⭐️⭐️In this issue⭐️⭐️

• Image reveal game in Playground

• Seeking content for Dunk The Teacher!!

• Wordwall printable worksheets on the Whiteboard

• My classroom background

Facebook

😑📘Koala Teachers Family recap

A relatively slow week for the Facebook group. A few Playground previews but nothing you absolutely need to know.

Katie Hamons is forming an accountability group

This is the one thing that caught my eye🐈‍⬛🏹

Koala Go

🛝👨‍💻 Image reveal game in Playground

Just one of the many exercises you can plug into your Playgrounds. Super fast and easy to set-up.

Playground

💧👩🏻‍🏫Seeking content for Dunk The Teacher!!

Do you like the concept behind Dunk The Teacher but it doesn’t have the right content for you? Send me an email about it.

My original plan was to offer many different versions with the content that teachers like yourself wanted (each version at $3), but since I cannot read minds I need you to tell me what you need.😆

Wordwall

👾🧩Wordwall printable worksheets on the Whiteboard

You may not know that Wordwall has printable worksheet templates, here is a short tutorial on how to make them and how I use them with the Koala Go Whiteboard.

Editorial

✍️🃏My classroom background

So you don’t think you have the space for, or can afford a fancy background like I have in my online classroom? Well, you can…

I didn’t expect to get any compliments on my background, but now that I have adult students I am hearing a few, to my surprise.

Many think that it is a fake background image done by my computer, but it is actually real. It is just the curtain that came with the apartment, probably the cheapest thing they could find.

The second notable feature is the light that comes up from the bottom. This is an LED tube light left behind by a previous tenant in a different apartment I lived in. I would probably prefer a different color, but this is what I had available. It is attached to the curtain at a strategic height with binder clips.

Finally, my big expenditure, as far as lighting goes, another LED lamp, this one set me back about $4. Theoretically I should have two, 1 placed off to each side of the room, but I only had the one. The finishing touch is a T-shirt my son outgrew that I hang on the light to soften it. It’s a relatively bright light and bounces off the white walls to give acceptable lighting where I sit. Keen eyes may notice that it is hanging from the smoke detector, as this is a rental and I don’t like to drill a bunch of holes I have to patch later.

So many online teachers on Preply spend zero effort on their background, and it shows. I believe that you need to get your webcam up level with your eyes. So students aren’t seeing under your chin or up your nose. That, along with decent lighting (doesn’t need to be expensive), and a neat, non-distracting background can go a long ways toward making a good impression with your profile video. 

I was planning to get a green screen to cover the curtain and make better use of computer generated backgrounds (because I really dislike the fuzziness you get without the green screen) but I just haven’t gotten around to it and I am teaching adults now.

Submissions

🙋🏽‍♂️🤷🏻‍♀️How do I submit my Playground to be featured in Koala Bites?

If you have a Playground you would like to have in this newsletter, or for that matter, anything the readers might find useful. Just click that button that says “Submissions”. That will open an email for you to describe what you would like to submit.

I like to schedule a time where I can come to your classroom and tour the Playground. Then I will do a short write-up. There is no cost for this.

Bye-bye

👋🏾Well that’s it for issue 17

Don’t forget to share it with your friends or on social media!