gamekits: game-making toolkits

Here are some avatar engines that could be used by students to create their being me avatar.

meez

Users create their own animated avatars and use them in customizable rooms within the meez comunity, play games or use them in social networks like Facebook. After creation, Meez can be exported for download in JPEG or GIF form for use in websites, social networking profiles, blog posts, and forum signatures. Meez can also be used alongside the games in the site, where the gameplay drives the emotions of the Meez.

zwinky

Users can create avatars that can represent them in any social network that supports zwinkies (i.e. my space, facebook etc). They are part of the MyWebSearchbar on computers running Windows. When users change the appearance of said Zwinkies, all sites in which that avatar is currently displayed will update accordingly. Zwinky is created by IAC Search and Media

neopets

Users can create their own Neopets, the virtual pets that inhabit the land of Neopia. Visitors can create an account and take care of up to four virtual pets, buying them food, toys, clothes, and other accessories using a virtual currency called Neopoints. Alike in Gaia Online, in Neopia neopoints can be earned through playing games, investing in the stock market, trading, winning contests and making your own shop. Users can explore the world of Neopia with their Neopets and interact with each other through the NeoBoards, NeoMail, and guilds. 

‘Facebook API enables outside web developers to inject new features and content into the Facebook environment. After signing up for a developer account on Facebook, the developer writes a web application (in the simplest case, a piece of web content; in the most advanced case, a full fledge web application with deep functionality) and hosts it on her own servers. The developer then registers her application with Facebook, and then users can add that application to their Facebook user experience in several different ways, including within their Facebook profile pages.’

Facebook API assumes that you have ccess to a web server running php5. Once you create your own app, you will using a different application name and a different server. We have highlighted these things that will be different for your application.

Also, on order to set up your application you have to use  FTML code, a facebook variation of the HTML.  Other than that the API uses a REST-like interface. This means that our Facebook method calls are made over the internet by sending HTTP GET or POST requests to the Facebook API REST server . Nearly any computer language can be used to communicate over HTTP with the REST server.

Facebook Developers

A step by step tutorial can be found here

Also many of these applications are open source, find more here (footprints)

Check the facebook devellopers wiki

finally play a cool Facebook API such as Scrabulous