Kent State’s Spring semester kicked-off this morning in the AT&T Classroom with Mrs. Gillespie and her sixth graders from Lakeview Intermediate (Stow-Munroe Falls City Schools). During their time in the AT&T Classroom the students will be learning to use several digital tools with their social studies projects. This morning the students were introduced to two tools they are using to prepare their research reports on an item manufactured in the eastern hemisphere and sold in the United States. One of the tools the students will be using to create their project is Buncee EDU, a free multi-platform tool for creating digital media projects. The platform offers an interactive digital canvas with thematic background templates that can be used to create stories, books, presentations, pamphlets, posters, etc. Students are able to customize the templates by adding animations, pictures, text, drawings, and videos. The Buncee platform also offers a very large gallery of searchable media that students can use in their projects or students have the option to import external media from their computers or other websites. Completed Buncee projects can be viewed online and/or saved as PDFs.
The students were also introduced to Adobe Spark Video, one of the tools available within the Adobe Spark platform. Adobe Spark Video can be used for creating movies/videos by adding text, images, and voice-over to slides. The tool includes access to a library of free music that can be added to the video or added with voice-over narration in the background of the video. In addition to Adobe Spark Video, the Adobe Spark platform includes two other tools - Adobe Spark Post and Adobe Spark Page. Adobe Spark Post can be used for creating graphics for posters, flyers, and social media. Adobe Spark Page can be used for creating digital slide shows, stories and web pages that include pictures, videos, text, and web links. All Adobe Spark tools can be used at no cost in your web browser (including Chromebooks) or via their free mobile iOS app for ipads.
