Friday, July 12, 2019

Buncee Bookmarks for Back-to-School!

Our students and teachers love bookmarks!  They are a special little treat to grab for their books when they come to the library and I carry them in my school bag to give out to them too. 

As we get ready to kick off the school year at the end of the August, I have been working on some new ones for back-to-school night to share information about our library with everyone. 
And guess what, friends?  We can now make super awesome bookmarks with BUNCEE! 

Let me show you how.
When you log into Buncee, there is now a Bookmarks category found on the left hand side.  You have two choices. 
You can Start From Scratch and add all of the different assets yourself.
You can also select from bookmarks they have already created from the Bookmark Templates, by clicking on one.
It will bring up the bookmark and you click on Use This Template in the right hand corner.
 This opens up the bookmark in Buncee where you can....
...add any of the assets to make it your own.  

It's as simple as that and look at all of these....
 ...special bookmarks that your students, teachers and families will love too! 

Thursday, July 11, 2019

Immersive Reader from Microsoft Comes To Wakelet!

Our friends at Wakelet have some BIG news to share this week!

They shared,

We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve teamed up with Microsoft Education to bring Immersive Reader into WakeletImmersive Reader will help Wakelet collections be as accessible and inclusive as possible for everyone - regardless of age or ability!
I have been waiting for this awesome news from Wakelet, ever since Buncee announced their integration with Immersive Reader a few weeks ago. 


Today, we’re thrilled to announce Immersive Reader will now be available as an Azure Cognitive Service, allowing third party apps and partners to add Immersive Reader right into their products, starting with the partners below. The Immersive Reader helps people of all abilities, including dyslexia, ADHD, emerging readers, non-native speakers, people with visual impairments. If there’s an app you love to use in your classroom and you would love to see an Immersive Reader icon show up there soon, let them know. We’ve made it easier than ever, you might even call it Literacy as a Service!

The Immersive Reader is part of Microsoft's suite of Learning Tools that brings accessibility to all readers through the following features....
  • Enhanced dictation: Improves authoring text
  • Focus mode: Sustains attention and improves reading speed
  • Immersive reading:  Improves comprehension and sustains attention
  • Font spacing and short lines:  Improve reading speed by addressing “visual crowding”
  • Parts of speech:  Supports instruction and improves writing quality
  • Syllabification:  Improves word recognition
  • Comprehension mode:  Improves comprehension by an average of 10% 
  • Translate Text: Choose from over 60+ languages 
This is their first wave of partners and I couldn't be more excited about...
...Wakelet being one of them.  

Let me show you how it works in Wakelet! 
You will find the Immersive Reader icon by the text in a Wakelet Collection. It has the purple star and arrow pointing to it. 

When you click on the Immersive Reader icon, it takes you...
 ...into the Immersive Reader giving you three different options in the right hand corner.
 You will find Text Preferences, 
 Grammar Options and...
 ...Reading Preferences.  In addition to offering over...
...+60 different languages. 
 It also offers the Picture Dictionary. When this is turned on,
students can click on the words in the sentences to find pictures of many of the words. 
At the bottom of the page, they will find Voice Settings button which includes Voice Speed and Voice Selection to be changed, along with the Play button. 

I can't wait to start using this with our students in the fall.  For now, a few of the ideas I have are: 

Using it as a way for students to listen and speak to Spanish.  All of our elementary students have Spanish every day, so this is a great way for them to practice and become more fluent.  

Create Collections for anyone to gain knowledge from through the text to speech in Immersive Reader and through the other features. 

Serve as a tool to support all readers, especially those who are beginning and struggling readers. 

Create meaningful learning experiences through paths within the Wakelet Collections. 

The possibilities are truly endless with this integration and that within other platforms, such as Flipgrid, Buncee and Follett too.  I can't wait to see what we do at Van Meter with Immersive Reader and we can't wait to learn and follow all of your ideas too! 

Wednesday, July 10, 2019

Making Reading Posters and Promotions Interactive With FlipgridAR!

