Greetings fellow educators! Before I dive into the latest tech snack, I have a big announcement to make regarding the maintenance of my site. For the last 11 years, I have been the Lower School Technology Integration Specialist for the Roland Park Country School. I created my website primarily for my faculty and students, but as the years progressed it has become a go to resource for many educators nationwide. Starting in March, I will be starting a new adventure as an Instructional Technologist for Coppin State University. As such my primary audience will change.
So….I will continue to maintain my current site for the many educators that find it useful (My faculty page has resources for K-8).
This continued maintenance includes my current blog Tech Snacks. The main change, however, is that I will be creating a new site and blog to address the needs of my new audience. Some entries from Tech Snacks may also appear on my new blog if the tools mentioned can be used for college students as well. Tech snacks will continue to be a blog about K-12 educational tools. My new blog, will be called the Faculty Lounge and will focus on technology integration practices and tools for the college audience. Look out for the new urls and content!
Now onwards and upwards to our latest tech snack….
Today’s tech snack can be found at the following url: http://www.playbuzz.com/
What is it?
Playbuzz is a website that allows people to create interactive content. **Full Disclaimer: This site is not exclusively an educational site-meaning that it is a public site that contains content that is not moderated. People use this site to create fun, engaging content that may or may not have any educational value. **
So why then would I bring up this site on my blog? Well, I bring it up because this site enables the user to create his/her own content. Content can then be shared via a url-requiring no login from the recipient(s) to access the activity. Created content can also be embedded into any website or Learning Management System(LMS)- which means students would only see the activity you created not any “extras” such as advertisements or other activities.
So how does it work?
Using the playbuzz website, anyone can make a free account. Once you have made an account, you can start creating interactive activities. Playbuzz has 12 different activities you can create. **Full Disclaimer: In order to create content, you must create an account. You can only create an account through the browser using a desktop or laptop. You cannot create content using a tablet or smartphone. There is an app for tablets and smartphone that allows you to see any activity created, you just can’t create activities with the app. However, any content you create and share via url or embed code, can be accessed on any Internet enabled device.**
Okay, now that the disclosure is out of the way, I want to talk about the different activities you can create with this tool. Since there are 12 activities, I will outline them in chart form for simplicity sake. If the embedded form does show, you can download the information using the attached document.
video_snaps___pubhtml5.pdf |
Playbuzz allows for a lot of creativity for classroom use. I would highly recommend embedding any playbuzz activities to avoid access to other content and advertisements.
Playbuzz has a whole section on their website dedicated to educators. The section is called playbuzz academy and has how to videos for all 12 playbuzz activities, webinars, best practices and case studies. To access these resources go to the following url:
https://publishers.playbuzz.com/academy/.