I love the idea behind Blabberize and I could see it being used in the foreign language classroom in countless ways. Blabberize takes a picture and let's you add a moving mouth and voice to the picture. I chose to try it out using the face of Venus from the Birth of Venus painting by Sandro Botticelli. I have to be honest and say it took me over 2 hours to get this done from beginning to end. At first I was excited to find out that my foreign language department already had a Blabberize account so I thought GREAT I won’t have to waste time setting up an account. I quickly located a picture, did some research on the painting and wrote up a script. I uploaded and cropped the picture, pressed the crop mouth button and put the pink oval over Venus’s mouth. I then hit the record button. I found the record button difficult to navigate and I really could not tell if I was recording or not because the mouth keeps moving either way ?!?
I also noticed I could not get Venus to open her mouth realistically, after trying a few times I left well enough alone. I ran in to difficulty after I completed the recording. The website said it's main server had crashed that day but was back up and running, unfortunately it was running very slow and not allowing me to save my recording. I must have tried over 10 times and each time I tried I had to re download the picture and re record the script! I then closed down my computer, walked away, and had dinner. An hour later I tried the website through Firefox. I reread my script and in the end I was able to save it! Since I know my students are tech savvy I am sure they can figure out how to maneuver the mouth cropping and then go on to show me. I also did not figure out how to embed the video on to my blog so the link will have to do. I give this 2.0 tool a 6 out of 10 for being user friendly.
I can see my students using Blabberize for Introducing:
- Famous Italian Designers
- Animal projects
- Family members
- Famous historical figure
- Famous Italian Artists
- Famous Italian painting
Venus from the Birth of Venus painted by Sandro Botticelli
Thanks for the honest post. It's amazing how sometimes a different browser can make the difference with some programs. This seems like one of them. A tip on the mouth (which can drive you crazy)- someone once told me to make the line for mouth movement UNDER the top lip (which causes only the bottom lip to move).
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