Don't Lose Your Dongle!

My crafty, art teacher background comes in handy quite often. This time, it's helped me to come up with a way to keep my bluetooth dongles from being lost and/or forgotten after being plugged into a student chromebook! 

My littleBits code kits have a bluetooth dongle that needs to be plugged into the students' machines in order to function correctly. Well, despite numerous reminders and attempts at attention-getting signage, students would still leave the room with the dongle still plugged in. Other devices utilizing "dongle" technology include wireless mice, the keyboard for the Kano computer kit, and pretty much anything else that works wirelessly and needs an adapter to connect. 

By the way, I could totally call this a bluetooth adapter, but the word "dongle" is wayyyy more fun. And I teach middle school, so that's where my humor is at. Dongle it is then! 

So... I had some extra yarn lying around from the time I tried to crochet some Dot and Dash hats, so I decided to repurpose the leftovers into chunky tassels that I could attach to each individual dongle. I'm (pretty) sure no one will walk out of the room with a giant purple and gray yarn tassel attached to their chromebook... fingers crossed! 

Making a yarn tassel is fairly simple. I used a tutorial graphic found on Pinterest, much like this one below, to guide me:

via craftberry bush blog

Now, depending on the shape and size of your dongles, you may or may not be able to attach your tassel to it by simply tying. Mine are fairly small, so I utilized a combination of tying and hot glue to create a strong attachment between the two: 

It's basically a blob of hot glue over the yarn knot and around the plastic. You know, super fancy. Just be careful to leave the metal USB plug part intact with enough room so that it still plugs in completely.

Ta da! It's now infinitely more difficult to lose these babies! If you're feeling extra, try customizing your tassels to your school colors or create a color-coding system for your devices. Enjoy!

- Mrs L.

DIY Emoji Magnets for Your Classroom

Not only do I have a magnetic white board in my classroom, I have a long metal electric supply channel that runs around the perimeter of my classroom (from back when this room was a traditional desktop computer lab setup) that is perfect for using magnets on. Therefore, I love all things magnetic: tiny organizer jars, wire baskets, erasers, clips, hooks, and decorative magnets for the sake of decorative magnets.

I guess this DIY falls into the latter. Middle school kids are motivated by all things quirky and trendy, so it helps to be on top of these things as much as possible. I can't keep up with it all, but I know that emojis are a "thing" right now. I thought it would be fun to print out full-page versions of some emojis to use in the classroom.

First, I did a regular old Google Image search for emojis. Then I printed the image files out as large as possible on a page.

Emojis are easy to search via Google Images, or you can borrow from my folder of emojis here!

After printing them out, I thought, "hmm I should laminate these so they last longer."

After laminating and cutting them out, I thought "hmm I should make these into MAGNETS for the whiteboard!"

And so it was.

I went on Amazon and ordered a 10-pack of these adhesive magnet sheets. I stuck my laminated printouts (I was only able to get 1 per sheet, but I had some leftover magnetic sheeting I could use with stickers or smaller images) onto the adhesive, and used regular old scissors to cut them out.

Voila! Giant emoji magnets for your whiteboard.

Fun, right? Think of the possibilities! 

- Mrs L.

DIY Techie Craft Ideas for Back-To-School

It's that time of year! I'm back after taking some summer time off to recharge, be a mom, and do some home improvement projects over the summer. It's been great, but it's time to start thinking about school again. My five-year-old starts kindergarten this fall, and he loves looking at school supplies. Hmm... I think he gets that from me?

So we were watching some YouTube videos about DIY school supplies and came across some super fun tech-related projects that Iggy and I had to make, and that I just had to share here.  Check it out!

Cord taco vs cord donut. Who will win?

Earbud cords are forever getting tangled, or lost/broken in your backpack or pencil case, amirite? We've got two new different solutions that you can try out this school year! The past couple of years, I was totally pushing the "mint-container-as-earbuds-holder" craft idea, but I've got a couple of new ones that I think are equally as functional and fun.

