Voki’s are one of the coolest web 2.0 technologies I get to play with. Simply put, you can create a digital character and have it speak for you. You can use computer generated voices or you can record your own voice. For a more detailed description go to http://www.squidoo.com/voki . I think this could have some create chances for students to be creative. Students can change a lot of features of a character such as hair color or eye color. On something like my shark you cannot change quite as much.

This web 2.0 technology is great because it can be embedded in to most blogs or web pages. Voki.com will tell students how to embed this technology in to most forms of web resources. This means that students only need to be able to find the html code to insert a voki. Since the voki pulls information from Voki.com students only have to sign in at one location to make changes. This means that you could put the same voki in 5 or 6 web blogs or discussion boards.

http://teachweb2.wikispaces.com/Voki goes over some basic strengths and weaknesses of using a voki for learning. I agree with most of these except that teachers need to be cautious that the voice does not always pronounce words correctly.

Teachers should consider using something like a voki if they want a character to talk to the class. For example, Abraham Lincoln has a premade character and you could use it to talk about the civil war. Be careful each voki can only talk for 60 seconds or so.