#i think today i will write a poem about minecraft

[millylotus]

Story Index

I’m going to be posting a bunch of stories right about now, and I want to have it all lined up so people can find them easier. Hope ya like ‘em.

Master Posts

POLL FIC MASTER POST [specifically this poll]

DeadLights [Duke Thomas x Danny Fenton | DP x DC]

Fic Prompt Master Posts *TO BE MADE*

Poems

Sol Born of a Wish

The Nebula

The Coven in the Woods

The Rabbits are not what it seems to be

The Desperate Broken Prince

The Demon Heart [Talia Al Ghul]

The Sunspot Prince [I’ve always liked bringing up the fact that Duke Thomas is probably a minor god]

In Madness

I call for a sacrifice to be my savior: my he be swift and kind (We worked on Tanka poems in class today :D)

In Madness (Dionysus invites Ariadne into his world)

Princess Most Holy (Ariadne’s life in one poem)

Little Brother (Ariadne mourns the Minotaur)

A Ring Lost In A Decade Is Still Lost (Ariadne misplaces the engagement Ring Dionysus gave her)

Parking Lots, Angry Birds, Forgotten Gods (A mortal approaches Ariadne at midnight in a Target parking lot)

Sherlock & Killer

Sherlock : Francesca “Frankie” Linly Bonet (Frankie’s back story and the songs I used to make her)

Ghost Zone Lore

How Ghost Are Born/Spawned

How to care for Young Ghosts [Lair]

Danielle’s Rebirth

Valerie Spots them

Ghost Classification

The GS Batfamily AUs

I have a google spreadsheet document that I keep all my AUs in for the batfamily.

BASE AU

Bat-Family Ages

Inheritance In The Bat-Family

Cullen Row / Mockingbird

New Baby Jitters

The Malones

Miscellaneous AUs

Madrigal Batfamily

Circus Robins

Birds Migrating East

This is a Justice League and Harry Potter, world mash crossover fic. Where every bat has some form of magic or another. And Tim, Steph, Duke, and Damien are sent to protect Harry in his fifth year. While Zatanna joins the Order. And Constantine infiltrates the Death Eaters.

Lore

Chapter I [May]

Chapter II [Four weeks later/July]

Chapter III [That Night/July]

Chapter IV [Three weeks later/June]

Chapter XI [Couple Minutes Before the Arrival of the Birds, and Batdad]

Chapter XII [In Number 12 Grimmauld Place]

Chapter XIII [Right when Dumbledore walked in]

Short Stories

Prompt: Five passengers are riding a train when something happens (It’s a zombie apocalypse and someone’s water broke)

The 8th and 9th wonders (Don’t really know how to explain this one)

Cassandra Sanvanterules (DnD character I was thinking about using)

Saint Lucifer (I remember writing a lot of this down on paper but I don’t feel like pulling out all my old journals)

Ender Bunn (One of the stories I finished for a Minecraft OC… I’ve changed them if your wondering)

Liminal Sanctuaire (A little story of puppy love that I had to make for school)

what a way to go. (A captive escapes their hell, but in the vast emptiness of space, they find no one) WARNINGS: TW SU!CIDE, TW SELF MUTILATION, TW SELF HARM, TW SELF CANNIBALISM

Chills (Just two love bros playfighting, and drinking beer)

But Never Enough (Abandoned Story Idea)

Boy Isn’t Right

Hello Lovely

But Never Enough

Unfinished Stories/Fanfiction

Moon Goddesses (Creation Myth)

A Kingdom Old and Forgotten (Was supposed to be a DSMP fanfic set in the modern world thousands of year after the DSMP fell, but then I got bored)

Jordan Needs to Move (In an apartment complex AU where all the MCYT families live together. Jordan moves away from his wife after divorce to Dream Family Apartments. (Not actually owned by Dream, but by his dad)) [Fanfiction]

I’m Not Gonna Be the Side-Character Anymore (A stereotypical Manhwa Harem goes wrong when one of the Harem boys defects and leaves)

The Animals Feed (Noble families are comprised of the Chinese zodiacs. And they all choose their heir, by making the twelve children (all of different zodiacs) fight to the death in different ways)

The Time of Fea (A story of two sisters who run away into the Fea populated woods)

OCs from a long ass time ago. That I honestly forgot existed.

