#MyKeynoteCharacter

I stumbled upon the most amazing resource late this summer…#MyKeynoteCharacter created by Laura Wright (@MrsLauraW).

It’s a Keynote presentation that allows users to create and customize their own avatars by copying and pasting different pieces together. There are slides to select skin color, slides to select eyes, and slides to choose hair. There are slides to select a mouth, slides to select clothes, and slides to select a nose. There are even slides to choose accessories such as glasses and hats.

At first, I thought it would simply be a fun activity for the students to complete that I could use to teach copying and pasting. Something we could do together the first few days of school. But then the more I thought about it, the more I loved the possibilities of it.

The students were very thoughtful with the “pieces” they chose to represent themselves. I was impressed with how aware they were of using pieces that matched their reality. As we worked, some students realized there weren’t pieces that matched them. The one particular item we noticed was there wasn’t a curly haired option. We tweeted to Laura and she graciously added a curly haired option along with another head covering update as well. What a perfect example to students of communicating globally and how easy it can be to collaborate with others who may not live close.

The first thing we did was create our avatar so we could use it to customize our Seesaw icon. The students enjoyed doing this and they were really excited to replace the generic animal icon with one that represented themselves. (Here is a video on how to replace the icon if you’re not sure on how to do it.)

Students became obsessed with creating characters. They were asking to create more avatars during choice time and asking to create characters “that didn’t look like them.” I decided to run with this enthusiasm and use this as a resource in the classroom.

Here are some ways you could use these avatars:

Appsmash the characters with ChatterPix Kids (FREE app for Apple and Android) to have students respond to their reading (compare two stories, retell a book, give a book review, tell a new ending to a story, etc.)
Create characters to describe using adjectives
Create characters to illustrate and add to a writing piece done in writing workshop. You can use Keynote shapes to add background detail to the illustration.
Appsmash the characters with ChatterPix Kids to have students create and tell math story problems
Create two characters and compare and contrast how they are the same and different
Play a guessing game with the characters where one student has to describe the character and the other partner has to figure out which character they are describing
The possibilities are truly endless!!

One of the most important things this template could be used for is to create an avatar that can be used to protect the identify of a student. We have a list of students at our school that are on our “Do Not Photo List” which means their face cannot appear in any photo or video. This can make it really difficult when creating projects. This is a great way for these students to still participate in video projects because they can appsmash and add this avatar to the project. They can also use it in place of a selfie.

This is an amazing resource that has so many possibilities. The only limit is the limit of your creativity.

Don’t fret if you don’t have Keynote. These slides can be opened using Power Point and Google Slides as well.

Laura Wright is the creative mind behind this resource. You can find this resource along with a plethora of others on her blog and website. (http://wrightstuffinteractive.com/) . Some of the resources that can be found include a monster maker (similar to the Keynote character file), a handwriting helper, reading correlation chart, Book Creator resources, and visible thinking routines among many, many others.