Technology Fun & Writing Idea — Wildlife Avatar

It’s my second official day of summer and what did I do?  Attend a teaching conference of course! Don’t feel to bad for me though.  I got paid for it (and for tomorrow too!) and they even included little sack lunches so we could sit outside in the lovely Colorado sun and eat with our colleagues.

I went to the educational technology session and got lots of new cool tips and tricks.  One of these I thought could be a fun end of year computer lab project, but I’m planning to use it as a fun back to school activity in the fall (as it is my summer if I haven’t mentioned that already).

Students can make their own wildlife avatars at Build Your Wild Self (even the name sounds fun!).  Then, they can use these on edmodo as their profile picture (another new find for me today) or use them as a writing project.  They can write about why they chose the many different parts of their avatar, and/or build one for a neighbor as they talk with them about what they like best.  Pretty cute!  I’m thinking I could use them as one of our first projects for a class blog next year if I’m brave enough to start it.

I chose the seahorse because I was just in Monterey last week and loved, loved, loved the seahorses at the aquarium!  My avatar has a rat tail in honor of my first real pet, the black and white rat Stimpy who could jump out of a garbage can.  Her polar bear ears remind me of a character in The Golden Compass, one of my favorite books.  The golden lemur arms represent the lovely spray tan that I spoil myself with during the summer, and she’s perched atop the Grand Canyon to remind me of the week I spent there working as a swamper on a Grand Canyon river rafting trip.

What would your avatar look like?  Try it out!

0 Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *