I'm continuing my daily reflections on the sessions I've attended at the TeachersPayTeacher conference. I was looking at the different options of sessions to attend, and I think I'm nearing the end of the list I made of sessions I was interested in attending.
Umm... I actually a little bit thankful to declare that, because I've noticed the last couple of days, I'm getting a little exhausted with all the information, even though I've taken it in slowly.
Today I watched 2 sessions that were about the same topic: digital resources. Actually, I can be honest and say I didn't watch all of both of them. I kind of fast-forwarded from time-to-time.
I'm pretty sure that last summer I watched a session on creating digital resources with Google slides. I remember even trying to make a piggy bank resource... that I never finished or did anything with.
I always think the process makes complete sense. Actually carrying out the process is not so quick and easy as it always seems in the video, though, in order to have things appropriately flattened.
Will I try again this year? Maybe. It's not my priority right now, though. My priority is fixing my store so the existing products, as they are, are the best they can be, without adding in extra digital components (other than Easel). My store goal is cohesive. That's what I hope you'd say after visiting my store, when I'm done.
While watching Daniel's session, my (correct) thought was that he must focus his resource-making on older students. I had 2 main take-aways from his session.
It's important to be careful with the colors you're using. I'd never considered this. Some kids are colorblind. He shared 1 in 12 males. That's a pretty big chunk of the population. 1 in 200 females. Daniel said it can be overwhelming to try to avoid all the possible combinations, but the most common one that is difficult to differentiate, if you are colorblind, is green and red. That's interesting to keep in mind!
A Facebook TPT group I'm a part of was recently having a conversation about whether or not print and digital resources should be grouped together online. Daniel says yes. I found his WHY kind of compelling.
I do create the resource for my students. That's great. It's awesome that I have this gift of creating / designing and don't have to spend lots of money buying lots of things. When I put the resource in my store, though, it's no longer a resource just for my kids, and I need to be considering the needs of other teachers, too, that might buy my resource. They might not be a 100% in person teacher. They might need both the online and print version. They might be a 100% in person teacher but have a student that needs that online adaptation for some reason.
Basically, it's not about my needs. When I choose to post it in my store, I need to consider the needs of other students that aren't necessarily in my classroom.
Yvonne and Brian's session really focused on Google slides.
They said to make sure you're in Edit mode so the kids can move the interactive pieces. It's also probably best to lock the background things that shouldn't be moved, so the kids don't mess things up. (I experienced that a lot when creating things in Seesaw for my kids last year.)
2 add-ons I really liked that they shared were Insert Icons for Slides, which are a ton of different icons you might want to use in your product. Another add-on was Unsplash Images, which are royalty-free images you can use for your products: photographs or backgrounds.
Well, this was a longer post, but that's ok.
Hope you have a great rest of your day!
We are an NBA household, so that will be our focus tonight...
