Crazy Talk

Crazy Talk is a program which allows you to bring your pictures to life by giving them facial movements and a voice over. The program was relatively simple to use as we followed the online tutorials and instructions set for us here. I feel, these Crazy Talk avatars would be a great engaging stimulus to use in the classroom, especially within the early years or nursery. They would make a good introductory activity to a new topic or perhaps a lesson focussed on a famous person or inventor, where said person could talk to the class. They could talk to the children and give them information about themsleves and the class could then use this information to write notes about their new topic This would also tie into the following curriculum outcomes:

As I listen or watch, I am learning to make notes under given headings and use these to understand what I have listened to or watched and create new texts.  LIT 1-05
As I listen or watch, I can make notes, organise these under suitable headings and use these to understand ideas and information and vreate new texts, using my own words as appropriate.  LIT 2-05

We used Crazy Talk to design a character relating to our Wiki topic, my groups being 'People Who Help Us'. We each took one of our 'helpers' and created an avatar related to their job. We then placed these on the relevant Wiki activity page. I feel these avatars make the information more accessable to children as they can listen to the character talking about their job, rather than having to read the information.