Let's Play Cards in Class! Microsoft Office Spoons downloadable! #busedu @MicrosoftEDU

My Advanced Computer Applications students, who learn Microsoft Office, are getting close to being finished for the year. We've covered all the content, they've finished final projects, nearly all are certified in at least one Microsoft application, and they are doing GMetrix review and trying to certify in another application this week. So, Monday and Tuesday I'm just not sure what to do with them! We are in school until Friday, we'll review on Wed/Thursday, but there's just extra time to fill.

I asked for feedback yesterday and, naturally, they wanted to watch a movie. Um, not really any good movies out there about spreadsheets or databases. Another student jokingly said, "Let's just play Spoons. That's fun."

Yeah, fun. But not related to curriculum.  Or is it?

So, I decided perhaps if I made some Microsoft Office playing cards, we could play Spoons. But, still, there needed to be some sort of "reason" for it. Got it!

I found this blog post from Jennifer Findley. She did this in her class as a review activity!

Then, I found a template at the Bright Hub for playing cards in Microsoft Word. Finally, I Googled some logos and took screenshots from various Microsoft applications--Word, Access, PowerPoint, Excel, and Edge (the browser) and pasted them in to create 52 cards. I printed on card stock and just sent my student aide down to cut them apart for me. We will make two sets of cards (I only have 11 students left in the class after seniors leave, so that will do). And, I found some little flag stickers so I can put a sticker on the back of each card in the set to keep them separated.

What did I create?

• 4 Word screenshots, 8 Excel screenshots, 4 Edge screenshots, 4 Access screenshots, and 8 PowerPoint screenshots. Students would just pass cards to find a matching number, like in "real Spoons" but will find the four Word screenshots or four of the Excel screenshots, etc. 
• 4 playing cards of the logos for Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, Edge, and Office. Those cards will just be straight logos, so that should be pretty simple (of course, this might be deceptively easy as two people might both be holding on to the "easy" Word logos. That would just be a straight match like the other version of Spoons.
• They will play like normal, passing cards and trying to find the screenshot matches or logo matches.
• Whoever is "out" must first say "Prove it" to the person who "won" and went out first. They will put their cards down and everyone will collectively decide if they do indeed have a correct match (and I printed an extra copy of the cards originals pages and stapled them and marked W, E, P, etc., so they can double check it for the screenshots). If matches are incorrect, they are now "out" instead.
• Whoever is "out" and doesn't get a spoon will have to explain something from one of their cards in their hands. So, if you have the Print dialog box from PowerPoint, you would say something like, you can set this to print handouts 6 per page from this in PowerPoint. 
• Then, they shuffle, re-deal, and play again. You could keep score of winners or negative scores on the "loser" each round. Up to you.

Think this might work for your kiddos? Feel free to download my PDF from Google and create your own set. 

UPDATE: We played, they enjoyed, and we tried different versions (have to have one of Word/Excel/Access/PPT was one derivative). They wanted to play where the loser goes out, so that's how we did it. However, I think I need to just write on the back of the cards... the stickers kept falling off!

Snapchat Geo-Filters--- SO EASY! #busedu

Today is my daughter's 11th birthday. As a "tech mom" I felt compelled to do something cool this year--get her a Snapchat filter at our house and on our "cul de sac" so that her friends at her party will be able to use "her filter" (and it went live this morning!).

I spent under $20 (for around 20,000 square feet area and it runs from 7 AM on Thursday until noon on Saturday) and it literally couldn't be any easier. You go here at the Snapchat website and perform three steps-- Design, Map, and Buy.

They have templates now, so designing can be done on their website. I mean, EASY. I didn't use the templates, but you could do that simply. Or, you can create your own in Photoshop, Illustrator, or other software (or even free using Pixlr, PicMonkey, or Canva--note that now you have to have Canva for business to export transparent PNG but you can take it to LunaPic or another site to make the background transparent). The main trick is that you have to follow their rules (can't use hashtags, photos, logos that aren't yours, phone numbers/URLs/personal info, etc.) and save as transparent PNG with 1080x1920 size.

Sounds like a fun class project, but their terms and conditions do require you to be 18 to order an on-demand filter, so just be aware of that. However, just creating one and not actually uploading it to Snapchat might be a fun end of year project! They could create for an event at school or for their own event! Maybe even have them design a few different options.

***SNAPCHAT PROJECT SCORING GUIDE***

**My students would not be able to get on the Snapchat site since it's blocked on school devices, but on the scoring guide, I pasted the text of the guidelines for if they were going to submit it. Certainly, they can take their PNG home and upload with parental permission if they really wanted to purchase a design.

Web Design Documentary for your class! @elefontpress #busedu

As I was looking for something to finish off my year in my advanced Web Design class, I ran across a documentary that details somewhat of the evolution of the web. I found it fascinating (and probably advanced students would as well... not a lot of bells and whistles as it is a documentary, but it features lots of important "web" people). What Comes Next Is the Future was created by Bearded founder Matt Griffin. It is the story of "Tim Berners-Lee’s creation – how it came to be, where it’s been, and where it’s going – as told by the people who build it."

What Comes Next Is the Future (2016) from Bearded Studio on Vimeo.

Of course, I feel like I LIVED this documentary. I decided to teach myself to code back in 1993 when I was in college. Back in the days of Mosaic and Webcrawler and Netscape. And, the video really talks about how the first WWW was more about delivering information. We didn't care so much about how it looked. Then, we did. Flash came, things got Flashy...

But, then devices and phones and big screens and small screens happened. Oh, and iPhones. Things changed. Designers were confused and fumbling.

As an incentive to get you to watch this video (watch it if you teach web design, especially if you are around my age in the 40-50s since you will really appreciate the history), I have created a viewing guide you can use with your class. I intend to divide the video into two days, probably. I want to have discussion before we begin and then some afterward about some of the topics.

Here's the viewing guide. It will prompt you to make a copy, so feel free to edit as you see fit. Enjoy!