Red River Press

Monday March 8, 2010

While Avatar may not have won best picture at the Oscars, it is still a subject worth discussing in English class this week. Your students may be sick of talking about the movie, but what about the term avatar itself? Chances are your English learners are participating in various online worlds and communities, including Nings, Facebook pages, and Twitter. So, why do some students insist on using flowers, whales, or silhouettes to represent their online identities?

Here are some Discussion Questions about Avatars to use in the Classroom:

1. How much thought did you put into your latest avatar?

2. Do you use the same avatar across all social network platforms? Why or why not?

3. What personal or cultural reasons do people have for using stock photos for avatars?

4. Are you less likely to communicate with an online profile that uses a silhouette rather than a personal photo?

5. Can an animation be used successfully to personify one’s true self?

6. Should online community members change their avatars often, or keep profile photos the same for easy recognition?

7. Describe the best avatar you have ever seen. What attracted you to this profile?

8. Do you like to be able to put a face to a name when reading comments? (EX: via Gravatar)

9. Will selecting the perfect avatar become more important in the future? Why or why not?

10. Should companies use logos for their social networking avatars, or are these images too impersonal?

Vocabulary to Review

• silhouette
• put thought into something
• social networks
• stock photos
• personify
• put a face to a name
• impersonal

Speaking of avatars, do you engage with your students in an online community like a blog or Ning? A student recently suggested that a teacher’s smiling face (looking straight at the screen and obviously posing for the camera) was more welcoming than one that showed that same teacher looking off in the distance. Maybe you need to put some more thought into your own avatar. Here is another related question to consider, posed last week by Karenne Sylvester of Kalinago English: R u U online?

Related
Avatars for Young Learners
Is your Photo Avatar Making you Look Old?
Voki: Get a Speaking Avatar for your Site
Avatar Importance

Who has the best avatar in ELT? Share your opinion and a link in the comments.

Contributed by Tara Benwell