Spirit of Bleak Winter & Knight of Shadows [DC x DP, Ship: Bruce/Danny - Frostbat] (Just a one-shot for a prompt I saw and loved)

Absolutely Smitten [Rottmnt x Into the Spiderverse Ship: Mikey/Miles - MarbledSpider]

Secret Son John Constantine [DpxDc John Constantine is the Everlasting Trio's magical baby child]

Super Villain Summer Internships [DpxDc Everlasting Trio go to Gotham & run amuck]

[jojoturnip]

A response to a mother at war, the poem of a friend:

You think of things so cosmically, don't you? I'm not surprised. I've seen your poetry of angels and your notebooks brimming over with theories of the world to compile into your games and campaigns.

There is no problem with that. Maybe that's a part of why I'm drawn to you and others who do the same. I like deep thinkers. I'd like to consider myself one.

There's nothing wrong with having your head in the clouds but don't forget you stand on earth.

I've been asked to hold a science writing workshop for another university's students who want to put science on the ballot (go them!!), so I've been thinking of some of my best writing advice. One piece I think of constantly when I write I found a long time ago scrolling through Pinterest:

"Don't write about the Holocaust. Write about the pair of children's shoes left behind in the street as they were taken away."

That one resonates with me a lot. Maybe it's the Jewish fear. I think it's more than that, though.

I, too, have been torn apart and eaten by the cosmos. I was punctured by the points of stars that promised to light the way. I have known and loved the darkness of man, the darkness of voids. I saw the big picture before I knew what it was.

It isn't pretty. Stepping back and looking at the timeline of my life, it isn't pretty.

Come look closer with me, though. Do you see that smudge? That's where my sister and I used to spray men's shaving cream at each other in the backyard when it was too hot to play like normal in the desert. Oh wait, no, look at this one, it's me hanging up my first houseplant, a rabbit footed fern. Does this one of me playing Minecraft with my cousin even look like me anymore?

No, no, this one you should see. You'll remember it. I had invited my sister, my roommates, my creative writing friends, and you all to the award ceremony for my literary award. You came with me, no one else did. Did you see how close to crying I am? Not from sadness even, just joy that you were there and supported me even though you didn't understand and it wasn't your thing. You were just there.

Don't think me stupid for finding that joy, my friend. The connections of the universe may be hard to conceptualize, but the constellations look nice. Did you hear we're supposed to be able to see the Aurora tonight?

Stepping back, I see all the pain and suffering that you do. And it's true that it overpowers the rest. But isn't it lonely up there? Only seeing the big picture and none of the details that make it worth painting?

I'm no artist. Or ethics professor. I'm not the one to tell you what's right and what isn't.

I study life. Both in botany and in writing. And I'm convinced, even after all the ugly I have pulled my rubber boots up from to stay afloat, that life is beautiful.

My bus driver always waves to other bus drivers we pass. But, when we come across a bus on the same route going the opposite direction, I see the flash of toothy smiles and special waves and salutes, like secret best-friend handshakes. My coworker dug a digital camera out of someone else's trash so I could use it to take pictures of my niece. The girl I complimented in the coffee shop today on her leather jacket beamed and told me how she was pretending it was warmer than it really was.

One of my favorite quotes comes from a source almost as odd as Pinterest, Norman Borlaug's biography. He's the father of the green revolution, and credited with saving more lives than any other person. I read it as a Borlaug Scholar in high school, and it was mostly dry. But he talked about his grandfather a bit, who said,

"Don't look for God in the sky. Look for him in the ground. That's where things grow."

Some of the tulips in the horticulture garden are planted above a hot water pipe, and the soil is warm enough for them to bloom early. They always come up short and have purple anthocyanin stress marks on their leaves, but people stop by to see the early flowers anyway.

I understand where you are, up in the universe, seemingly above it all but feeling swallowed by the vacuum. There's a beauty in that, too, in having a mind that can untangle dark matter. So I'm not here to change you.

