Bitmoji Classrooms: A Useful Tool for Teaching Online

Bitmoji Classrooms are an amazing way that teachers have been adapting their teaching methods to the online class structures which have become common due to the Coronavirus lockdowns.  Reilly Mahan joins us to discuss her Bitmoji classroom and how it has helped her stay organized and on top of communicating with her students in spite of distance.

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How have Bitmoji classrooms changed the way teachers approach online education?

First thing to say is how amazing the communities of teachers all over the world have been in supporting each other and dealing with how education is changing right now, and how we’re reacting to the pandemic everywhere. A Bitmoji classroom is just one of those ways.

The idea is that you can take your bitmoji, which would come from Snapchat (or any avatar where you can make a little version of yourself as a cartoon) and you can use it to make a virtual classroom. In that way, kids are able to interact with the room and see a little bit of your personality. You can also hyperlink everything. It gives you one place for all the kids to come together, to get resources for the class, and to see what’s on the daily schedule.

(Reilly uses Google Slides to build her Bitmoji Classroom by utilizing google features to share individual instances with each student, keeping them organized.)

Since we’re hybrid, I have kids who were at school on Monday-Wednesday and at home on Tuesday-Thursday, so they’ll be doing their own work.  I made the room to be a place where the kids will go for their at-home learning assignments. They can click objects all around the room to be able to complete their assignments. When they click on Monday- Tuesday, it takes them to their Google Classroom assignment.

I can give them some tips and the objectives for the week that we’re working on, and then I created a little schedule which will keep them on a good routine while at home. All their assignments for the days are linked and they can click on them. If we do a writing prompt for the day, it’s actually just a link on the next slide where the kids can read about their writing prompt and write it on the slide. It’s just really immersive.

We have work on paper that we do, but for the kids who aren’t here or are virtual on Monday, I can’t give them the physical paper. Instead, I can screengrab their assignment and post it on here on the slide and make it editable.

What resources exist for teachers who want to build a similar classroom?

The only resource for teachers out there that is actually applicable and helpful is other teachers. There are a couple Facebook pages, and lots of teachers have side hustles like teacher blogs, where they post a lot of materials. The one that I’m in I think it’s called the “Bitmoji Craze for Educators.” People were just sharing free resources and examples of classrooms. I actually, I tried a couple methods and I kind of came to this on my own with a couple of teachers at my school.

Originally, I had a checklist like on a Word document. It was a little too much to look at at one time. Instead, it made a lot more sense to make slides for it that was similar to the bitmoji classroom, and just link it up to there.

It’s been a hybrid of just teachers I worked with and teachers being amazing and giving out free resources and ideas online. On all these Facebook pages, that are free to join, there’s so many people who’ve done so many better than me. So I want to give credit where credit is due.