I did this "thing" last year, but didn't choose to explore Buncee at that time. A couple weeks ago I went to a workshop with Shannon Miller and she reignited my interest. I signed up for the trial and began to look at all of the information offered on the site. I went through all of the following:
What is Buncee?
Buncee Ideas & Use Cases
How To's
- Buncee Video Tutorials (Creating Student Accounts, Sharing Buncees, & More)
- Buncee Classroom Features
- Sign Up For Live Training
One of the first things I noticed is that there is the ability to comment on Buncees and that there's a blog feature. Our IT guy doesn't allow blogs for students and I'm thinking that this might be a way to "get around" that rule.
There's an English teacher who has a project that she wants me to help with next month. She wants students to be able to work in groups and have discussions across separate classes. The Buncee Boards might be a good way for us to do that. I think I now know through watching the tutorial on creating groups, how the teacher will be able to have her discussion groups across classes. If I put all of the students from each class into one, and then create groups for each book title, the students from different classes who are discussing the same book should be able to collaborate.
I love that so many of the links take you to examples of Buncees and that a lot of them have directions that go along with how they got the stickers, animation, etc on to their slides. The Buncee creation video was helpful and something I'll go back and look at again once I get started. I also scrolled through the Buncee School Stories/Blogs and found a lot of great ways that educators have used Buncee. Shannon's and Francesca's video tutorial has so much useful information. I love the idea of creating signage for the library, and the fact that I can use what someone else has already done as a template, and modify as needed. I also love the examples of library home pages, where there are links to other things outside of the library. I didn't sign up for the live training as I felt I got quite a bit through the tutorial. I finally got to a page that gave pricing information and was surprised to see that the Classroom Lite version, which is what I believe I'd need is $100. I'm not sure that I'll be able to get that, so might not be able to use it with those English classes next month. I was excited to find a "free month" of Buncee offer for teacher appreciation in May, but when I clicked the link it said it was no longer accepting responses. I went back and realized the original link in my search was dated May 1, 2017 so maybe they'll have another offer the beginning of May this year. I'm going to make a Buncee to see how much I like it and then determine whether or not I want to pursue a subscription to use with the class next month.
This is the Buncee that I made to use for students who want to check out books over the summer.
https://app.edu.buncee.com/buncee/D57212F813E3447290EFF069B7FD88F4
This is the Buncee that I made to use for students who want to check out books over the summer.
https://app.edu.buncee.com/buncee/D57212F813E3447290EFF069B7FD88F4
Buncee does seem to be very popular. I haven't really explored it enough yet. Good to take advantage of the free trial to see if it's something you want to pay for.
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