A Thankful Buncee From These 2nd Grade Friends!

For Thanksgiving, we look for ways that our students can share what they are thankful for.  

In fact, we can give them these opportunities all year long.  And Buncee, is perfect for letting our students show what they are thankful for through images, stickers, animations, text, backgrounds and even by adding their own voice and video messages too. 

Megan Warwick, one of our 2nd grade teachers, used Buncee to do just that with her students this week.

As she told the students what they would be doing for their Thankful Buncee, they found lots of backgrounds, stickers, images and more they would use to share what they are thankful for.

They even added little videos and attached their voice to the different stickers and animations.

You will find their collaborative class Thankful Buncee here.  

Using Animoto To Create Video Booktalks With Our 4th Graders!

Our 4th graders in Mrs. Haverstick and Mrs. Teigland's class are sharing their favorite books in a different way this year. 

For their last reading project, they used Animoto,

which allows them to create video booktalks online in a snap.  And WOW...did their Animoto's turn out awesome. 

Let me share how they did it.

First, Amy Haverstick and Abby Teigland used a simple graphic organizer to lay out what slides they were to include within their Animoto video booktalk. 

This helped the 4th graders think about elements such as characters, setting, happenings in the book they wanted to share, and more. 

We set the students up with their very own Animoto account using their school Google accounts.

Once logged in, they open up the creation window. 

An Animoto video is created by adding images, video clips, text and music to one of the many templates.  As you can see, they have really cool templates to choose from.

The 4th graders added their own photos and videos. 

We loved seeing the kids take photos of themselves holding the book they read.  They uploaded these to use in their Animoto's.

They also used photos and videos to use from the Free Stock Content. They found a lot that would tie in to their booktalks.

And they really enjoyed choosing a song for their Animoto.  

Within the Change Song section there are tons of different categories to choose from that fit any theme and mood. 

They previewed their Animoto's along the way...

...making sure to get it just right. 

 

When they were all finished, they produced the Animoto booktalk.  They were now ready to be shared with classmates and others, inspiring them to...

 ...read the book they were sharing and recommending.

You will find all of their Animoto booktalks on this Padlet that Abby and Amy had their students add the link from their video to when they were finished.

Padlet is the perfect place to bring Animoto or any digital project together in one spot online.  Since the Animoto's are all embedded in the Padlet, they can play the videos just by clicking on one at a time.

You can apply for your FREE Educational Animoto account here too, friends. 

New Coding Resources, Books, Songs, Sites & Activities for Hour of Code & All Year Long!

As we get ready for last few weeks of 2019, we are going to be focusing on a lot of things around computer science, including robotics, virtual reality, digital storytelling and coding. 

This is also the perfect connection for Hour of Code, which is coming up December 9-15, 2019. 

For the coding piece, we have put together a newly updated Coding Symbaloo that you can find here. It is filled with awesome books, eBooks, resources, digital tools and apps, and so much more that you and your school community will find useful and informative too.

In this post, I would like to show you around the Symbaloo and all of the treasures it holds.

 First, the Coding Symbaloo is a piece of our Coding, Coding, Coding Collection by Destiny.

You will find the Coding, Coding, Coding Collection by Destiny here. 

Please feel free to use and share this public Collection with your school community too. If you would like to collaborate on this Collection, just let me know and I will add you.  I would love that! 

Next, are the wonderful resources from Code.org, which is the organization that started and supports Hour of Code every year. 

As shown circled in the Symbaloo, I will kick off our work in coding with the students by showing this new video for this year, What Is Creativity? #Hour of Code. 

In fact, there is an entire What is Creativity Series from Code.org can be found here.  These will be such a powerful way to kick off the work we will do for Hour of Code.

I am must excited about what the CS First curriculum from Google has to offer.  It not only includes an entire curriculum and lots of activities for all ages and subject matter,

they have created a special new Hour of Code activity, Code Your Hero that you will find here.

And on the Symbaloo in the right hand corner, along with a few other Google coding activities, Santa Tracker and Made with Code, that I will talk about later in this post. 

Next up on the Symbaloo are the terrific resources found in the right hand corner.....books and eBooks! 

I love all of these so much and I can't wait to share them with our students, teachers and families. 

A favorite is my new book from the Capstone Adventures in Makerspace series, A Coding Mission. You can read all about this 4D graphic novel and the other three in the series here. 

Four other favorites are the Code It! series of stories and songs from Cantata Learning.  You can read all about this super fun series and the resources available here. 

It will be awesome using these four books as we teach them these basic computer science/coding concepts in the library and ones they can take home to practice too. 

A Coding Mission, all four of Code It! and this sweet Code Play series with Adi and Gabi are all available within Capstone Interactive, which is a great way to share when learning something new as all of our students can listen to them anytime at school and at home. 

I also included EPIC and the new....

...Coding Collection I put together together to share on the Symbaloo. You can find it here. 

I LOVED finding my friend and author, Ruth Spiro's book, Baby Loves Coding! and... 

...this coding series from Lerner. 

And last, but not least is the Computer Science article in PebbleGo which, 

covers coding, along with other important information. 

There is a Share What You Know Activity Sheet available with the PebbleGo article on the site too.  

On the Symbaloo, I have added a lot of coding games and simulations. There are several new ones including....

....The Grinch Hour of Code, 

Dance Party from Code.org and Amazon Future Engineer, 

and Create a Holiday Emoji from....

Made with Code Google,  

These join lots that have been around for a year or two but that are still awesome and ones that our students love! 

They include Tynker,  

Disney,  

Kodable,  

Minecraft,  

Google,  

Vidcode and more. 

With all of the Hour of Code Activities on the Code.org site, it is helpful to be able to search by age/grade level at the top. 

One of my favorite resources for teaching specific coding skills are the three lessons that I have included towards the top of the Coding Symbaloo. 

As you start thinking about and planning your Hour of Code, go to the Code.org to sign up.  

It's truly amazing to see how many young people and communities are involved in this important event each year.  

I hope you join us as we celebrate and find these resources helpful to use, share and celebrate coding within your library, school and community too!  

And remember, you can get to all of these resources and more at the Coding Symbaloo here.