The first one is a "cord taco" made from craft foam and velcro dots. My son decided to try his hand at the "cord pizza," and loved it so much that he made one for his dad, too. Here he is, hard at work:

He's not exactly coordinated enough for painting (or patient enough!) just yet, so Iggy opted to decorate his foam cord keepers using colorful permanent markers. I used acrylic paint though for mine.

The second item was a "cord donut" made from Perler beads. This is actually where our crafts all started. My son is hooked on these tiny plastic beads that you place onto a pegboard, and then melt to fuse together using an iron. He started out making flat images of Ghostbusters and monsters and such, but has started to graduate to 3-D creations. I was researching the best glue to use when I came across the DIY for a cord donut. How could I NOT try it out? It's a donut!

And once you go down the YouTube rabbit hole of ideas, it tends to snowball. I became obsessed with the idea of a lipstick USB drive, and had to try to make one for myself:

The trick here is finding a USB drive that's small enough to fit into your empty lipstick tube! I got mine on Amazon, but still had to do a little tweaking via a sanding block to get mine to fit just right... but it's super cute, don't you think? 

Here's my complete playlist with the DIY directions on how to make these (and other) fun tech and school supplies!

BONUS CRAFT: 

If you follow me on Instagram, you probably saw how I made myself the ultimate finger pointer stick for my whiteboard this school year, inspired by one of my all-time favorite movies, School of Rock:

Heavy metal rock hand for the win!

Hope your school year gets off to an awesome start!

- Mrs L.

Easy Tech DIY: VR Classroom Tour!

One of my 7th grade students showed me how to create a photo sphere of a location using my phone's camera and the Google Street View app (it's available FREE for both iOS AND Android devices). It makes a 360 degree "street view" image, like in Google Maps... OR, if you use your phone with a Google Cardboard viewer, you can view the space in VR and put yourself directly in the middle of the photo sphere!

Of course, I had to make one of our classroom here at school and publish it on Google Maps. I think it's cool that anyone can experience being "in" the computer lit room from anywhere - it's a totally new take on a virtual classroom tour, and a super fun alternative to a video tour!

Here's how I did it... First, I downloaded and launched the Google Street view app (see top of post for links to iOS and Android versions). There will be a little camera icon in the lower right-hand corner of your screen. Click on it, and select "camera" to use your regular old camera phone.

Your live camera view will pop up, and you're tasked with overlaying the circle on the "dot" - holding it in place until the pie-shaped timer runs out. You then rotate around, repeating this circle/dot step until you get back to your starting point. 

Once you've rotated 360 degrees though, you now can tilt your camera UP or DOWN, repeating the 360 turn and the circle/dot routine, until you've basically photographed an entire sphere around you! 

When your photo sphere is complete, you'll get a green check mark icon. You can then select it and publish it to a specific Google Maps listing. Once that step is finished, you can then choose to share your photo sphere via email, messages, etc... You can even embed your image to your website or blog, like I did above!

If you open our classroom photo sphere (here's the link: 360 Sphere of Room 020) using your mobile device, you can choose the "Google Cardboard" view, which works when you insert your mobile device sideways into a viewer. Without a viewer, it just looks like this:

I loved how easy this was to do, and although this has actually been around for quite a while, I'm just catching on now, and thought that it was totally worth sharing. Check it out!

- Mrs L.

A Portable, Wearable Green Screen?

I've been asked a few times to give some more information about my DIY portable green screen for video production. Which is actually kind of embarrassing due to the extreme primitive nature of its construction... but here’s the scoop:

I was slated to do the Google Summit Demo Slam, and I had decided that my topic would be color keying, since it’s my favorite WeVideo feature. I was trying to figure out a way to demonstrate how to use a green screen without actually having a green screen, or somehow make it work to setup a green screen within a 3-minute Demo Slam timeframe.

I considered a 3-fold “science fair”-type project board, but this would have still required me to have a surface (like a table) in which to set it on behind me. I decided to instead try and paint a standard piece of foam core with green paint. The original idea was that during the slam I could just hold it behind me and film via webcam, then demonstrate how to do color keying.

