Technically a Librarian: Bursting to Use Buncee!

If there is one tool I am super excited to use this year, it's Buncee. I used Buncee with my middle schoolers last year, but Buncee has had some major upgrades over the summer and I can't wait to share them with my kids.

Here's a short video explaining Buncee

We're a 1:1 iPad school, so I'm always on the lookout for tablet-friendly presentation tools. We are a GAFE school, and kids are very comfortable with using Google Slides. Unfortunately, it takes the kids far too long to add the creative touches to their Slides presentations simply because there are so few built-in elements. That's actually my absolute favorite part about Buncee - there are loads of options for clip art, animations, and colorful fonts. And although I want my kids to be creative, I also don't want them spending too much time making it "pretty" and not focusing on the actual content of the project. Fortunately, Buncee can help with that too. Even though there are a lot of decorative elements, there are also a ton of educational elements built in.

For example, here is a template for a state project (the only thing I added was "Pennsylvania" - everything else was already done). Now, the kids can have a super-cute presentation, but won't be spending hours on the design.

As a librarian I love that there are loads of book review templates. Here is a popular one with my middle schoolers.

You can also merge multiple templates together (or create your own) and share with your kids. Once they view your Buncee, they will have the option to "Copy and Create". It's as simple as that!

As a teacher, you can take advantage of the "Copy and Create" feature by searching through Buncee's large gallery.

When its time to personalize, it's incredibly simple. Choose a category or type in a search term (awesome!) You can even add in media from other sources like Vimeo and YouTube.

Buncee was definitely designed with kids in mind - the animations are super kid-friendly!

These animations look a little "young" to you? That's okay - Buncee has a load of clip art and animations that will appeal to your older kids. For example, here are some of the results when I searched "chemistry"

I'm fortunate that ~~most~~ some of my middle schoolers know how to type. When I was an elementary librarian, I dreaded any activity that involved using the keyboard. It's painfully exhausting to watch second graders finger punch the keyboard. And 10 minutes later...they've typed "OK". It's awful. One of the unique features of Buncee is the ability to voice annotate anything you've added to your canvas.

For example, let's say a student is doing a presentation on a country. They add an image, and click "Audio". After enabling the microphone, your students can record up to 5 minutes of audio.

Not only is the audio feature awesome for kids, it's also great for teachers doing flipped lessons. Let's say you're having your students analyze a piece of artwork and you want to do some modeling. Instead of filling up your slide with text, you can make the image large and voice record.

Buncee also makes it easy for you to share your presentations with students by marking them as "assignments". This allows students to easily share their creations back to you by submitting their slides as an assignment. There are also other ways to share your creation if you'd rather email or embed it on your website.