Bitmoji Classrooms for Student Engagement!

I keep seeing the awesome Bitmoji classrooms that teachers are creating and sharing all over social media to serve as a "Meet the Teacher" opportunity! Teachers are including all kinds of important information that parents and students could possibly need to know as the school year begins.

Although I haven't created mine yet, it got me thinking about how we could put a spin on then and use them to further engage our students during remote learning lessons to defend their thinking and amplify their voices rather than simply providing information or hyperlinks to resources.

Here's a quick activity that you can easily recreate to engage your students during virtual instruction with your students.

Step 1:  Go to https://www.canva.com/ and create your free account.

Step 2:  Click on the "Presentations" option.

Step 3:  Using the "Photos" and "Elements" options on the left, create a classroom.  I added my Bitmoji to this example below.  I also added 2 shapes (1 red and 1 green).  These will be used to create hyperlinks to some different options for your students.  I added them here so they become a part of the background.  I also left them blank so you could use them for different activities, for example: Would you rather.....Select A (green shape) or B (red shape).  You could also pose a question and have your students click on the green shape to agree or the red shape to disagree.

Step 4: Once you have your classroom set up the way that you want it, download it as a PNG or a JPG file.  

Step 5:  Open up a Google Slides presentation.  Upload your saved image as a BACKGROUND.  This way, it won't be able to be manipulated!  Add your question prompt and the text that you'd like inside of the green and red boxes.  

You could also leave the boxes blank and make the association with green=go=yes=agree and red=stop=no=disagree for your students.  Up to you!

Step 6:  Hyperlink the red and green boxes to go where you need them to go!  In this example, I've hyperlinked the agree and disagree selections to separate Flipgrid topics where students would have to voice why they agreed or disagreed that climate change is the greatest thread facing humanity today.  

In the Flipgrid, I added an article about climate change as well as a link to a YouTube video for students to reference should they need more information.  

Once students have recorded their response, you could instruct them to go to the option that they didn't select and reply to 2 of their classmates.  This allows for a way to have your students defend their thinking, collaborate with their peers, and do further research on the topic/prompt that you've provided them with.

There are TONS of ways that you could spin this activity to meet the needs of your students. Your options could go to:

• Flipgrid prompts
• Padlet boards
• Google Jamboards
• Microsoft Sways
• Collaborative PowerPoint or Slides presentations
• Collaborative Google or Microsoft Docs
• YouTube Videos
• Adobe Spark Pages, Posts, or Videos
• Buncees
• Etc.

I hope this quick activity sparked some ideas of how you could incorporate something like this into your remote learning lessons.  If you give it a try, let me know!  I'd love to add some of your creations to this post!  Email them to me at drnatasharachell@gmail.com or Tweet me @apsitnatasha.

Happy creating!

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Why I LOVE Bitmoji!

If you are one of the LAST people on this earth that has NOT heard of Bitmoji....let me introduce you to this amazing-ness that has transformed the way I communicate!

Bitmoji is an amazing tool that allows you to create a "person"....a cartoon, if you will, of yourself!  You are able to change the skin complexion, eye shape, makeup, hair style, cut and color, clothing, etc!  Every Friday Bitmoji releases a new set of "cartoons" that you can use!  Recently, Bitmojis have taken over the world of educational technology!  People are using them to get their point across, in #booksnaps, in presentations, etc.  I LOVE them!!!  There is LITERALLY a Bitmoji for EVERYTHING!!!

Another thing that I love about it, is that is has a Chrome extension AND an app!!!!! I have texted several Bitmojis as responses to text messages!  The extension allows you to drag and drop your Bitmoji into where ever you want!  When you add a Bitmoji to a G-Suite product (ie. Docs, Slides, etc) you are able to double click on it, crop out what you don't want, and even add your own text to make it say what you want!  That's how I made my #thefridayfour Bitmoji!

I must admit that you can get into what I like to call the "Pinterest Time Suck" when you first get started with Bitmoji trying to create the PERFECT version of yourself!  I like to change her outfit with my mood, too!  You can make her sassy, classy, relaxed, pregnant, on the way to the gym, etc!  LOL!

I love the way that people see my Bitmoji before they meet me, like on social media, and when they meet me, they say, "You look JUST like your Bitmoji!"  Imagine your student's faces when they open their graded assignments back up in Google Classroom and find a cartoon character of you telling them "Good Job!" Think of all the possibilities!

Here are some of my favorites!




So, go give it a try!  Download the Chrome Extension and the app and add some flavor to your presentations and ed tech life!