One of the BEST things shared at ISTE was by our friends at Flipgrid and Microsoft.  
Among lots of AWESOME updates and additions they shared at FlipgridLIVE on Monday night in Philadelphia, one of the best and most exciting things they shared was the addition of....
FlipgridAR!

Flipgrid videos can now be viewed in augmented reality with FlipgridAR! 
With FlipgridAR, we can stick student voice everywhere with FlipgridAR stickers. All we have to do is update the Flipgrid app to find that all QR Codes have autoMAGICally been updated to Flipgrid AR codes.  

With this update, we can create, add, print and place FlipgridAR stickers anywhere we want a Flipgrid video response to pop up. 

Since ISTE, I have been brainstorming all kinds of ways FlipgridAR can be used.  We are working on a back-to-school project with our teachers voices and will add these to our updated school website with FlipgridAR. I have brainstormed with the art teachers on how they can use FlipgridAR in displaying student work in the hallways and art fair. Teachers can use FlipgridAR with students to explain centers and independent learning activities throughout the week. Student work will come to life by using FlipgridAR as a way to share the innovative and creative process through explanation and reflection.  We can even put FlipgridAR stickers inside of books and on Makerspace materials for explanations and reviews. 

The ideas go on and on. I can't even wait to get started...and I can't wait to hear all of the ideas our students and teachers have as well. 

For now, I want to share one idea with you.  One that will add so much spark and voice to a fun reading promotion project we are working on with all of our teachers to kick off the year.  
In May, I wrote about an idea I had for creating Look What I'm Reading Bitmoji Posters.  These are the posters that will hang up outside of each teachers doors to celebrate and share what each of us are currently reading.  The book we are holding will change by adding different covers to the posters throughout the year.

You can read all about this project and how to create your own Look What I'm Reading Bitmoji Posters here

As I worked on my poster this week, I started to think about how fun it would be to add FlipgridAR stickers to these to make the reading posters interactive and even more awesome for our students, teachers and families to see throughout the hallways of our school. 
So, I started the new Van Meter Book Talks Flipgrid!  

The teachers, administrators and other adults within our building will add a book talk to this Flipgrid every time they finish a book and add a new cover to their Look What I'm Reading poster.  It could even be a student, parent or a community member sharing a book talk on the Flipgrid about that particular book. 
From this Flipgrid, we will take the QR code of the book talk and add it to the book cover on the poster.  When students, teachers and others see the posters, they can scan the code for the FlipgridAR. How fun! 

Let me show you how to create these interactive FlipgridAR reading posters and promotions. 
I am going to use Bear Moves by Ben Bailey Smith and Sav Akyuz as an example. If you haven't checked out this one, you must.  We love it at Van Meter. 
I remembered that one of our students shared Bear Moves on the Van Meter Celebrates WRAD 2019 Flipgrid.  So, I went to that grid and...
....found the video from Isabella. 
 I clicked on Share in the right hand corner and it gave me two ways to share...a link and a QR code.
I clicked on the QR code and it popped up on the page so I could right-click to copy or download. 
Once I had the QR code,  
I added it to the front of the book in my Look What I'm Reading poster.  

Remember you can read this post to see how I created my Bitmoji reading poster. 
I added a little black square behind the QR code to make it pop and stand out like the book cover. 
Now when these posters are hanging outside of the classrooms, library, offices and other places within our school, the QR codes can be scanned to take you to the FlipgridAR videos. 

It is easy to view these with the....
....Flipgrid app, which is also free like the site. 
All you have to do is open up the Flipgrid app and click on the QR code to the left of Enter a Flip Code. 
 This screen pops up that asks you to Scan Flipgrid QR. 
 When the Flipgrid QR is scanned,
 the FlipgridAR pops up.  You can see Isabella's video in the image above.
You can even take your fingers to make the video larger or smaller and move it around.  

It is that simple, friends. 

So, think about what you can do with FlipgridAR and make learning, sharing, creativity, innovation and most of all, student voice, come to life this year through this amazing new gift from our friends at Flipgrid and Microsoft.  

To learn more about FlipgridAR, please visit the Flipgrid Help Center here