Tag Archives: Global teacher

Snap

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Snap is a tool that can be used if you have a blog, wiki or other webpage. Snap takes your links and automatically adds visual snap shots of them for your readers.

Snap shots home
Snap shots home

Accounts are free and easy to set up. There are only a couple of steps:

Set up page
Set up page
  • choose the colour for your theme
  • add a logo if you have one
  • select the language you want
  • register
  • copy the code automatically generated to your webpage.

The easiest way to add the Snap code to a WordPress page (including Edublogs and Globalteacher) was to:

  • copy the code given
  • go to widgets
  • add ‘text’
  • save
  • edit ‘text’ and paste the code
  • save.

All of the links, whether they be within posts or not, now appear with a snap shot once a mouse is hovered over it. Snap is a tool that is quick and easy to use and add visual appeal to blogs, wikis and websites. It adds visual information for users as they can see what the website belonging to the link looks like before they decide to visit it.

Snap shots are already used by eBay, Amazon, Google, Flickr, photobucket and Wikipedia. If you decide you don’t want to see Snaps on Bright Ideas, just click the Options icon in the upper right corner of the Snap Shot and opt-out.

Please note that you can also customise the advertising away from what Snap has selected by going to ‘Snap Shares’ within the Snap site and adding your own blog, wiki, etc. URL. And if you have a lot of links on your page, like Bright Ideas, you may find that Snap takes up too much room.

Voki

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Voki is a resource that enables users to create a talking avatar, a fun way to jazz up (dare I say pimp?) your blog.

Voki homepage

Voki homepage

There are lots of avatar types to choose from; people, animals, anime characters and so on. Once you have chosen your avatar, you can change the colour of its hair, its lips, select glasses and so on. You can also select the type of background; holidays, travel, outdoors, sports, nightlife or insert a background from your own picture collection. Voices and accents can be selected if you decide to type your message in via the computer keyboard. Otherwise you can record your own voice via mobile phone or microphone. The Bright Ideas voki took about five minutes to create, have a look here and also at the one on the sidebar.)

Sue Waters has created a post explaining how to add the voki to Edublogs, WordPress or Global teacher. Following her instructions, adding the voki was simple and took about two minutes. Helen Otway also lists interesting ways you can use vokis in the classroom (please note the terms and conditions of Voki; students must be over the age of 13 to sign up for an account):

  1. Students can create avatars that are similar in looks or personalities and record a message that tells about themselves.
  2. Students can exchange these avatars with e-pals either within their own setting or anywhere in the world.
  3. Students can generate questions to ask their avatar e-pals.
  4. ESL (English as a Second Language) students can use the speaking avatars to practice and listen to their speech. They may use the computerised voice first then record their own voice when they feel more comfortable. Writing, reading and pronunciation are all practised.
  5. Students can create an avatar that resembles a character from a story, add a setting and give it speech. The speech could be from the story or a creative point of view (POV) from the character on an event.

Vokis can be a fun way to communicate and the advantage is that students can maintain their anonymity when publishing to the world.