The sort of wisdom one acquires from brushing up a textbook page to page is not equivalent as the understanding accomplished through exposure. A Google search for “avatars in education”, exhibit a comprehensive account of entertaining platforms effortlessly resilient for the classroom. It authorizes teachers and students to bring notable, historical personalities to an entity as humorous, expressing and vivid characters. Students can represent themselves imaginatively by adding speech bubbles, selecting themes and backgrounds, changing characters’ facial expression, and mixing audio tracks for their projects.
Avatar-based learning and digital personas are innately engaging. These types of platforms are excellent for independent learning. When students use their avatars to investigate a virtual world they have open door to an abundance of wisdom.
When they enter a Mughal Empire, for example, avatars can build up prominent Mughal memorial such as the Taj Mahal. Students can inquire about the architectural specifics, distinctive clothing, or culture of the Mughal peoples. As a teacher, you can directly switch the virtual realities from historical mode to archaeological mode and then students analyze Mughal again, this time with a distinct learning objective.
1. Ask students to make historical avatars. They can type text to each other on the computer that would be appropriate for the historical period.
2. Engage students in historical biographies by having them create characters to match their learning content
3. When students write autobiographies, they can include an Avatar of themselves as part of the project. Ask them to correlate their writing to the elements they include on their Avatar.
4. Play a “Guess Who” as a get to know you activity at the start of the school year. Have students create an Avatar and then pose a few questions for other students to make guesses as to who it is.
5. Embed an Avatar into a Google doc to personalize it and build relationships with students
6. Celebrate an accomplishment of a student, by embedding an Avatar onto their Google assignments.
7. Bring student narrative writing to life by having them create a set of characters to correspond with their writing piece.
8. Teach adjectives by having students create an Avatar and write adjectives to describe them.
9. Practice reading fluency by having students record their voice on a Voki reading a poem or short passage. Share it with their parents or embed in a digital portfolio.
10. Encourage students to include dialogue in their writing and use personalized Avatars to illustrate their writing.
11. Use the student’s avatars when creating and writing stories that will engage them immensely in the writing process.
12. Use the avatars on behaviour management charts and rewards systems.
13. An ice breaker activity – shuffle and distribute the pictures of avatars. Students then need to find the person their avatar corresponds with.
14. Use the avatars to show progress on classroom goal boards.
15. Use the avatars on certificates or awards to personalize them.
16. Students can design their Avatar to speak the language they are learning. A set of instructions could be given to, for example, pronounce new words or state their definitions. Students can use their Avatar as a teacher who speaks the correct version of the word and definition after they have spoken it. This is similar to the use of flashcards, except it is more exciting and way more fun!
17. If you are interested in knowing what the students have been gaining from your lessons or lectures, you can assign a fun class assignment by asking them to give a short one-minute summary of your previous lecture. Their Avatar could be the teacher (it could even be you) speaking about a recently learned subject and summarizing the most important points.
18. Presenting in front of a classroom full of people is not everyone’s cup of tea. Do your shy students a favour by requiring a classroom presentation on an assigned subject through their avatar. You can make the project more creative by asking them to create a character that would most likely fit the role of the person presenting.
19. For teachers, the worst part of teaching could be when the students start yawning, start chatting with their peers, and seem utterly uninterested in what they have to say. Young students don’t always have a fabulous attention span and easily get distracted by the next thing that pops-up. You could bring your lecture to life by asking your Avatar to do the talking instead of you. The quirky character will certainly increase their attention span.
20. Let your avatar do the work delegation, and in the meantime, you get to make a presentation. Humanize that boring Word Doc with a list of projects or assignment instructions and let the Avatar articulate what they are expected to do. The clip can be added to your shared classroom folder that students can re-open and hear the instructions again whenever they need to.
As a tech tool expert here are some avatar creating tools –
DoppelMe
Voki
Build your Wild Self
Frenzoo
Gravatar
Most of the above-mentioned Avatar maker online applications are free. They are easy to use and quite fun. It’s an easy to use interface. You would come across tons of stylized attributes and body positions to choose from. They help your student let express themselves. The cartoon style is developed and professional and really shows details so that you can go ahead and represent yourself in the very best way.
The above article was featured on Teacher Plus Magazine in January 2020
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