Using Voki

Today Megan Overbey and I did a lesson on Patriot and Loyalist perspectives on events that led to the Revolutionary War.  We used a cool tool called voki that we saw used at OCSS.  It is free, but until Mason opens up the kids school emails to be true emails, they cannot receive the activation code to make the voki account,  To workaround this just have kids use a personal email or make a login yourself they can use.

Essential voki allows kids to make an animated avatar that they can do text to speech animations with or also voice record via a phone call or via microphone.  We had them speak as if they were Patriots and Loyalists and it was really fun.  They then posted the links to their vokis (we couldn't figure out how to actually embed them just yet) to a Google Sites Page as comments.  Then kids could have mini "debates" in character as a Loyalist or Patriot there and view their classmates vokis.

We plan on having kids evaluate whether their peers vokis accurately represent the views of a Patriot and/or Loyalist using evidence to support their claims about the events they discussed.

Here is Megan's really cool voki (George Washington) that she made to intro the topic.  I did Ben Franklin, but it was not as awesome!

Click here to go to Voki.com

Check out Mrs. Page's Voki

 Check out Mrs. Overbey's way cooler Voki

Here is a link to our site and directions as well as voki if you are interested.

https://sites.google.com/a/masonohioschools.com/patriot-loyalist-conversations/home

Obviously when you see the site you will notice that we didn't spend any time on beautifying it.