Buncee and Immersive Reader: A Winning Combination for Assistive Learning

I am a huge fan of Buncee. The following is a guest post by Rachelle Dene Poth (@Rdene915), Spanish and STEAM Teacher at Riverview High School in PA.

For several years, Buncee has been one of my favorite creation tools; both for personal use and for classroom instruction. While there are many digital tools to choose from when it comes to teaching and having our students create, Buncee’s versatility and ease-of-use make it a go-to tool for all creative needs. Now, Buncee’s recent integration with Microsoft’s Immersive Reader makes the platform even more accessible for students of diverse ages, backgrounds, and abilities to learn 21st-Century Skills and express themselves. What my students love the most is that Buncee offers something for everyone, and I love that they love it.

Always keeping a finger on the pulse of their community’s needs, the Buncee team consistently listens to their community and refines the platform based on this! Their integration with Immersive Reader is a perfect example of this.

Immersive Reader: It’s About Opportunities For ALL Students 

This summer, Buncee integrated with Microsoft’s Immersive Reader, increasing accessibility for students and offering a robust environment to build literacy skills. Immersive Reader is a full-screen accessibility tool, supporting the readability of text in Buncees for language learners and their families and students with dyslexia or visual impairments. Any text added into a Buncee can be translated and read aloud in over 60 languages.

There are many ways Immersive Reader can enhance learning opportunities for students. It can help to build their confidence and create an inclusive classroom environment. Educators can use this integration to create lessons, make interactive flashcards for students, and communicate with families. Inclusive learning and providing for students and families from different backgrounds is something that the Buncee and the Microsoft team are definitely passionate about, making this integration a natural fit.

Imagine the possibilities for reaching students and their families of non-native English speaking homes, or supporting students who are just learning to read. The use of Immersive Reader in Buncee enables students to do more than just create multimedia content, it helps them improve reading and language learning skills as they engage with the content in authentic and meaningful ways. 

How Does Immersive Reader Work in Buncee? 

There are several ways to help students build their skills through the different options available within Buncee and using Immersive Reader. Getting started with Immersive Reader in Buncee is easy.

By clicking on the Immersive Reader icon when viewing a Buncee, a personalized reading and learning experience for students appears. Immersive Reader accesses the text in the Buncee, offering a multitude of options. Families can access these features at home as well, without having to log into or need any specific account. 

Navigating the Immersive Reader Functionality In Buncee

I decided to create a Buncee using some of the new 3D objects and also explore the options available through Immersive Reader. For first time users, it is easy to figure out how to adjust the settings. 

First, I clicked on the speaker symbol at the bottom to listen to the text read aloud. Students could use this as a way to practice their own pronunciation, especially when using it for language learning, by repeating after the speaker. Students can also build listening comprehension skills by focusing on written words and making connections with the audio. 

 

By clicking on text preferences, I can choose the text size, increase spacing, and select from three choices in font style. These are great options to help with readability for students. There are also 21 color choices for the background on the screen. I find this to be very useful, especially as someone who can be sensitive to certain colors when reading. I've also had students experience difficulty with reading on certain colored backgrounds, so this is a definite plus. 

The grammar options enable you to break words up by syllables and also color code the different parts of speech. Being able to use the color codes to help with the identification of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs will help students to build their grammar skills. These labels can be turned on or off, which means that families can work with their children and use it as a teaching tool for review. 

Just to experiment, I turned everything off except for the verbs. Displayed on the screen were the two verbs in the sentence both highlighted in red. I then selected a different color for each part of speech, I chose purple to identify nouns and green for the adjectives. I was amazed at how quickly this could be set up and the possibilities for helping students with reading comprehension and language skills. Using this as a way to further engage students with identifying parts of speech and making the visual connection is another option for more interactive learning.

Under reading preferences, you can focus on one line or on the entire text.

When you focus on a line, it closes the screen down to that one specific sentence, which you can also make narrower or thicker depending on your choice. 

There are more than 60 languages available for translation. I decided to try French first, and when I clicked on a word, it showed me the word in French and in English. I also explored other languages, including Spanish and was impressed with how much it offered to reinforce the content and to provide a more personalized learning experience for students. There is also a picture dictionary to visually reinforce vocabulary acquisition. You can choose the voice and speed of reading, so it provides a great way to reinforce speaking skills as well as listening, reading and writing. 

In his book, Digital Leadership, Eric Sheninger talks about the critical competencies needed by learners for success in today’s world. These competencies are in alignment with the ISTE standards for students and teachers and can be addressed through the use of Buncee. Now with the Immersive Reader integration, the possibilities to address these standards are open to all learners. Beyond the potential for creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, and communication, students using Buncee can build skills in digital media literacy, entrepreneurship, technological proficiency, and digital citizenship. Students have the opportunity to use technology as a tool for solving real-world problems and making real-world connections. We have to look beyond simply using digital tools to engage students in learning and instead, empower them through opportunities to apply what they have learned in unique ways. 

The Need For Digital Literacy

With 1:1 technology initiatives and BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) programs increasingly being implemented in schools across the globe, the need for digital literacy education has become more important than ever. Although technology enables students to access more information in much less time, it does not always foster learning. Teaching digital literacy helps to manage all of the benefits of technology while helping students understand how to safely weed through the vast amounts of information online.

Technology in the classroom has the following advantages:

• Allows students to manipulate information and media to construct their own meanings
• Enables students to share their ideas quickly and easily
• Engages students of all cognitive levels and abilities
• Prepares students to be college and career ready

These benefits, among others, are why technology has become a major part of the global curriculum. However, teaching digital literacy has its challenges. The aspects of e-safety, critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, and finding and evaluating information must all be addressed. Many teachers lose sight of creativity and collaboration because Common Core and other initiatives focus on gathering and evaluating information with very little emphasis on creativity.

Educators need to embrace the creative and collaborative aspects of digital literacy. So much great learning happens through creative and collaborative processes. Bridget Burns, Michael Crow and Mark Becker noted the benefits of collaboration in their article Innovating Together: Collaboration as a Driving Force to Improve Student Success, March 2, 2015. They state that collaboration spurs innovation because bringing together groups of people who have different ideas, approaches, experiences, and areas of expertise creates a fertile environment for generating new concepts and methods. Sharing insights allows ideas to be refined and improved. Charging a group with developing a promising idea incentivizes the group—not just a single individual—to commit to its success and paves the way for trusted collaboration.

Giving students the opportunity to broaden their ideas and experiences opens up pathways of learning that can be extremely beneficial.

Brianna Crowley, an educator in Hershey, PA, successfully teaches her students digital literacy while infusing creativity throughout. She says it took a series of small steps to begin the process. One thing in particular she does is refrain from introducing any new tools into her classroom unless she knows they are going to enhance learning. Often she utilizes tools to engage her students, such as A Google a Day which is teaching her students to search for information in a safe yet creative way.

Another challenge teachers face while teaching digital literacy is the differing views on social media in education. Many schools have strict policies in place to avoid educational use of social media, while others feel that these restrictions are stifling the creativity and collaboration capabilities of today’s students. Dan Haesler, a teacher and educational consultant, believes in proactive social media education, and allowing students to make use of all that it has to offer.

When asked by Common Sense Media about social media bans in schools Haesler replied, “What if we approached driver’s education in the same way?” He concluded: Driving lessons would be taught by adults with little or no driving experience, they would only focus on what not to do, and they would never take place in an actual car. Both driving a vehicle, and navigating the internet require experience and knowledge of safety precautions so as to avoid any major incidents.

