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Avatar Bazar

April 16th, 2009 | Author:

carolavatarIf you don’t want a picture of yourself on various blogs, wikis, forums etc. but you still want a picture you can make an avatar of yourself. One of the latest I come across, thanks to Jane’s eLearning Pick of the Day, is DoppelMe. On the right is one I created today.

This is early days for this service and I would have liked the option to change the shape of my face, but otherwise it’s fine as an avatar. You can change clothes, hair, expression etc. and there are a number of accessories you can add. Some of it requires DoppleMe Coins which you get by referring others to the site.

Now more interesting is the question of why people use a photo or an avatar. When avatars first became available in education LMSs I used to use a cartoon of myself quite frequently. I thought this showed students that I was humorous. Now I tend to use a photo, as these days I think it more important that people see me when they read what I say.

If you want to go the avatar route here’s a list of 27 avatar makers at Mashable.

So, what do you do? Photo or avatar? Why?

Posted in (e)Learning & (e)Teaching, Web 2.0 Applications | Tags: , , ,
  • http://www.digitalang.com/blog Seth Dickens

    Photo – as I think that it's important that the tiny human touch it conveys can manage to ever-so-slightly break into the emotional divide that is naturally there when we use online teaching.

    However, with most of my students being under 18, I can't encourage them to do the same :(

    Seth

  • http://cooper-taylor.com Carol Cooper-Taylor

    <html><body><span style=”font-family:Verdana; color:#000000; font-size:10pt;”><div>That has to be borne in mind of course Seth, so thanks for raising this important issue. </div>
    <div>Do any of your students use avatars? How much do you think they are aware of safety issues online?</div>
    <div>What do others do in this area?</div></span></body></html>

  • http://www.digitalang.com/blog Seth Dickens

    A few do, a few don't. Avatars for them is a picture of a random fluffy toy though :D I haven't seen any home-made ones yet.

    A few posted photos of themselves to the school wiki as their profile pic, too. At the time I didn't have the heart to tell them to take them down, but I did talk a while about internet safety in class afterwards.

    Seth :)

    p.s. thanks for letting me know comment posted. It was still working away a while back when I closed the browser!

  • http://www.digitalang.com/blog Seth Dickens

    A few do, a few don't. Avatars for them is a picture of a random fluffy toy though :D I haven't seen any home-made ones yet.

    A few posted photos of themselves to the school wiki as their profile pic, too. At the time I didn't have the heart to tell them to take them down, but I did talk a while about internet safety in class afterwards.

    Seth :)

    p.s. thanks for letting me know comment posted. It was still working away a while back when I closed the browser!



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