I painted 3-4 coats of acrylic paint on the board and let it dry. It did, unfortunately, warp the board a little bit, which was less than desirable. But the color looked pretty good, so I pushed forward.

I logged in to WeVideo and tried recording from my webcam while holding the board behind me, but it became obvious pretty quickly that there was no graceful (or steady) way to hold up the board behind me while filming. Frustrated, I explained the situation to a group of my 7th graders and asked them what they thought I should do. We started brainstorming ideas for mounting or hanging the board behind me (like, “Can we attach it to a selfie stick somehow?” “How about putting it on a backpack?”), which inspired my very rudimentary solution: bend a couple of wire hangers into shoulder mounts and attach it to the foam core with tape!

If you look carefully, you can see the top of the hanger wire (you know, the hook part) underneath the tape.

This is what the final result ended up becoming: a curvy piece of painted foam core with haphazardly bent wire hangers as a shoulder mount. Embarrassingly primitive, but funny nonetheless, so I brought it with me to the GAFE Summit and used it as a prop in my Demo Slam. Fortunately, it got lots of laughs and attention, even if it didn’t end up winning the competition.

I didn’t actually USE the portable green screen contraption to film, as it still has some limitations:

• It’s not quite large enough to span the webcam’s view all the way to the edges of the frame.
• The foam core only reaches to the top of my shoulders, making the green screen only useful for neck-up situations, which is… limiting, to say the least. 

Therefore, I have some ideas for improving upon my design for the future:

• Buy colored foam core and skip the paint part, which would eliminate warping.
• Use a larger piece of foam core, so it will cover the edges of the camera frame. 
• Attach a green piece of fabric to the bottom of the foam core, which would create a “cape” of green behind me, which would allow me to film from the waist-up (ish) and still have green background behind me. 

I’m not necessarily convinced that the portable green screen is better or easier than just toting a green fabric sheet around with me (that’d certainly be more compact!), but it does make for a great conversation piece! So there you have it. If you decide to make your own (probably improved!) version, please share it with me!

-Mrs. L.

Hack Your Classroom Space: DIY Whiteboard Tables!

My major summer project this year was painting the classroom tabletops with whiteboard wipe-off paint! I thought that it would be a great addition to the classroom because:

1. It's a novelty - who doesn't like to write on furniture?!
2. It encourages collaboration - my students work in table groups, so they can easily work together to brainstorm or diagram.
3. It provides a different kind of hands-on activity - we use our Chromebooks so much in computer class, it's nice to have an "unplugged" activity once in a while!
4. It addresses multiple intelligence philosophies - visual learners who like to draw or write out notes and ideas by hand get the opportunity to do so. 

I was super lucky to win a grant from our district's education foundation at the end of last year, which will allow for the purchase of "rocker" stools and a set of beanbag chairs for the classroom. I felt like giving the tables a fun face-lift was the perfect complement to the new furniture. Thankfully, I had enough money left over after the furniture purchase that the education foundation was willing to fund the supplies for this project, so long as I was willing to put in the work.

I did a lot of research prior to beginning this project. I used this tutorial for the bulk of my instructions (thanks, Pinterest!). I also read a whole lot of Amazon product reviews to determine the best paint for the job. I learned that it is a good idea to buy your paint in-person (I went to Home Depot) rather than ordering online, as you are able to open the boxes and check the manufacture date... Apparently this paint is good for 2 years from the date of manufacture, and after that, you should not use it. Whether or not this is true, I do not know, but I wasn't going to take a chance!

I bought two of these cans of wipe-off whiteboard paint, and a foam roller/tray set, like this. I also grabbed a couple rolls of blue painter's tape to tape off the edges of the tables. It cost me less than $80 for all of the supplies. Not too bad.

I came in to school the week after students were let out. It took me an entire school day's worth of time to complete this project by myself, but if you had a friend, you could probably knock it out a little faster? In the end, my timing worked out really well because it allowed for adequate dry time between coats, and then the tables had the entire rest of summer to cure before we attempted to write on them!

