Do you 2.0 and Avatar Fun!

I have been playing around with various web2.0 tools this week, and evaluating which I might want to use with my class this coming year.  First, I played with Voki.  It was easy to set up an account, but once I tried to create my avatar, I was very frustrated.  The free avatar choices were not very good-- I didn't want to pay the yearly fee just to get an avatar I liked.

My favorite avatar style is one that looks like the Wii Mii's (maybe that's what they're called), and a person I follow on Twitter now (thanks to the Dynamic Landscapes Conference) is Jennifer LaGarde-- or as she is known by her twitter handle:

I love the style of her avatar... cartoonish, and cute, and looks just like the real person (minus the cartoonish part).

I have been searching the net off and on for months trying to figure out how to make an avatar in that style-- which clearly was a big old brain fart on my part.  Why did I not just tweet her to find out?  So I have now done just that!

And ironically, LibraryGirl, just tweeted this-- literally 5 minutes before I tweeted her:

The link will bring you to a page describing 20 different ways to create an avatar, and one of them will even put your head in a jar.  Seriously...check it out here.  I think I even found the way to make the cute wii mii person like LibraryGirl.

I have also been playing around with Edmodo.  It was super easy to set up an account and I was quickly able to set up my page.  I like that it looks like a Facebook page-- I have a feeling that my class this coming year is fairly savvy with Facebook.  I need to play around with it more to see what it is capable of.  Maybe I'll send out a tweet to see what other teachers think.

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Ok... so I'm now back a couple of hours later to say that I am absolutely having sooooooo much fun playing with avatars.  Here are the one's I have played with from the link found above:

My lego avatar

My Simpsons Avatar

I Picasso'd my face

   and my favorite so far

Wee Mee

And I still find myself playing.  The kids would really love to "Wimp" themselves at www.wimpyourself.com!  Here's my wimp avatar: 

Here, I played on www.clayyourself.com and made a clay avatar: