Last Wednesday, I published the first of this four part blog series on the 3 Cs on Creation. As I shared then, my 3 Cs of Creation not only helps us determine which tools best fit our students needs but provides our students increased access to creating with these tools. In this second post, I will go into detail and share about two of the six tech tools that I identified embody the 3Cs. Want to learn more, click here or use the form at the bottom of this post to subscribe to my weekly newsletter and receive two freebies about these two amazing tools- Wonderful Ways to Empower Our Littles Using Wixie and Fire Up Learning with Flashcard Factory Using Math!
Wixie
It should come as no surprise how much I love using Wixie. It is my go to creation tool for littles. It has ALL of the 3 Cs and more. As the Wixie website shares, "One tool, unlimited uses!"
Choice in Wixie
How does Wixie promote choice? That's easy- Wixie allows students to choose from five modalities to share their thinking. Students can use text, paint tools, audio, images and even video to communicate their ideas. I love how this gives our students options to pick what best meets their needs. Sometimes, students will use a combination of these modalities to super charge their ideas.
Collaboration in Wixie
How does Wixie promote collaboration? Wixie has a Teams feature that allows our students to work together in the same document. Much like a collaborative Google Slides deck, you can add students to a Team which allows them to work.
Clickable in Wixie
I love how Wixie has such an easy to use interface with easy to recognize icons. In fact, it even has all of its icons as stickers in its image library. In addition, Wixie has two modes: primary mode for our littlest learners and standard mode for our elementary students. These modes make Wixie a very clickable program.
Pear Deck's Flashcard Factory
This unsung hero is quickly becoming one of my favorite ways to have students create. Although most people use this program with older students and just for vocabulary, I have found so many other amazing uses for it.
Choice in Flashcard Factory
Using Flashcard Factory, students are randomly paired up to make flashcards. One student, the artist, draws an example of the problem. The artist is given lots of tools to use- the paint brush, the eraser, a line tool and even text. In addition, the artist can customize and change the size of any of these tools using the size slider.
Collaboration in Flashcard Factory
When students are randomly partnered up by the program, it uses technological magic to get the two partners' computers to sync up. While the artist draws, the detective or writer works on their part of the question. When each part is finished, it forms half of flashcard and students can then ship it out to the conveyor belt. Students have to work together to complete these tasks- it's collaboration in action!
Clickable in Flashcard Factory
I love how Flashcard Factory also uses easy to use icons to allow students to easily navigate use of this program. All of our students can easily recognize the paint brush, eraser, line tool and text tool.