First up, Step Gently Out written by Helen Frost & pictures by Rick Lieder. For this one, I called in and recorded my own voice for the avatar's words.
Next up is Water Sings Blue: Ocean Poems by Kate Coombs and illustrated by Meilo So. I chose to type in my text and use a fish with an animated ocean background (fun!) and an Australian accent (even more fun!) for this one.
My review of Voki: This website is easy to use for creating avatars, and I think children will enjoy the multitude of options available. It took me a few minutes to figure out how to change the basic characters because the different categories are on a very small sliding bar under the "Head" option. Once I understood how to get to all the choices, the rest of it was very simple. My audio is not perfect on the avatar where I called in, but I think that is probably more a function of my phone than the website, and also it could possibly be affected by my LouisiTexas accent! When I entered my text for Water Sings Blue, I hit a character limit that would not let me include everything I wanted to say.
Final thoughts: I think kids will jump at the chance to use these, and it's also a great way to let them include themselves in a project without using their actual picture when there are privacy concerns. These could be used in conjunction with many other applications to add interest and variation, and I know students will come up with so many more ideas than I ever could!
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