The students at Maker’s Place in Homewood, Philadelphia, PA, are a prime example of digital literacy at its finest. Children from the inner city get together to work on their digital literacy through creative and collaborative projects. Instructor Jomari Peterson teaches the students to “take control of your destiny and change the world.” Her students work together to utilize different apps and programs that help them first build a business idea and then use collaborative tools to bring that idea to life.

Although there is no “secret sauce” to effectively help educators teach their students digital literacy, there are some key points to focus on:

• Allow students to maintain blogs or webpages that enable them to track their own learning. Google Drive easily allows students to create blogs and sites that they can share and collaborate on with their peers.
• Have students create digital stories that they can share and publish. Edu.buncee.com is a site where students can utilize hundreds of custom stickers, animations, multimedia and even record their voice into their project so they can make it “their” own, both figuratively and literally. For example, “My Day at the Beach” a student tells her story with stickers and animations and her voice recording. “Come to Istanbul” describes the city and all it has to offer.  Getting creative with Buncee is a breeze.

• Offer students the ability to email and video chat with students in other countries. Skype Translate allows students to have a real time conversation with immediate translation.
• Don’t get caught up in the need for strictly finding information and evaluating it. Always allow for creative ways to learn and produce.

With the help of great Ed Tech tools and dedicated educators, students can gain digital literacy and become fluent in safely finding and evaluating information, creating, and collaborating.

Getting Creative With Buncee

The following is a guest post by Marie Arturi, the CEO/Founder Buncee and a creative communication evangelist.  Her nephew is one of my teachers at New Milford HS.

Consider for a moment how we, as adults, consume content today. We’re constantly immersed in media. We look for inspiration on Pinterest, use video tutorials, watch live news footage, get statistics from infographics, skim blogs for 'how to' videos, browse social media for trends and articles, and check social photo streams to catch up on our friends’ and family’s latest endeavors. We are learning about our world through these media, and we are drawn to them because of their quality, color, and creativity. It only makes sense, then, that our students are attracted to the same things. As Eric has mentioned before, you can’t teach in black and white, when they’re learning in color.

Buncee was born from a similar desire to create and share engaging, personal, and colorful content. In fact, it was not originally envisioned for educational purposes, but to design personalized and unique thank you cards to share with doctors and scientists from our Foundation! However, it was one educator and one student who initially lit the spark when they encouraged us to bring buncee to the educational community. They felt that the ease of use dovetailed perfectly with teaching requirements they had at school. So over time, we have worked very closely with education experts at all levels to build edu.buncee.com.

Today buncee has matured into an innovative presentational tool that makes it easy to both create engaging content for students and having them enjoy creating content themselves, practices we believe ought to be present in every classroom. It's important to recognize that the teachers, professors, classes, and topics that shape us the most while growing up are the ones that ignite our curiosities. Consuming interesting content, though, is just the start; it’s creating original content that really gets students involved in learning. Although students are drawn to certain subjects over others, sharing interesting videos, adding audio, well-designed infographics, and awe-inspiring photos can greatly increase the likelihood of student engagement. We believe using Buncee for Education and teaching students the same way they learn outside the classroom is how they will become active learners.

We saw first hand how buncee’ing positively affected students during our last Google Hangout demo. The young scholars from Shannon Miller's class went above and beyond active participation and took the initiative to suggest new ideas for product features and animated stickers, like dancing candies! The same thing happened while we were visiting one of our local Long Island schools. Having just finished their digital media stories, students were teeming with ideas for stickers and animations. These young creators inspired us through their boundless energy and enthusiasm, and we honored as many of their requests as we could! It’s moments like these that validate the use of creative tools in the classroom and at home.

Today more than ever it is important that students not only expand their knowledge of the world, but exercise their creative skills. In a society where digital production is prevalent, we believe those students who are actively creating and sharing their thoughts will gain a richer educational experience. We have been honored to have met so many marvelous educators and through them, their students. Whether at schools, over tweets, or at events like SXSWedu and ISTE 2014, what a privilege it has been to share our tool in this way, at this time.