This week we have an interview with Mrs. Stephanie Bullock. Mrs. Bullock is an academic technology teacher from The Lovett School in Atlanta, GA. She a Voki user since 2009! It was great that we have a chance to talk to Mrs. Bullock.
Here’s what Mrs. Bullock likes about Voki:
- My students feel like they are creating something original and personal to share with a wider audience.
- I love that my students can create their own backgrounds to further personalize their Vokis.
- My most favorite thing is that Vokis are easily embeddable and they are there for me to share with the students’ family.
Mrs. Bullock created a Voki about how she used Voki in class. She and her third graders did a really great reading project by creating Voki characters to represents the characters from the books they read!
Q: What would you add to the Voki product?
A: I would add the ability to edit the student Vokis from the teacher account. My students were too young and my time with them was too limited to ask them to handle the audio conversions that were necessary, so I had to keep track of all their usernames and passwords in order to add the audio for them. It was time consuming.
Wider variety of acceptable voice and background formats. I’ve had to open students’ backgrounds using Preview and then export them as low-quality .jpgs in order for them to successfully be uploaded.
The ability to publish a Voki without having to add audio so that the students’ work during one computer class period will be saved for the next time they have class. I haven’t found a way to save their work before they are ready to add audio. (See my work-around below).
Q: Do you have any Voki tricks up your sleeve?
A: I use the application Audacity to convert audio files to the acceptable .mp3 format. My students only have access to the application Audio Recorder on their computer, producing an .m4a file that isn’t an acceptable file type.
To circumvent the publishing issue that I have, I usually type in a filler word like “test” in the audio component to Voki so that I am able to save students’ work from class period to class period.
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Mrs. Bullock runs a technology blog: http://techknowledgey.edublogs.org/
Follow Mrs. Bullock on Twitter: @srbullock
Want to be interviewed for the Voki blog? Send us an email at submit@voki.com!
Until next time,
The Voki Team
The Voki Blog - Expanding Education 