Avatars: the face of eLearning?

Avatars are virtual characters and provide a realistic human side to online education and ICT. There are many benefits and students can instantly relate to it. Unlike reading a paragraph of text, avatars may be considered fun and visual. They are an excellent tool for attention grabbing in a world where visual stimulus is higher than ever before. Prensky (2005), highlights the need for students to be engaged and interested to facilitate optimum learning. He discusses the vast amount of stimulus children engage in in their free time. Computer games, television, mobile phones, social networking, iPods and other internet applications all involve high visual and audio stimulation and many are highly interactive. Avatars can be used for the purpose of capturing attention and bringing learning to life.

Avatars are also a great tool for assessment. Students may be given tasks that are to be presented using an avatar such as Voki. The option of sharing their avatar with the rest of the world can also be inspiration for them to put in more effort, and the environment is safe as they are not sharing any images of themselves, only a representation. It’s also a way of encouraging creativity and shyer students acn be encouraged by giving them ‘a voice’.

Here is a voki I’ve created with a simplistic example of using it for a school homework task.


Get a Voki now!


I love this wiki Voices of the World. It is well worth a visit as it hosted a worldwide learning activity for school children using voki. Each school had to produce an animated character using the audio recording option to record their voices saying the sentence, “We are the (school) from (location) and you’re listening to voices of the world”. Students were able to hear different accents and different languages. It’s a great example of a meaningful task in learning to appreciate globalisation and make connections worldwide using ICT.

Reference

Prensky, M. (2005). Engage me or enrage me. Educause Review, Retrieved July 22, from http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0553.pdf