Grade 7 Voki's

This week, I decided it would be a fun thing for the Grade 7's to make their own avatar using http://www.voki.com/.

Since they are the first Grade 7's going through the school I thought it would be fun for them to create an avatar with a message to the Grade 1-6's giving them some advice or a parting message.  I decided not to tell them how to use the site in the traditional manner, but instead, using Jing, I created a screencast of the instructions which they viewed and followed.

It worked like a bomb - and I think I shall teach them how to use Jing next!

Here is an example of one of their final products:

It was great watching them work it out, discover different images and voices, and enjoying the activity. I was thrilled with the outcome of their Voki's and already have ideas where I can use this with other classes.

Todays Meet and Peer Assessment

The Grade 7's have just finished a project on "Disasters". It was a combined assignment between the myself and the Class teacher.

They had to choose 5 disasters that had occurred anywhere in the world. One of these had to be chosen to make a movie of in ICT - the movie had to be accompanied by their Oral. 

Over a period of 4 weeks they:

• Discussed the difference between a natural and man-made disasters
• Learnt the importance of a bibliography / crediting your source
• Sourced and saved information and images
• Imported images into Photo Story 3
• Customised the motion of the images
• Did transitions of images
• Added their key points
• Recorded their orals
• Saved their projects

The final step of the Oral is for it to be viewed and assessed.  As well as the Teacher assessing them, I set up a "Todays Meet"  for the class.  They will need to make a positive observation, a constructive criticism and comment on something that they learnt from their peers oral.

* * *

Today this all happened and it was FANTASTIC!  Their orals were great but even better was their reaction to "Todays Meet"!  Needless to say, I have had to promise them that for their next ICT lesson, we can make use of it again! 

Today's Meet is really easy to use, literally takes a minute to set up and you can choose how long you would like to keep the room open for. The learners viewed each Oral, then made their comments and were able to view one another's comments in real time.

I printed out the Todays Meet transcript. It was given to their teacher and they were able to go through it and the learners could see (a) what they did well (b) what could they improve on (c) what did people learn from them.

It was a great success and the Class teacher has asked if we can incorporate this into the Curriculum for next year.  Will be fun to think of another project using this tool that they will feel enthusiastic about!

  

 Adding their comments

 What a great lesson that turned out to be!