Denton's newest adventure with 2.0 web technology is a collaborative creation for the Denton Educational Network (Station 88) called, "Where in the World is Mrs. Allen?" The customized avatar created to represent Mrs. Allen on her journey around the globe has captured the children's imagination and allowed her to tailor the clues and locations to their interests and experiences. Her avatar is posted on her webpage in order to enable children to access it in their classrooms as well as share and discuss this activity at home with their parentsand family. So far Mrs. Allen has traveled to the Phillipines and Paris, France. Who knows where she will turn up next?

If you are walking through the hallways during one of these segments on the morning announcements, you will see children with their attention rivited on the monitors listening intently as Mrs. Allen's avatar provides the next sets of clues. As soon as the segment is over, you can hear children engaged in ainimated conversation discussing the clues and possible destinations.

In an interesting marriage of traditional instructional materials and high technology, the world map posted in the main hallway has served as a focal point for student conversation. Groups of children are often found clustered around the map studying it carefully and engaged in spontaneous conversation about world geography. There is no doubt that utilizing the avatar has set a tone of playful exploration and stimulated children's natural curiosity about the world around them. In conversations with students, I have learned that, in fact, children are accessing Mrs. Allen's webpage from home with their parents and family members to discuss the latest clues.

I spent some time this weekend exploring the Voki website and creating my own avatar. The website is user friendly and it took me less than 15 minutes to create my image, however, it took another 15 minutes of tweaking for me to be satisfied with my avatar. It is relatively easy to copy and paste the html code into my blog.

While creating my avatar, I realized that this was something a child can do and, in fact, there are number of online websites designed for children. These websites allow the child to use their creativity to create characters, settings, and dialogues. Kerpoof allows children to create pictures, stories and short videos. Doppelme and Build Your Wild Self (National Wildlife Conservatory) enable children to create avatars and copy and paste them into other programs.

I would be interested in learning if you have explored any of these or similar websites. What was your experince? How have you used them with your students?

I would like to acknowledge the collaborative efforts and expertise of Mrs. Allen, Natina DiOrio, MariAnthi Glykos, Lisa Parisi and Jessica Henry in creating and producing the "Where is Mrs. Allen?" project.