Tech Tac Toe-Blabberize

When I saw Blabberize demoed in class I almost lost it. That talking lama/emu cracked me up! The next day I showed every teacher that stopped by my classroom Blabberize. I tried it out on my fifth grade class and they got a good chuckle too.

I used Katie the Cat to introduce the morning’s activity to the students. I wanted to try the famous following directions activity with my students, the one where there are 23 directions but if you follow the instructions and read them all first all you have to do is put your name on it. In the Blabber Katie the Cat asked the students to follow the directions on the paper on their desk-meow.

Overall the tool was easy to use. You simply have to upload a photo, draw the mouth, and record your blurb. You can record directly from your computers microphone, call it in through your cell phone or upload previously recorded audio. I wanted to disguise my voice, so I pinched my nose while I spoke. The most difficult part was drawing the mouth. I would draw the mouth, and then test it out to see how it moved and ended up getting it right after five or six tries. Part of the problem was I wanted to use an image of my Mom’s cat Katie and she did not cooperate when I tried to take her photo. She would not hold her head up, which made it hard to locate her mouth on the image.

I could see myself using Blabberize a lot in my classroom, in a funny or serious manner. It would be a good way to introduce a unit or topic or historical figures. I could also use it as an assessment tool for the students. They could record a character summary from a fiction text, information about a historical figure, a summary of a battle in the Revolutionary or Civil Wars, or even talk about themselves as a beginning of the year introduction. I am excited to try it out with them later this year.