Saturday 10 May 2008

Creating Avatars

I have had a teacher ask me if there is site where children can create their own avatars without having to register their names etc. Generally you do have to register but with some sites you can get away with doing a screen capture.

First of all 'What is an avatar?'
An avatar is a computer user’s representation of himself or herself.

If you have a yahoo account you can make avatars where you can copy and paste the code into your Blog site, here is mine!
Yahoo! Avatars Australia & NZ But this one is not really suitable for children, great for adults. Then I searched specifically for children and found this site Reasonably Clever Block Head Iconiser





To use this picture you need to take a screen capture (Windows users, press Print Screen button on your keyboard, paste into Paint, click and drag around the part you want and copy/paste it into the programme you want to use) (Mac users press Shift, Control, Apple, 4, click and drag around the part you want and paste it into the programme you want to use).

Another programme called Build your Wildself has students creating themselves and then adding animal body parts to finish off as a Wild Self. Once students had created their “wild self”, click on Get a Wild desktop, right click it and select Save Image As and you will have a copy of the avatar.








Kerpoof a site I have reviewed previously in this blog allows you to make avatars but you need to be registered. Once you have registered, go to My Stuff and create your avatar.






Again there is no download feature but you can do a screen capture before you click Save.



And then there is
DoppelMe you can create your avatar and when you have finished you can right click, select Copy and paste into the programme of your choice.




Finally Weemee. There are lots of choices to make changes to the avatar, you can screen capture it or register to get the code to insert into your blogs.



Teachers will need to try these out themselves to find out which is the best for their class situation.

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