DEN STAR Report - Board Builder

Last week my TERRIBIT Kinders began using board builder! I am so proud of them. They have done an amazing job with it. They even got to show some visitors to our county how much they have learned about using the iPads and Discovery Education in just a little over 2 weeks. (Chill bump inducing proudness!)

In all of this euphoric proudness I have to stop and get real. I didn't think they could do it. (gasp!) I pride myself on setting high expectations (that others may not agree with) and then watching my Kinders blow right past them. This time though, I had doubts. Back in January I got to visit a different feeder pattern in our county that had been using iPads for a while, We visited high school classes all the way down to Kindergarten. During the tour I saw 2nd grade students using DE board builder with a partner and I thought, "That's great but my kids can't do all of that by themselves". Looking back I want to kick myself for ever thinking such!!!! 

After getting the iPads and beginning my journey as a DEN STAR I knew I had to push myself and my kids to at least attempt board builder. Here is our journey:

Tuesday, March 25th - 3rd Grade Ambassadors

Mrs. Peturis brought her fabulous 3rd grade class to our room to help us get started. I borrowed iPads from my super sweet neighbor so that all my kids had an iPad and a 3rd grader. Mrs. Peturis and I stepped back and let the third graders help the kids build a sea life board.

Wednesday, March 26th & Thursday, March 27th - Slow and Steady

Wednesday morning I began by having the students tell me how to make a board as I put one together on the Promethean board. That afternoon we went s l o w l y, step by step, with me on the board and the Kinders on their iPads and put together boards on Orca Whales.

On Thursday, we went back and edited our boards on the whales and then they shared them with me so I could print and hang them up.

(Orca Whales creativity from Deanna Jump)

We also made shark boards Thursday & Friday afternoon - again s l o w l y!

This week we finished are Sea Life unit on Monday and Tuesday and began our Plants & Flowers unit. I see a lot more boards in our future!

In the spirit of becoming a DEN STAR I am sharing with you the directions I shared with the teachers at my school for making boards. I hope this will help anyone doubting themselves see that making boards is super and easy and EXTREMELY fun! As always, please let me know if you need any help or have any questions!

Using Board Builder from Discovery Education on an iPad

1.     Make sure you have created a class and your students have their login information.

2.     Have students login. (I have logged in as a student to show you pictures.)

3.     Once students have arrived on their page, have them click (touch with finger) “Board Builder”.

(The cute frog is your guide. I put him on the picture so you could see where the buttons are. There are not frogs on DE. J)

4.     Select a theme by clicking on their choice.

5.     Enter a title and then “make the keyboard go away” by clicking the button on the bottom right hand corner then and click continue.

6.     Click add to add it to their favorites folder. You should now be looking at a board.

 

7.     I have my students close the black “editor’s tools” box so that there is one less thing on the screen for them to have to navigate around.  If you need the box, there is a button now on the left side of the screen with a blue pencil.

***VERY IMPORTANT*** Tell them not to be impatient. They cannot start tap tap tapping all over the screen. With this being web based it takes a second to register what you are telling it to do and then load – GO SLOW!

8.     Add a Heading: GO SLOW!

click once slowly and then click once more slowly, now type in your heading.

9.     Adding Resources: GO SLOW!

·      Click on where you want to get your resources. In my class we have just used resources from DE so we click search.

·      (if searching) type in what you want to find

·      on the left side of the screen filter down to K-2

·      on the left side you can also filter down to the type of resource you want them to use.

·      Click the orange “Add” button for any resource they want to add. "Remove" in red if they change their minds.

·      Click on the blue “Add Selected Resources” – It will take you back to your board with your resources added. If more than one was selected the first one will be at the top of the page and the rest will be at the end.

o   On our first few boards we just added resources without typing so we deleted all of the text boxes and all but the first resource button so that all of our pictures showed up at the top of the page.

o   We did the same thing on our shark page but used the “editor’s tools” (what we closed earlier) to add in a text box.

10. Adding Text: GO SLOW!

This is just like adding a Heading - click once slowly and then click once more slowly, now type in your text.

11.  Save – click green save at top. Another box with come up that you can add more information about your board. We have not done this and just click the blue save at the bottom.

12. Share – click the blue share at the top. Tell students to make sure they see your name in the grey box that comes up and click share again.