I need some software to animate my students.
March 7, 2011 4:42 PM   Subscribe

I'm looking for a software that has "live avatar" or "real time lip sync" functionality for my students to use in my ESL classroom. Any ideas?

Many of my students are shy and getting them to speak in class can be impossible. I thought that I could ween them of their fears, give them a chance to succeed at speaking English, and have a lot of fun by using a live avatar in class. There's a large screen TV and computer setup in my classroom to do this with.

Here's how I imagine this working. I'd set up a booth in the corner of the class with a mic attached to the computer and some magic software would animate a character on the screen as the student spoke. I'm looking for that software. The closest option I found is Crazy Talk 4 Skype, but I don't need the Skype functionality and not sure I can use it without making a call.

Is there any software that can do this?

Bonus question:
Has anyone in the MiFi community tried this?


Other requirements:

- Hopefully free or low cost. (I'll be going out of pocket on this one most likely.)
- The ability to add new avatars would be useful but not necessary.
- Mac preferred, but Windows OK.
- It doesn't need to be professional quality
posted by sleepytako to Education (2 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: I think this is a fantastic idea.

You can do this kind of thing for (mostly) free, but with probably a high time cost, with Second Life. Here's an example on YouTube. You'd have a lot of flexibility in the avatars, but I'm not sure it would be worth how much time you might end up sinking into it.

I think that the Crazy Talk 4 Skype looks pretty good, actually. There's no reason that you can't use the Skype-to-Skype video chat as a one-way camera. Not exactly a call; no "phone" required. But it does mean that you'd have to have another computer, maybe a cheap laptop, to hook up to the TV.

But maybe what you want is something like Logitech's Video Effects? Surely Logitech isn't the only webcam company that makes this type of program.
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 8:59 PM on March 7, 2011


(Boo, now I'm playing with Skype and WeeMe -- but I don't think that WeeMe's are actually animated.)
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 8:59 PM on March 7, 2011


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