Educational Uses for Avatars

When thinking about the educational uses for avatars, here were my initial ideas

- Use in LOTE (having an avatar speak another language as a tool for students to learn)
- Communicating with students (Creating your own characters to communicate and interact with the students).
- Getting students to generate characters and using them to ask questions in relation to classes. students can ask questions to their voki friends.

I also found a great website which has countless other ideas on how they can be used. At the risk of plagiarising anything this website also helped me to add other educational uses for avatars to my list such as:

- using them as a tool to help shy students to speak up (This would be also great for students who hate public speaking, rather then doing it in front of the class students could create and use their own avatars to give a speech or presentation)
-using a voki as a teaching tool in online and distance education
- students can create avatars resembling characters in a story, add a setting and give it a speech.

There were countless other ideas and links I found on this website also.

Avatars would also be great to use to incorporate the Engagement Theory and Active Learning Theory into the classroom as students are working together on something which they can "relate, create and donate" to (Kearsley and Shniederman) Students would be motivated to learn due to the novel and fun nature of using the avatars as a tool to apply what they have learned.

In relation to the learning design framework avatars would be an effective (and fun!)learner centered resource to incorporate into the classroom, especially when looking at the 8LMQ'S at 4, 5 and 6. Avatars would be a great learning tool to use, when considering who will do what?engaging people, professionals and learning tools. In this case the avatar can be used as the learning tool to engage students.

Students could also become support for one another through using these avatars (what resources do I have at my disposal?). When considering LMQ 5, what will constitute the learning journey? students can use avatars to develop and manage their own learning experience in any subject using some of the ideas listed above and on the website I have listed.

Students and teachers can also share and compare avatars to monitor learner progress and as evidence of what they have learned. (LMQ 7 and 8).

I am now wishing that I could have used an avatar for all those Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet speeches I had to do in English when I was at school!

Reference:


Kearsley, G., & Shneiderman, B. (1999). Engagement Theory: A framework for technology-based teaching and learning. Retrieved from CQUniversity e-course, EDED20491 ICTs for learning design, http://e-courses.cqu.edu.au/.

Marzano, R. J., & Pickering, D. J. (with Arrendondo, D. E., Paynter, D. E., Blackburn, G. J., Brandt, R. S., Pollock, J.E., Moffett, C.A & Whisler, J. S.). (1997). Dimensions of learning teacher’s manual (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.