Here's how the paint works: it comes in two parts, which you mix together before painting on. Once the paint is mixed, you have only an hour or two to apply it before the paint is no longer any good. So there's no saving paint for touch-ups, unfortunately. The plan for now is that I'll probably buy a new can of paint and do a refresher coat at the end of this year to prepare for the next.

I did have the presence of mind to take some photos as I worked, so that you can see the transformation as it happened:

The first thing that I did was give the tabletops a really good clean/wipe down with some disinfecting wipes, and let them dry. Then I began the somewhat time-consuming task of taping off the edges. Depending on what your tables look like, you may or may not choose to do this step. Even though it took me a while, I feel like it was really worth the effort.

The tables in my room have a vinyl/plastic-y rounded edge trim, and I think it would look weird if I painted it. Not to mention, I'm not sure how well the paint would stick. 

I ended up applying 4 coats overall. Coat #1 was not full coverage, so don't panic if you see streaks on your first go-round. I painted all seven tables with coat #1 before moving on to coat #2. By the time I finished table #7, the first table was generally dry enough to start the second coat. 

I also had a box fan running in the room, pointed at the tables as I worked to help speed the drying process between coats.

I ended up using ALL of the first can of paint, and a good majority (but not all) of my second can of paint. I made four rounds/four coats of paint on each table before I called it quits. 

For those interested, my tables are about 30 inches wide, and 60 inches (5 feet) long. 

The foam roller was really important because it helped to create a very smooth, even coat overall, suitable for a writing surface.

Originally, the tabletops were a speckled light gray color. Painting the tops with this glossy wipe-off paint made everything look clean, fresh, and new!

I left my room like this, all summer, so the tabletops could cure properly before we tried writing on them. I did (carefully) peel off the blue tape when I was finished painting at the end of the day. Peeling off paint while paint is still wet seems to be effective for getting cleaner lines. If I peeled it off after the paint was dry, I might end up peeling up some of the tabletop paint along with the tape!

Once our new year began, I was super eager to test out the new tables. While I was setting up the room a few days before school started, I gave my 4-year old son, Iggy, some markers and an eraser to try it out. Success! 

I'm so happy with how these turned out, and I highly recommend "hacking" your own classroom furniture using this method! 

We used our tabletops to do a "complete-the-sentence" activity in 8th grade involving similes. It was easy for students to look across the room and see what their classmates had written, as opposed to being hidden behind a screen. Many students had fun embellishing their responses with drawings and designs:

via Instagram

I did discover some really awesome dry-erasers that work amazingly well with my tabletops. These erasers by 3M have two sides to them: a grippier, scrubby side, and a smooth side. I have found that when using these erasers, students can get a completely clean tabletop at the end of class! Score!

Side note: If you are viewing my blog from within the district, it seems that my former photo hosting site is blocked this school year, so all of my past images are not showing up/have broken/blocked links. Whomp whomp. Sorry about that. I'm working to find a solution to this as soon as possible. 

- Mrs. L.

Organization: Rolling Chairs and Earbuds

Last week on Friday, the maintenance guys were awesome (as usual) and replaced all of the rolling chairs with REGULAR non-rolling chairs! I was so excited, although the students were (for the most part) disappointed. No more yelling at kids about rolling across the room or constantly adjusting the up and down mechanism. Score! 

Seriously though... those chairs were a HUGE distraction, and I'm super excited to see them go. Believe it or not, the room looks bigger without them, too!

Yesterday, I was talking with a couple of young ladies about earbud woes and how to carry them throughout the school day, and I was directed to this tutorial about making an earbud case from a mint container!

I love love LOVE this idea, and plan on making one (or more) for myself! The best part is the clip-on keyring, because it can easily be hooked onto your chromebook bag, pencil case, or bookbag. Another idea is to just stash this cute plastic case in the zipper pocket in front of your chromebook bag - it'll keep the cords from becoming tangled, and leave room for other stuff!

Remember, you'll need to bring earbuds or headphones to computer lit class each day anyways (and you'll probably need them for other classes, too), so why not have a cute container to keep them in?

- Mrs. L.