Hey friends! It’s been a while since I’ve blogged. Remember that time I set a goal to blog twice a month? Well it’s March and here we are. Anyway, I wanted to share an awesome new technology that I’ve been using in my classroom with you. It’s called Showbie and it is uh-ma-zing! First off, something I love about Showbie is that it’s FREE for educators to use (up to a certain number of assignments), or you can purchase Showbie PRO if you plan to use it full time with your students. I have been using it for about a month now, and it has been such a game changer for my students (and me!). We have been using it for our partner projects that we began recently, so I’m going to tell you all about that.
To get started with Showbie, I made an account and created a classroom. I actually teach both fourth grade classes, so I easily created a classroom for both 4A and 4B. Each class was given a code that I could easily share with students so that they could login using their Google accounts. To get ready for our partner projects, I uploaded the Powerpoint Presentation that I used with my class so that they could have all the information in one place, the rubric that I would be using to grade their projects, so they could make sure they had all of the components they needed, and the assignment planning sheet (just in case someone lost theirs – teachers, I know you feel me on this one!). With all of this in one place and ready to go, I presented Showbie to my students and they created their logins, which seriously only took 5 minutes. The best part is that there was no time on my end creating individual student logins for 35 different students (again, you all know that feeling). After that, we were ready to start working!
Our partner projects were an assignment to create a Powerpoint about a topic they were studying and it was something that we would be working on over a few class periods. When we picked up where we left off later in the week, the inevitable “I forget our topic!” or “Where did you tell us to look for that again?” and “What pages was that on?” questions came up. This is where having all of my materials on Showbie really saved me. All I had to do was direct my students to Showbie for the Powerpoint with all that information. Those questions quickly turned into, “Oh right! This is awesome!” and “This is so cool to have it all right here for us!” No really, my fourth graders ACTUALLY said those things. And I certainly was thinking them.
Once my students started to complete their projects, they were able to easily submit them right into the Showbie discussion board. All they needed to do was click the assignment and add directly from Google Drive. No more, “should I share this with you?” followed by mistyped email addresses or having to dig through my inbox to find 20 different links to projects! Seriously, a game changer for all of us.
This was our first assignment using Showbie Pro, but it will definitely be a staple in my classroom now! Anything that saves me and my students time and makes our lives a little easier is a no-brainer for me.
If you’re interested in trying out Showbie for yourself, you can sign up for free at https://my.showbie.com/signup or get Showbie Pro for just $99 (regular price $149) using coupon code showbie499 until March 31, 2019! Let me know when you sign up so we can Showbie together!
