Voices Of The World Wikispace - click on link to hear all the children's voices from around the world participate in each month's task to unite their voices together.
If you would like to participate in this global project then send an email, through this network, to Sharon Tonner with the name of your school, town and country and also the age of the children who will be participating in the project.

October's task is now live for all to view. Go the VOTW wikispace and select October. I hope you enjoy watching and listening to all the National Anthems or local songs.

November's task is simple but I can assure you the end result will be very effective. The theme is the nursery rhyme 'twinkle, twinkle, little star' to which the children will sing in their own language. My vision is join all the songs together so they go smoothly from one to the next. To do this I need everyone to sing in the key and speed. How do I manage this to do this? Quite easy. I have create 10 backing tracks to 'Twinkle Twinkle' on the good old keyboard then saved them as MP3 files.

For those interested they send me an email and I will then send them one of the backing tracks so that there is variety.

You task is to use the backing track and record your children singing 'Twinkle Twinkle', in their own language, along with the track.

Send the recording to me with the typed words of Twinkle Twinkle in the language the song is song (if English then no need to do the typed words).

I will then join all together in a special way that I am sure you will like with each version moving easy from one to the next.

Because the final product is one large slidecast it would still be nice to have individual contributions on a page so children can click on a specific country without listening to the whole thing.

With the audio you created you can get the children to draw a picture to represent Twinkle Twinkle and upload both to One True Media to create a simple presentation like the example below which I made in a few minutes (I will be creating one with the children's work when back at school).



Sharon

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?

Hello Voices Of The World,

it is great to see you on the Ning network that will be the place to find out what is happening each month and what to do. I hope to have all registered by the end of August then will submit first task on 1st September so remember to come back then.

Sharon