Brooklyn Banneker Student Blog--be creative, innovate, take risks, unlearn to learn...: December 2009

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Avatars

A Voki is a talking voice character, a computer-generated version of oneself. The more generic term for a Voki is a speaking avatar, a digital representation of a person or being.

Avatars provide a face to the students and a face to the teacher. They provide the human element to online teaching.

Voki---Voki lives on your blog---Voki is a combination of "vox", which is Latin for voice, and "Loki", which, is a prankster character in Norse Mythology.

Squidoo

Voki is simply a talking voice character. These animated characters or avatars enable users to express themselves on the web with a voice but as a talking character.You can customize your Voki to look like you or take on the identity of lots of other types of characters--animals, monsters, anime etc.You can even have your Voki speak with your own voice by adding your voice with a microphone, upload, or by phone.

Walking Tour Project in Brooklyn

I want to thank Ms. Sinckler a history teacher at Banneker for this project idea.
Walking Tour Project

Every weekend you are to post to your blog. Remember your blog outline is your guide. The weekend of 12/25 post either a national or an international new article. The articles can be found her: Google News or New York Times or CNN

Housing History Videos: The Local-Fort Greene-Clinton Hill

Part I

Choose two of the Walking tours from the book: Walking Brooklyn: 30 Tours Exploring Historical Legacies, by Adrienne Onofri. Search for the book on Google Books; Barnes & Noble; visit the Brooklyn libraries.

Follow your selected tours and do the following and post on your blog :

Create a multimedia representation use ( Slideshare, MyPlick , authorStream and Joggle)
Maps: (Community Walk, (Entertonement---collection of sound bites, ---record your voice right on this site) Google Maps, Mapwing)
Photos and pictures (flickr, Picasa Web Albums)
Video (Vimeo, YouTube, Animoto )
Audio Tools: Podcasts are recordings distributed across the Internet as downloadable MP3 files (Audacity, Gcast, Blabberize) (Entertonement---collection of sound bites, ---record your voice right on this site)
Use your mobile device to take photographs, record voice and video commentary, jot down a few notes and post. Do you have a GPS locator on today’s mobile phones? If so, you will be allowed to explore your surroundings.
A list of Brooklyn Neighborhoods

Part II

Make your own neighborhood walking tours (use the book as your example)
Record Narratives and Commentaries :
Discuss the neighborhoods you chose for your tours
Provide detailed instructions your tours
Discuss in detail "Points of Interest" (see the book)
Talk about your route you took ( it in the book titled "Route Summary" )
Describe how the neighborhoods look
Provide detailed instructions of sites t and their history
See Examples:
Radio Rookies
Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn, New York