Face your manga and create an avatar

Nick Peachey has written a great post about how the free avatar creation site Face your Manga could be used in the EFL classroom. Judging by the home page, it would seem that French, Spanish and Japanese versions of the site are also planned. Now that would be cool!

Comments

[Sharon]

Joe, have you played with all the sections of this tool? If you have are you happy that it has female charaters that reveal too much in the clothing option and that you can have your character showing middle finger or two fingers? You know I am all for using tools like this but really disappointed that it really does not pose suitable for use with children. It is fine to say that only the teacher will use this as a stimulus or tool but children will then go to the site because it has been advertised by the teacher. I know I would not like my children using this. I suppose you could say they can view various things on Youtube and we use it in school. Yes this is true but we are not giving them the option to use tools that have inappropriate options.

Sorry Joe but this is a tool I'm not using which is a pity as it looked quite good when I initially viewed it.

take care.

Sharon

[Joe Dale]

You're right Sharon. Well spotted.

I totally agree with your comment. It may be better to stick with WeeMees to avoid offence.
http://joedale.typepad.com/integrating_ict_into_the_/2007/06/try-a-weemee-fo.html

[Nik Peachey]

Sharon

I agree Sharon, it is a shame. It depends though on the age and maturity of your students and the kind of cultural background they come from, as to how much and at what age you can use this. You could just ask them not to use the hand gestures, or you could actually deal with an explanation of why and tell students that they are offensive. Of course some students will always be more attracted to the things that are forbidden, so if you have students like this, then perhaps it's better not to use activities that give them free hands on use of the site.

Best

Nik