But I also know your feet are as gravity-striken as mine. Welcome to Earth, my friend, come dig in the dirt with me. We can find earthworms and seeds and a thousand lives too small for us to see. It does not take away from the big picture, or the acknowledgement of your pain to pay them notice.

I brought you an extra trowel, but I cannot help you find god or hope or love or whatever it is people dig for. You have to want it. Then you have to dig for it.

I'm just digging next to you.

[jezabatlovesbats]

Day 26 of the Unitober challenge is a free day. So, here goes…

Back in the year of 2017, when the Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga remake was released and Minecraft: Story Mode was still pretty big, I was young and ambitious, and I wanted to be a video game developer. I took a computer class at my junior high school to learn the basics of it, but as the school year went by, I realized that I didn’t exactly have what it took. Coding wasn’t something I could easily learn.

And that’s okay. I found something better to be passionate about in life when this show first aired.

The very first episode of Unikitty aired on October 27, 2017, right before Halloween. Right afterwards, in November and December, the second and third episodes aired. No Day Like Snow Day was my first episode; I watched it when it first came out. Later, on New Years’ Day 2018, the show officially premiered, and let me tell you what happened then.

I fell in love with the show, its characters, its wackiness, and pretty much everything else about it really quickly.

What exactly was the appeal? Well, earlier in my life, when I was about 9 or 10, I was into the Lego Movie. Who was my favorite character? Who do you think? OG Unikitty was the only LEGO Movie character I remember trying to draw. There was just something about her that made me feel sweet inside. I used to ship her with an “OC” (if you can even call it that) named “Horsepuppy,” which was basically just a horse-dog hybrid with no personality. Other “characters” from that time were “Pegabunny,” “Turtlebird” and “Geckofly”. They didn’t have personalities either.

So, that’s where that came from. A few days after the show dropped episodes 4-9, I started writing a dumb little fanfiction called “Broken and Frozen.” The very first draft began with an edgy, sad poem written by my first OC, Germafrost, as the prologue. That fanfiction has gone through many drafts and has morphed into an idea for a series. A week or so after I started writing it, I began to write random things in my notes app, pretending to have a Wattpad account because I didn’t have one yet but wanted it badly.

Unikitty was what I would write about 90% of the time, although I occasionally talked about Minecraft: Story Mode stuff and other things. As the months went by, I came up with more ideas and more OCs. I drew fanart, made not-so-cool memes (all but one), talked about other people’s fanarts, talked a bit about what went on in my life, and squealed over Foxodile. It took me a while to squeal over Frock as well, but I’m happy to say that I did! I also came up with a bunch of episode ideas, but I’m not all that serious about them. There are so many more things I wrote in my Notes out of my love for the show.

Eventually, I did get a Wattpad account and a DeviantArt account as well. You can find plenty of Unikitty-related posts and artwork there.

A lot of the ideas I thought up for my fanmade characters are still canon about them today. Other ideas, I’ve let go of. And there are a LOT of ideas I had to scrap.

I got the Sparkle Party DVD in September of 2018, and it’s now a personal treasure of mine.

Even though this show might be over now, I hope that people will still continue to talk about it. This show means the world to me and that is a fact. It’s inspired me to keep drawing to make my art skills the best they can be. It’s also inspired me to check out other cartoons, like Teen Titans and Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart. Though I’ve definitely hit some bumps along the way like anybody would (there are things I’ve done that I regret doing a LOT), I am feeling great about myself and my artistic abilities.

At times when I felt sad, angry, or doubtful of myself, I’d watch Unikitty to pick myself back up. I mean, the whole message of the show is to believe in yourself and stay positive, so it was there for me when I needed it.

Being in this show’s fandom has helped me grow into a better person, and watching this show has let me think about my outlook on life. Watching Unikitty and her friends spread happiness to other people when they need it and help each other gave me the thought that maybe the world didn’t need to be a miserable place. I didn’t have to live my life in sadness. I wanted to focus more on the things that brought me joy. And the more I did that, the more I felt better for it.

