Three Very Cool Avatar Creators

Recently, I was working with some students on autobiography projects. Although we can’t publish the students realistic image, since their stories about the students themselves, we’d like the students to be able to show their creativity and personality.  I found many sites, but these three seemed to meet our needs most, because of their ease of use, the fact that students don’t need to log in to create them, and the quality of the avatar.

Dopple Me

–  Dopple Me

Of these three sites, this one is probably the most basic.  It took a little bit of tinkering to get it to create this avatar.  Plus, sometimes when I made a choice, it didn’t let me take it back.  So, of the three, this would probably be my last resort.

However, what I did like about it was its simplicity.  This would be a good choice for a quick avatar, if you just wanted to get in and done

Buid Your Wild Self

Build  Your Wild Self

What a beautiful tool!  The site itself is linked to the New York Zoos and Aquarium.   I was really impressed with the artistic quality of the site.  This site provides  a little more customization to the avatar.  The students were able to choose facial features as well as clothing styles for the avatar.

The only problem I saw with this site is the inability to download the finished product.  We got around this problem by “printing” as a PDF and then saving the it that way.  When the students need to embed this avatar into their project, we just will save the pdf as a jpg.  This is a lot of steps, and I walked the kids through it.  However, with younger students it might pose a problem.

Toy Story Toy Creator 

Toy Story Toy Creator

I saved the best for last! This by far was my (and the students’) favorite avatar creator.  Again, the students didn’t need to log in in any way, and they were able to customize many elements of the avatar.  Not only did they get to choose the eyes, nose, etc, they could also further customize by moving them around, changing the color, etc.

The site itself was fun to use and had some “bells and whistles” that enaged the students, but the bells and whistles didn’t bog down our network.  The students were able to create a personalized avatar  within twenty minutes.  Plus, the site allows to students to download the avatar in many different formats…again without requiring any log in of any type!

Sure, it’s a commercial site, but I have to say—way to go Pixar!!

I’d love to know any other sites you could recommend, but these three did the trick for us!

Twitter Template—Cool!

Lately I have been working with a class doing a “Living History” project.  They completed the project last year using imovie, garage band, powerpoint, etc.  This year we were looking in incorporate a twitterlike template that students would use.  Of course, it is not as authentic as actually tweeting, but I think it’s the next best thing.

In the past we’ve used the Facebook template that was posted and that’s been pretty successful.  I tried to emulate that type of format.  The idea behind it is that the kids have to try and really understand the details behind the events, decide what is or isn’t important, and even find images that work with it.

Anyway…like I said, it was created in Pages, and I’d be happy to share if your school uses this platform.  I’m new to this, so if  have  a suggestion on where to store it….cool.  Box doesn’t work because it doesn’t like Pages. I can also email it to you.

If you don’t have Pages,  I’d love some suggestions on how to convert it to another format and then I’ll send it out that way.

Not often that you try and do something and it actually works the way you want it too!  Hurray!