Welcome To Voices Of The World, a place to connect educators around the world.
This network was created by Sharon Tonner, now a University Lecturer, to connect children together using their voices rather than the written or typed word. It was also created to enable children to develop an appreciation of different languages, accents and dialects from around the world.

We are now in our second year of VOTW where each month a new task is put to the members. Members first place suggestions for the month's task in the FORUM with other members making further suggestions. Once an agreement is made, a teacher is chosen to lead the monthly task. Again all information is placed in the FORUM.

The aim is to release a task at the beginning of the month with all contributions completed by the end of the month. Contributions are in the form of embedded code which are sent to Sharon who then places them on the VOTW wikispace.

The VOTW wikispace for that month is not released until the last day of the month so that all members can look and view all contributions from around the world.

If you would like to join, you need to have primary school children to work with who are not in a participating school.

The aim of VOTW is to hopefully allow children to appreciate the voices of other children from all around the world.

Anna has worked quickly to get the next task complete - well done. You will see below that the children have used their won drawings alongside digital pictures - very inspiring. I am sure you will love the look of the end product and now you can imagine how it will look when I place them all together - but not yet.

Listen to Greece below:

October's task introduces you to another tool on the internet that is visual and auditory. Animito will be used to create a visual presentation that is accompanied by the children singing their National Anthems.

There are some restrictions and some freedom in this project so you can decided how adventurous you want to be within the limitations.

The images can be created by the children by paper or electronically or the images can be taken using a camera of the surrounding area. If you feel you don't have time then save some images from the internet. The restricted part is that no more than 20 images can be used.

The audio can be song solo, as a group, as a class, accompanied or unaccompanied - you decide. The restriction is that you are only allowed 30 seconds and no more.

Before starting please read my email with instructions and enjoy the example I threw together below - the real one from the children should be even better!!!



Any questions then please feel free to give me a shout as always.

Voices Of The World's first task is now available for the world to look and listen. It is amazing listening to all the voices say the same sentence in their own language. I have to say my favourite sound is the children from Greece who sound so sweet. I hope you all enjoyed this first task because I certainly enjoyed working with you all. Until next month's task. Sharon

Just a gentle reminder that this network is for the teachers involved in VOTW and not for the children.



I am currently working on the children's area with all our completed vokis. The plan is to diplay all the vokis in one area - wikispace. I am then going to take all the audio from each voki and create a podcast so that it is like a show. I can do this for everyone this month as each file is very small but in later tasks there may be an element of only selecting specific voices for the podcast but still displaying the main task.



Just a wee bit background on the project, i initally created VOTW as an E-twinning project to unite voices around the world. to make it the world I need to branch out of Europe hence why all you lovely teachers are involved.



Because the site is popular I have to adapt to the interest and realise that some of my inital ideas might not be feasible anymore due to the size as it would not be interesting to the children to listen to a podcast that lasts over an hour. When using different voices and languages children need to be kept focussed and entertained.



To do this I will incorporate a different piece of software each month that you can use from the internet so that not only are the children participating in a global project using their voice they are also learning new ICT skills and hopefully some teachers too.



Briefly, the next themes are National Anthem, Nursery Rhyme, Jingle Bells, Hopes For The Future etc. All these will be in the child's language but this should not present a barrier to understanding as the children have already completed the task and know understand the concept.



The power of the voice and sound are amazing tools if used in a structured environment.



I hope this answers some questions and puts the project into a perspective. Sharon

Our task for September is to create a voki (an animated character with sound).


Get a Voki now!


To complete this project you need:

* Computer and Internet connection;

* Computer microphone;

* Eager child, children or class.

What to say in your own language:

'Hello, we are from (school) in (country) and you are listening to Voices Of The World.'

If you have not used a voki before then watch the voki video on this page to get you started. If you have any problems or questions then please do hesitate to contact me.

Each voki must be ready for the 26th September 2007 in time to be published on VOTW blog and wiki for Friday 28th September 2007.

The end product will be a display of all the vokis representing each country alongside one podcast that joins all the voices from each voki into one track - sounding good so far?