Make an Avatar

The National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) are standards for learning, teaching, and leading in the digital age.  Standard 2 includes “interacting, collaborating, and publishing with peers, experts or others employing a variety of digital environments and media and communicating information and ideas  effectively to multiple audiences using a variety of media and formats”

One way to collaborate and communicate is to use one of the many web 2.0 tools (ex:  Voicethread) available.  Students can create their own avatar, a character that represents the online user, to express their ideas.  This is favored over displaying students’ actual photographs.   Below are two free websites you can use to create an avatar and even save the image for later use.  Neither requires an account or login. 

Have fun!

 1.       Build Your Wild Self   http://buildyourwildself.com

Choose options (gender, skin tone, eyes, etc) à I’m done à  Get a Wild Desktop (If you choose Send to a Friend, you can email or print [facts below picture]) à  Right click on picture à save picture as (.bmp file) à (choose location and file name)

 2.       Clay Yourself      http://www.clayyourself.com      

Wait for movie clapper (timer) to count up to 99 and then says “Get Started” à  start à choose options:  (gender, skin tone, eyes, etc ) à when done, click Finished sign à Skip Naming Avatar à (image appears)  à Download now à  right click on picture à  à save picture as (.bmp file) à (choose location and file name)

Resources:

International Society for Technology in Education. “NETS
          Standards”  2 December 2012  
          http://www.iste.org/standards/

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"Clay Yourself!." Clay Yourself!. Hotels.com, n.d. Web. 2 Dec.
          2012. http://www.clayyourself.com.

"BuiLD YouR WiLD SeLF." BuiLD YouR WiLD SeLF. New York Zoos
          and Aquarium, n.d. Web. 2 Dec.
          2012. <http://buildyourwildself.com/>.