I really am loving my job this year. I am fully aware at how blessed I am to be a Tech TOSA in my district. I have been working with a few teachers regularly this year and it is amazing. This is the first time our district has had coaches or TOSAs since the early 2000’s. Honestly, we are all figuring out this new role together. Myself and the other TOSAs: how to best help and support teachers. Teachers: How to best use us and what questions to ask. Personally, I think the teachers are doing an amazing job in their classrooms.
One teacher came to me before Thanksgiving Break and wanted to know the best way to create a class picture using Bitmoji or something similar. This is when I directed her to Pixton. Pixton is a comic based creation website where students can create, show learning, and share their comics (be sure to sign up for the educator account). Then, over the break she played around with it to create her avatar and begin her classroom pic.
The real fun started when I was in her room earlier this week and I tried to lead her class of 1st-graders through their creations. Let’s just say, they barely heard a word I said and went for it! The results were awesome! The kiddos had a great time – as evidenced by their total engagement.
The teacher was talking to a colleague about Pixton and how much fun the kids had. I got a DM from the second teacher. This teacher also taught 1st-grade. Same thing happened in that teacher’s classroom. The kids were so engaged that they didn’t hear a word I had to say.
While exploring we found some fun features. The students can have various backgrounds for their class picture including space, dinosaurs, and a Christmas theme. While the free version is limited with backgrounds and character choices, the students can use each other’s avatars in their comics. This is great for story telling, beginning – middle – end, explaining math or science. There are several possibilities with this.
We had a bit of trouble coming up with a story so I had them creating some of the clues to the locks. They were RockStars creating the clues! They really thought out how to make the clues meaningful, with a bit of depth. One clue deals with the compass rose. We are still debating if we should have different ones on one page or split them up onto different pages and have them placed around the room. I think we will have to run the game with another class to work out some of the kinks.
different approach in creating the coordinateplane. One group created a visually pleasing one with gradient coloring and took the time to draw each line. Meanwhile, another group struggled to create one; they needed four or five. The struggling group asked if the gradient colored group would mind sharing so they could copy their coordinate plane. And of course, the group was kind enough to share!
Nowa Techie 