In this issue

• Koala Teachers Family FB Weekly Recap

• Word Search puzzle prototype Playground Story

• Rosebud AI - More small improvements to Popcorn the Storyteller

• Editorial: All dressed up and nobody to tutor… 

• Interesting Links

• How do I submit my Playground to be featured in Koala Bites?

Facebook

😑📘Koala Teachers Family recap

Another very slow week in the Facebook group

• Fidget Pop Literacy Zone Orton-Gillingham Classroom This will be listed for $6.99 until 9/1/24.

• Mz. Marianna is looking to hire teachers for their organization on Outschool

Playground

 🛝🛠️Word Search puzzle prototype Playground Story

Well it didn’t take as long as I thought it would, but I have a working prototype to share as a Playground Story. Seems to take a similar amount of time to reprogram this one as it takes for Dunk The Teacher. Just have to be organized.

The first page has an exercise in matching shapes with a verbal description of the shape, once the matches are all made, a trap door opens and you drop into the next exercise, the word search. When solved, you drop into the finish area and get a congrats message, GIF and finisher password.

The site I currently use to create the puzzles is called Puzzle Maker it’s by Discovery Education. For my use, it is the best I could find, and very flexible.

It has tools to make other types of puzzles as well and best of all, FREE!!

There are a few options to make the puzzle easier or harder, my prototype is on the harder side with words that can be backwards, diagonal or even both.

The question now…is it worth my time to publish this as a Playground?…

AI Tools

🌹🤖Rosebud AI - More small improvements to Popcorn the Storyteller

I spent a little more time working on this project on Rosebud, I wish I had even more time to play around with it.

I changed the image of Popcorn to appear like it is breathing, sort of, by having it move around a tiny bit and get 2% bigger and smaller. To add more of a personal touch Popcorn will ask for and use your name. I also changed the color of some of the text for easier readability. 

I was trying to add a cloud drifting across the sky but couldn’t get that to work after several tries, probably wasn’t asking the right questions again. Here is what worked: 

Please add cloud.png?TNcW to the layer in front of the background image, the clouds should be scalable and move slowly across the top of the screen.

“cloud.png?TNcW” is a graphical asset I had Rosebud create and it is in my assets library. So now we have subtle clouds randomly drifting in the sky. I plan to add more little details and surprises in the future.

These were mostly just changes to make the overall game look better and be less static and boring.

At one point I wanted to make a change from blue text to black text and just went into the code and did it manually, for fine tuning adjustments like that it’s just faster and I learn a little code while I am at it.

I love how I have something working and can add features to it as I come up with them and have time to add them. For those who want to create games but don’t know how to code this is an awesome way to get started.

Try it, you might enjoy it.

Editorial

✍️🃏Editorial: All dressed up and nobody to tutor… 

Last Sunday started out pretty normal I had a few Preply classes scheduled. Right before my first class, I was dressed, seated and ready to go. The student messaged me that they would not be able to make it to class, due to work issues. Ok, no problem this happens with adults. Usually a couple times a week. Luckily with Preply I still get paid for the class.

The next class I was ready again, waiting in the classroom, student was fashionably late, then late, I sent a message, then the student was very late and never showed up. Again, no big deal I still got paid for the class and I work on other things while waiting, like this newsletter.

Ditto for the next class, student never arrived. I was starting to see a weird trend. Would it continue? I had one last class scheduled for this day.

Sure enough, just before class I got a nice message from the student, they would not be able to attend.

This was a very strange day of tutoring for me. 100% absent students, but 100% payment for classes. I got a lot of little things done with the extra time sitting at the computer.

I like Preply’s policy on class cancellations and no-shows.

Links

🧐⛓️‍💥Interesting Links

These are links that I found interesting but haven’t written about, there is simply too much happening these days.

• Feeling Great - AI therapy app

• Lower cost humanoid robot prices going down fast, how low can they go? 

• My dream job at Tesla?

• A new study on the topic of Lookism, bias in computer vision. Looks are everything.

• Stephen Wolfram thinks we need philosophers working on big questions around AI

Enjoy!!

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 this issue

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