki. It's fun, interactive, and the
kids love it! Plus, it helps students learn the tool before you introduce it with academic content.
This activity also works great as an icebreaker for staff technology trainings at beginning of the
year faculty meetings!"
Kristen Swanson Twitter /Blog
Voki Ambassador
Technology Director for Springfield Township School District
Pennsylvania
"If you are working with young and very young learners, Voki is one of the greatest tools to
engage your students with your lessons. You can use Voki with so many different activities
throughout the year.
• It's great to use on the first day of school and as an icebreaker for kindergarten and
primary school kids.
• If you have a class blog, you can use it on the front page to introduce yourself and
welcome your students.
• You can create a class pet/puppet/mascot that will ask kids questions about
themselves, such as what they did in the summer or how they feel about coming back
to school.
• You can let your students create talking avatars to introduce themselves to each
other.
• You can create a Voki avatar for parents, to talk about your objectives, class rules
and what you expect them to do.
Voki is such a cool, user-friendly and fun tool to use in your classes that you and your students
will love creating speaking avatars with it. Your lessons will change forever!"
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Özge Karaoglu Twitter /Blog
Voki Ambassador
Teacher/Trainer, Turkey
Esra Girgin Akiskali Twitter/Blog
Voki Ambassador
Kindergarten Teacher, Turkey
"I frequently use Web 2.0 tools to engage my sixth and seventh grade social studies students.
At first, I will be using a Voki avatar based on myself to lead a virtual tour of the new class
homepage. My goal is to pique my student's interest in creating their own personalized Voki's. I
plan on having students create Voki's based on historical figures. Since the avatars can be
easily embedded on a webpage, blog, or wiki, my students will also use Voki to communicate
with other classrooms around the world. I am especially excited to see how the quieter, shy
students use Voki as a tool to more freely speak their minds."
Matt Farber Twitter/Blog
Voki Ambassador
Social Studies Teacher, NJ
"Do you need the attention of your students or do some seem to lack focus? My students love
seeing a new or well-used Voki, and the Voki always has their complete attention. For the first
day of school, I will use a Voki to help welcome the students to their new class and to introduce
and clarify parts of my first day slideshow. I'm lucky to have a Smartboard, and I also have
wired standard stereo speakers and placed them in the room; no matter where a student sits,
they can clearly (see and) hear what is going on! I've found that Voki is a great tool for
transitions between subjects as well as when a new group enters the room; my Voki uses
student names or says something odd to capture the attention of all in the room. It always
works! My new students can't wait to see and hear what the Voki will have to say!"
Eric Watanbe
Voki Ambassador
6th grade teacher
Landell Elementary School
"In my fifth grade inclusion class in New York, USA, I work hard to provide many venues where
ALL my students can find tools to be successful. Voki is a perfect tool for struggling writers,
children working on fluency but not quite there yet, and unmotivated workers. And, of course,
it's just fun!
To start the school year, my co-teacher and I have created Vokis and embedded them in our
class website. http://herricks.org/webpages/dentondynamos/ This is our introduction to our
students. One of the first online assignments they will have is creating their own Voki and
posting it on their new blogs. http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=88116 I cannot
wait to see what they create to introduce themselves to the world."
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Lisa Parisi
Twitter/ Blog
Voki Ambassador
Fifth grade teacher, Technology Geek
New York
Voki Ideas: Get Inspired!
Teach a Foreign Language: "As a foreign language pronunciation tool, to record things that I
will have to reuse/repeat; to add to my blog, etc :) - I teach French -- J'aime les vokis!!"
Shared on Facebook / By: Tamar Bailey-Silvera
Introduce a New Topic: "Instructors can use a Voki avatar to introduce the course or topics. It
can also be used to aid in instructing those who are more audio/visual learners. Voki is also a
great way to get shy students involved or to share comments with students in other countries."
Found on Squidoo.com/Voki / By: Kirsti A. Dyer
Collaborate Internationally: "...used for students to introduce themselves to the students in
another global school on collaborative projects. The class from each country has set up 5
questions they would like to know about each other and then replies have been made via Vokis
on a collaborative wiki."
Found on Classroom 2.0 Forum / By: Anne Mirtschin
Encourage Story Telling: "Students can create an avatar that resembles a character from a
story, add a setting and give it speech. The speech could be from the story or a creative point
of view from the character on an event."
Found on The Edublogger / By: Sue Waters
Thanks to these inspiring teachers for sharing!
Share YOUR Voki experiences with us! You can find us on Facebook and Twitter.
Thanks for being a part of the Voki community and have a fantastic new school year!
Best wishes,
The Voki Team
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