An avatar is a comic representation of you that you can embed in your webpage, wiki, blog, or any other place you go online. It allows you to have an online personality without posting your personal photo. You can use an avatar as a way to protect your online identity, or just to have fun. Once you have an avatar, you can capture it as an image file, or you can embed the code in a page so that it changes each time you change your avatar. (It's fun to change clothes, etc. for occasions.)

Here are three sites you can use to create an avatar:

 http://www.buildyourwildself.com/ Animal lovers - or those with a wild streak - will enjoy creating wild versions of themselves here.

http://www.manga.com/content/avatar-face-maker Manga lovers will enjoy this site.

 http://www.tektek.org/dream/ . This site lets you create cute little people. Choose the "special avatars" option for fantasy avatar options.

Once you create an avatar you like, here is how you can save it and copy it to your flashdrive and email it to me:

1. Press the Command+Shift+4 keys all at once. Your cursor will turn into a little cross-hairs.
2. Place this cursor in the top left corner of the image.
3. Hold down the clicker, and use your finger on the track pad to drag to the bottom right corner, then release the clicker.
4. Your image will be saved and appear on your desktop as "Picture 1" (or Picture 2, etc., if there are already other Picture files on the desktop). If you didn't drag exactly how you wanted to, just repeat steps 2 and 3.
5. Rename your file to avatar_period#_lastname_firstname.png.
6. If you have email, open your email and send me an email to jlofton@lvusd.org and attach your file. Sign your name in the email.
7. Insert your flashdrive in one of the USB ports. You will see a drive image on the desktop.
8. Drag your Picture file over the flashdrive to copy it to your flashdrive.
9. Now, drag your Picture file to the trash in the right end of the dock.
10. Empty the trash.
11. Drag the flashdrive icon to the trash to eject it.
12. Remove your flash drive from your computer.

Help for saving avatars on a PC: PC users cannot use the Command+Shift+4 key to save a partial screen image. Here are some suggestions:

1. If you use the http://www.tektek.org/dream/ site, once you complete the avatar, click the Save button below it. You can then place the cursor over the image, Right-Click, and select "Save Image as" from the pop-up menu. Save your file as a .jpg file.
2. The other two sites, press Alt+PrtScn. This will capture an image of the entire screen to your clipboard. You can then open a graphics program such as Paint, Select Edit -> Paste to open the image, crop the image around the avatar, and save the file.