We’ve talked about Bitmoji libraries, and it seems like a potentially fun thing to try! As more of our member schools move into either hybrid or fully online systems, providing more strategies for connecting to people who are distant will be important.
Are you trying any Bitmoji work? If so, how is it going?
Check out some ideas in this article excerpt, and you can find the whole thing here.
Virtual Libraries and Bitmoji Classrooms Bring a New Kind of Book Browsing
“As the school year gets into full swing, educators across the country are adjusting to radically different learning environments. With millions of kids learning from home and on screens, many teachers and librarians are embracing new ways to connect virtually with their students. Educators are creating Bitmoji and interactive classrooms, and also developing virtual classroom libraries to ensure students are able to access books digitally and are able to read from home.
Even in places where students are attending school in person five days a week, kids are coming into libraries less often, and there are limits on how students deal can handle and take home books from school. Many school libraries are being used as classrooms in order to provide for social distancing requirements, and public libraries remain closed or with limited services offered.
“So many kids miss the library,” says Angel Murdock, the media specialist at Holly Grove Middle School in Holly Springs, NC. Murdock created an interactive library site for her school. “Since kids can’t browse physically for books, we are reinventing what we do.”
Bitmoji classrooms and interactive libraries
When schools closed and remote learning started last spring, many educators began creating Bitmoji classrooms. These virtual learning environments are highly visual and interactive and can be customized in myriad ways. They have also become a huge trend among educators. On Facebook, a group called Bitmoji Craze for Educators has about 500,000 followers and passionate posts, and a large amount of Bitmoji related content is available on Pinterest and YouTube.
“Bitmojis are a fun way to connect with students,” says Shana Ramin, a middle school technology teacher at Norup International School in Berkely, CA. Ramin runs the blog helloteacherlady.com and has created tutorials to help educators learn how to create Bitmoji classrooms. “They allow you to display information in a more visual way which has been very helpful for my students.”
A Bitmoji classroom is usually created through Google Slides and can have many different links. Teachers can post announcements, give assignments, showcase new books, and link to videos on YouTube and other sites. Some teachers are using their Bitmoji classroom as their main classroom page during remote learning, while others link their Bitmoji classroom to their main page in Google Classroom or other platforms. Some educators are painstakingly creating their Bitmoji classrooms to closely resemble their physical classroom.”
You can read the rest of this article here, along with the rest of their information given on that page.