Tuesday Tech Thoughts
Beth Rihtar- Instr. Tech Coach- Park Ridge-Niles, Illinois
Bitmoji--it's fun!
Bitmojis are small, customizable cartoons with text and image, which are available through the Bitmoji app. These cartoons are popular with educators and also the world-- and they create quite a buzz! I will admit... when I changed my email address to include a Bitmoji, I was surprised that I got as much reaction to my velociraptor that I did, but... I get it. It's a velociraptor!
So the pros: it's fun, it's easy to use, and NOW (from a recent update), it's super customizable. (If the text you're looking for isn't there, you can just type it in, and it'll create a Bitmoji with a range of emotions that might go along.)
The cons: You have to use the app on your smartphone (available for both iOS and Android) to get started and create an account. You can also use Snapchat, and Bitmoji works with that-- but you don't have to if you don't want to.
If you want to have Bitmoji "friends", where you can have multiple Bitmojis together in an image, you must have a Snapchat account.
Using VR to build greater understanding
I had the good fortune this last week to present at IETC 2019 (Illinois Education & Technology Conference) this past week, and talked to attendees about generating empathy in students by looking at a learning situation through virtual reality goggles. We have a set here at Emerson, and rather than talking to your students about coral bleaching, famine in Africa, tenement housing-- you can SHOW them this in virtual reality. There are a lot of research studies that show that children feel a greater empathy when they look at environments in VR over simply discussing them. If you'd like to use Emerson's VR set, just send me an email, and I can show you how to access Google Expeditions, and then we can schedule a time for your students. This is a really engaging resource, and we already have students participating! I linked my slides below, if you'd like to see my #IETC19 presentation.
Want to learn more about math? Check this out!
Engaging Slides?
Everyone always likes my slide templates.... here's the secret though: I'm terrible at design, matching colors, picking fonts. So, rather than angst over the fact that I can't pick a "cute" color to save my life, I use tools that have great templates for creation. For Google Slides, I use Slidescarnival and SlidesGo. Both of these websites have a variety of slide deck templates that you can make a copy of, and then use as a theme in Google Slides. Very easy to use, lots of beautiful and engaging templates, and sorted by color, genre, etc. For graphics, I use Canva... a LOT. It's a freemium tool (free to use, with some paid premium features), and is great for making infographics and social media posts. Lastly, when I need cool graphics (like the palette right above), I use Iconfinder. There are free, Creative Commons 0 (licensed for reuse) matching sets of icons that you can use to make a project more cohesive. Check these sites out!
Check out more amazing resources from Julie Woodard!
Julie sketchnotes so many awesome things, and is a great resource to follow/connect with!