Today, I was thinking about a new project we have been working on with our 2nd graders at Van Meter focused on storytelling.
They have been creating stickers and backgrounds for Buncee with our amazing friends and designers at Buncee. On Friday, they wrote and illustrated digital stories with their special creations too.
As I sat there writing and thinking about next steps, I looked over at my MERGE headset and cube sitting there.
Then I thought,
How could we bring these two resources together? How could we bring our Buncee's into CoSpaces using the MERGE cubes and bring our students creations to life with these awesome augmented reality tools?
I grabbed my laptop and started playing around with some ideas.
If you use the Square size in Buncee, you will be able to create backgrounds to add to a MERGE Cube using CoSpacesEDU.
You would need to create 6 square slides in Buncee, download them and upload them into CoSpaces to add to the MERGE Cube sides.
You can get to this Buncee above here, where you can make a copy for yourself.
I tried it out for myself by using one of the backgrounds and stickers our 2nd graders created. I even added a Molly Dolls sticker of me!
When I finished, I downloaded the slide.
I took this image and....
...uploaded it into CoSpaces.
I added this image to one of the sides of the MERGE Cube and locked it into place.
I added a unicorn and added an animation of it eating.
I then started my story by adding text.
Even though I have 5 sides left to finish my story, I wanted to give it a try with CoSpaces. I opened up the CoSpaces app and scanned the MERGE Cube so I could view it on there.
It was so cool! My Buncee page and story had come to life.
This is just a start!
I am going to have my 4th grade friends, who are really great at CoSpaces, help me with a few things today. I can't wait to learn more from them so I can make my Buncee story even more awesome using CoSpaces and MERGE too.
A few weeks ago during a district wide professional development about Quick Writes, I had an idea.
As our guest shared great information about Quick Writes, which are short 2-10 minute written responses to an open ended question or prompt, the Sample Writing-to-Learn Prompts really stood out to me. They got me thinking of all of the ways we could use technology to have our students do Quick Writes too.
Our 2nd graders became official Buncee Student Artists!
Before you read this super fun post, please watch the short little clip at the top from Tracy Ferguson's 2nd grade classroom at Van Meter last Friday so you can share the excitement of them as their art work was revealed as real Buncee stickers and backgrounds.
It was just one of the best moments with students ever!
In the first post of this new project and four part blog series, Bringing Our Students Art To Life With Buncee,I shared how this project started and how it was making such a difference in the lives of our students as they became the very first Buncee Student Artists!
This last week, their art work came to life right in front of their eyes as we Skyped with the Buncee creator and CEO, Marie Arturi, and her Buncee team in New York City and on Long Island.
Throughout the day, Buncee Skyped with all three of our 2nd grade classrooms who were part of this amazing digital storytelling project. We started in Staci Braun's classroom.
Joel Wong, lead designer at Buncee, kicked off each one of our Skype's by sharing how he took their art work created here in Van Meter and turned it into stickers and backgrounds using Photoshop.
It was very interesting to see how he "cut" around their art work, made the background transparent and....
...uploaded it into Buncee to make it a sticker that could be used....
...in any Buncee, by anyone around the world. The students cheered as Joel turned a classmates cute heart drawing into a Buncee sticker.
And they all screamed when they saw there was a brand new category called Student Art with a little stickers from one of their friends at Van Meter.
We gave our students a chance to ask questions and make suggestions too.
After each Skype, we gave them time to work on their pages for the collaborative class Buncee, The Day Our Buncee Stickers Came To Life.
For this part, I created a handy little sheet in Buncee to tell them the 5 things they needed to do in their 1 to 2 page Buncee. It was helpful for them to have the boxes to check off and the image of the spot for their name and how to turn the Stitching feature on.
And remember from what I shared in the first post of this series, they had already worked very hard on a sketch of their Buncee and a rough draft of their story, so they were...
...ready to go.
It was so much fun watching how excited Mrs. Braun's students were and the wonderful writing they were doing....
using the background, stickers and other assets in Buncee....
...to create their very own.
Next up was Megan Warwick's students and we had them in the library that day.
Once again, Marie, Joel and the awesome Buncee team revealed our students stickers and shared how they were created.
And at the end of this exciting day, I visited Tracy Ferguson's classroom as Marie, Joel and the rest of the Buncee team Skyped in to....
...show them the behind the scene creation of their stickers and do one last big reveal, as you watched in the beginning of this post. It was so much fun!
When they were done Skyping in, I showed them a few little visual tricks and tips to make their Buncee's the best they can be.
And WOW, were they ever!
I was so excited to see and read what all of our 2nd graders created during this day and all throughout this project over the last two weeks.
As you can see, they are very excited and proud of their work too.
We are still working on the creation of our collaborative story in Buncee, but I wanted to give you a little sneak peak of how we are going to stitch the Buncee pages together.
I will start with Mrs. Ferguson's 2nd graders.
When they were finished,
they shared their Buncee's with me.
They had made sure the Stitching was already turned on...remember that was one of their check boxes on the sheet I made them. So when I opened up each Buncee, I can see that little scissors on top. I just click on that....
...and this window comes up that lets me click on the slides I want to Clip. I put Select All on each Buncee, and clip them.
Next, I started a new Buncee for this big collaborative book or Buncee we were making as a 2nd grade class. When I went to add a slide or new page on the left hand side, instead of clicking on Blank New Page, I clicked on add right under Stitching which...
...brings up all of the slides from the 2nd graders I just clipped. I highlight each and add them all to my Buncee.
You can see the pages from the students on the left hand side, right under this fun title page I created.
Tomorrow, we will finish up their Buncee's and get every single students added to this big collaborative Buncee and then we will be ready to share....
The Day Our Buncee Stickers Came To Life, with all of you!
So check back in this week as I share the third post in this blog series, along with the lesson plan I developed for this project too.
And don't forget, the very last post will be the announcement of our new Buncee Student Artist Contest! We can't wait, friends to include your students in this very special part of Buncee too.
