Connecting Educators Around the World

Here at Voki, we understand the importance of community. As part of the New Voki for Education, we have established a virtual space for educators and students to connect and network with each other. Now, you can share ideas, lesson plans, news, tips, and build communities!

Share and Get Inspired!

Try out the Voki Lesson Plan database. You can submit and store your own lessons, and take a peek at what other educators are doing in the classroom. This is a place for educators to inspire and get inspired!

Digital Technology and Social Media in the Classroom

As younger kids become more immersed in social & digital media, even very young learners can begin to learn using Voki. Two influencial educators, Ozge Karaoglu and Esra Girgin Akiskali sat down to share how they use Voki in the classroom:

Voki for Young Learners

If you want to use technology with young learners, Voki is a great tool to enhance and facilitate learning and improve different skills that you want to build on. There is no doubt that the children love creating their own Voki avatars and using Voki for different activities in lessons. It's fun, user friendly, colorful, animated and engaging for them. Here are some examples and ways to use Voki with your young learners.

Class Mascot: You can create a Voki avatar to use as a class mascot or a puppet. You can decide on the character with the kids or you can create a suitable avatar for the children. You can change the background and it can be your classroom picture. You can decide on the name of your puppet with the kids or the puppet/mascot can introduce himself/herself to the class. Before the day starts, you can make the puppet/mascot talk about the weather, day, month, seasons or it can talk about the activities that they will be doing during the day. When the children are familiar with Voki, you can assign one student everyday to make the puppet talk using text-to speech feature or recording his/her voice.

Treasure Hunt: You can play treasure hunt with your students. Your Voki avatar can give the directions to the kids to find the treasure that you have hidden in the classroom. You can write the directions at the same time by using text-to speech activities or you can record your voice beforehand.

Interact: Use Voki avatars to ask questions to the kids or make the kids ask questions to Voki avatar. It's a great way to practice the learnt language and improve speaking skills. Children love interacting with a Voki avatar other than answering the questions you ask them.

Journal: Children can create their own avatars and keep a journal by recording their own voices or again using text-to-speech application. You can place (embed) all the avatars on one page and you can ask the kids to change the recording of the avatar every day and talk about what they did on previous day. Each child can listen to each other. It's a good speaking activity and a good way for kids to hear their pronunciation.

Teamwork: Children can do pair work and they can exchange their Voki avatars or they can be like online pen friends for each other and they leave messages to each other every day/week by recording their voices. You can also collaborate with other teachers to find e-pals for your kids.

Story Telling: Create a Voki and start telling a story and ask the children to write the end of the story. They can also create Voki at home and record their voices by telling the end of the story or retell a story you did in class.

Holiday Wishes: Children can leave messages for special days such as birthdays, Christmas or they can record their wishes for Mother's Days or Father's Day.

Class Blog: If you have a class blog or a website, you can create a Voki and welcome children or the parents to the blog. You can talk about yourself and what you aim at using the blog or you can remind their homework by a Voki avatar.

Songs: You can ask the children to sing songs and you can have a song contest. They can record their voices while they are singing their songs and the children can vote for the ones they like most.

Discussion: You can ask the children to talk about their likes, their favorites or simply about anything you teach in the classroom.

Projects: Instead of asking children to create a project on paper, you can ask them to tell their projects using a Voki avatar and it's certainly more eco-friendly.

News Reports: You can ask the children to report news as if they are the newsreader. Each child can take turns in being the newsreader.

Voki Quiz: Create an avatar and record your voice beforehand. Show the Voki avatar to the kids and write some questions about the avatar such as "How old is she?" "What is her favorite color?" etc. and ask the children to write down their guesses to those questions. When they finish writing, they can read aloud their guesses. When they all finish speaking, let the Voki avatar speak and check who has got the true answers to the questions.

Announcements: You can use Vokis for announcements about class or praising the kids instead of giving them certificates, stars or stickers.

There are many ways to use Voki in your classroom with young learners. Voki is sure to be one of the best tools to improve listening, speaking and writing activities.

We want to hear from you!

Tell us how you're using Voki – we're looking for all sorts of ideas. Every so often, we'll choose some examples to feature in the Voki newsletter! Just email us at submit@voki.com. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook to join the conversation online and get our latest updates!

What are people saying about Voki?

"I keep my pet cat (voki) on my class wiki site and I update it almost daily.
The voki gives directions and reminders to my students. They love it of course
some of them think the talking cartoon cat is real ;)"

– Cindy Bonney Duncan via Facebook.com

"loving the fun of voki"

– David Simpson via @MrSimpson07

"Many students lack the confidence to practice their speaking skills in front of the class.
However, Vokis give them the opportunity to practice them in a safe and fun environment.
Students find them entertaining and enjoy having the opportunity of using the as part of the languages lessons."

– Emma Martin-Tobes via FlexibleTeachers.com

"Why wouldn't you want a talking alien against a backdrop of your own
village on your website? I can't think of a single reason."

– Claire White via TalkAboutLocal.org.uk