#YaKiT: Making the Last 5 Minutes of Class More Efficient

You have 5 minutes left in class and you want your students to summarize what they have learned today. What do you do? You may want to turn to the YaKiT, which gives users the ability to easily create and share photos that talk in as little as a minute. In my previous post, I had mentioned some other alternatives. 

How could you use it? 

• You are a history teacher and have just finished a lesson on the causes of the Civil War. Perhaps you have one half of the class use Abraham Lincoln's picture to summarize the Union Army perspective, while the other half uses Jefferson Dave to summarize the Confederate perspective. 

• You are a language arts teacher and have finished a lesson on poetry. Perhaps you have Edgar Allan Poe describe literary elements found in poetry. 

• You are a science teacher and have finished a lesson on radioactivity. Perhaps you have Marie Curie describe the important elements of today's lesson. 

• You are a mathematics teacher who has just wrapped up a lesson on the Pythagorean theorem. Perhaps you have students find a picture of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and have him describe the term.

• You have just wrapped up a lesson that is filled with vocabulary terms. Perhaps you divide your class into small groups and have each pair create a YaKiT to provide a visual and verbal description of the term. You could easily add this resource to your class webpage, LiveBinder, etc. to serve as a study tool. 

If you do not have iPads in your classroom, another great alternative was suggested in a comment made by Kaitlin. She had mentioned that Voki would be another great alternative to use!

How does YaKiT work?
1. You can begin by taking your own photo, accessing a photo from your camera roll, or grabbing a picture from the Internet.

2. Next, you can edit your picture by zooming and cropping.

3. Now it is time to customize your picture! You can customize your own customized movable mouth or select from a library of mouths, eyes, lips, noses, and even beards! You can add characters to your picture like President Obama or zombies, props like halos and hearts, or special effects like rain clouds and sunshine.

4. Then it is time to record your voice. You can customize the sound of the voice by increasing or decreasing pitch.

5. Finally, it is time to share. You can share your YaKiT via social media or your camera roll.