Oh The Things Wixie Can Do
Yes, it is true that I love using technology. To be clear, I don't love technology solely for the sake of using technology but for the opportunities it gives my students, This past week, I was so proud to see my young scholars in Kindergarten and First Grade get new opportunities to engage with each other and their learning using technology, As I reflected over the past week, the words "Oh the Things Wixie Can Do" kept swirling in my head. This program has come such a long way in the past couple of years in not only providing our students opportunities to create, but also for educators to scaffold these experiences.
Yes, Littles Can Collaborate
This past week, my littles worked collaboratively inside a Wixie project. They used Pebble Go to research 2 different types of weather out of 8 options, Then, they used stickers to pack a suitcase with clothes for the weather. Finally, they either drew a picture or wrote about their partner's suitcases. They did such an amazing job.
For each group of students, I didn't just have students go into this without any handles. In each of the partner activities I designed, I have color coded pages either red or blue and then color coded their partner list accordingly. In Kindergarten, I added their pairs ahead of time so that these students only needed to open their projects under Team Projects. For my first graders, I assigned the project to one student and showed them how to add their partner. In addition, I used Wixie's Project Settings to only give my students the options to create that they needed- text, select and images.
When Magic Stickers Join a Math Class
My first grade students also got the opportunity to use Wixie during their math classes to #techupthemath. We used one of Wixie's new features called "magic stickers." This feature allows students when a magic sticker is locked by the educator to either click on the sticker to "roll" or get a random response or open a project tha differs based on when it is opened.
We used the magic sticker for numbers 1-10 as part of a choice board for practicing adding and subtracting up to 20. For the addition activity, students clicked the magic sticker twice and recorded the numbers they got and the sum on the Wixie page. For the subtraction activity, students clicked once and subtracted that number from a predetermined number.
They were both great activities for two reasons. One, the students loved using this new feature and it engaged them as they practiced their facts. Two, these activities could be used more than once after it was created since the random responses would change each time students completed the activity.
What Else Can Wixie Do?
Yes, I talk about Wixie a lot when it comes to our young scholars. But I use this program with my students K-5. As I have shared in earlier blog posts, it not only has my 3 Cs of Creation- choice, collaborative, and clickable, but it also allows students to #techupthemath as it encourages students to visualize math, use multimodal thinking and includes opportunities for interaction between students and with students. That makes it a supercharged tech tool in my book.
Last week, Wixie sent me a tee shirt for participating in one of their Facebook contests. On the back, it says "CREATE > CONSUME " and has the icons listed for text, image, audio and video. In many ways, that says it all.
Are you giving your students in your classroom the opportunity to "create" using technology?
Are you giving your students in your classroom the opportunity to "collaborate" using technology?
Are you using technology to "transform" learning based on the needs of your students?
Take some time this week and consider these answers. If you haven't tried Wixie, click here to join my email list if you haven't yet and get access to try Wixie for a year. Then, you too will know all the things that Wixie can do!