One of the best parts about the show that the characters are all perfectly happy being themselves. They have flaws, but they accept them and let nothing get in their way. The best part of it is that no one judges them for expressing themselves. Seeing this, I felt a little less self-conscious about the kind of person I was. I’ve always liked to post super weird stuff.

I love shows with deep messages, realistic character growth and an overarching story as much as the next guy, but sometimes, you just need to loosen up and laugh a little. That’s exactly what Unikitty wants us to do, and it’s great at making us laugh. I’ve surely done that.

This show has been with me since I was in 7th grade. I’m a high school senior now. There’s still a very special place in my heart for Unikitty. I still love it so very much.

In 2020, I drew this pic to give the show a big, grateful hug.

And once more, I’d like to say:

Unikitty, thank you for brightening mine and practically everyone else’s days with bubbly happiness, fun adventures and lots and lots of sparkle matter. People like you are the kinds of friends that not everyone is so lucky to have. I’m grateful that you’re there for other people when you need to be and that you understand what makes them happy. The show wouldn’t be the same if you weren’t the star.

Puppycorn, thank you for being such an adorable and funny young pup. You sure are charming. You provided many hilarious moments that I enjoyed watching. If I met you, I’d ask, “Can I give you a hug?”

Dr. Fox, thank you for your smarts and your loyalty. You always come through for your friends, and when you and your friends are or could be in danger, you do your best to get out of it. The costume I wore for the school play back in 7th grade looked a lot like you, and because of that, you’re the character I’ve always wanted to cosplay. I’m finally doing it for Halloween this year! You’re also super “attractive in the form of endearment or charm,” which is called being “cute” in everyday speech.

Hawkodile, thank you for being such a trustworthy bodyguard and a radical action hero, as you call yourself. You’re always there for the gang when they need you, and you try your best to overcome your fears. You’re such a sweet and selfless guy.

Richard, thank you for keeping the castle and the Unikingdom as a whole from falling apart. You are pretty boring by most people’s standards, but if it weren’t for you, the kingdom would be a destroyed cesspool of chaos by now. Unikitty and her friends are lucky to have you. Come what may, but I’ll support you no matter what.

Master Frown, thank you for being such an amazing and very hilarious villain. I love watching you make mischief anywhere you could. As Unikitty told you, you might be a huge grumpy-grouch, but that’s cool with me. Besides, it’s one of the things that make you who I know and love. 

Brock, thank you for your lovable nature and how you’re such a good friend. You make me happy with how funny you can also be. You and Master Frown have a very healthy relationship, and it’s pleasing to see because of how good you guys are at working through problems. I also like you because of your easygoing nature and your lenience. I’d totally try one of your cookies, too.

I would also like to thank all of the other villains, heroes and characters in the show for being awesome and the people who worked on the show for making them so awesome. They all played a part in entertaining 12-year-old to present me, and I’m the most grateful I possibly can be for that. 

This show has taught me things about happiness, life and self-expression. My heart goes out to Lynn, to Ed, to Aaron, Phil, Christopher, Dan, Roy, Jill and Sam. I would also like to give my heart’s deepest thanks to @careeningle, to Brock, Casey, Bill, Adriel, Neil, Andrea and Anna for their hard work. A very special thanks to the incredible voice talents of Tara, Grey, Kate, Roger, Eric, Michael, Keith, and all of the other talented VAs who lent their voices to the show. Finally, a very, VERY special thanks to every single other person who was involved with Unikitty and made it as fantastic as it is. You each poured thousands of hours into something amazing.

I would also like to send my love to all my fellow Unikitty fans. Thank you guys as well! You all are so awesome, and you can reblog this post and explain why you love Unikitty if you want to. We’ve all gotta celebrate if we feel we should.

I wish you all bright futures and nothing but the best. Stay positive. 💖

All my love,

Jezabat 🦇

(Hailey W.)

[elytrafemme]

Hello good morning/evening mare! So I have a kinda funny story about cs and a past English class.

So like one and a half years ago when I took creative writing for english, around the midterm, our teacher gave us the rubric/info about our final for the course —a choice written project that could be like a short story, a chapter of a long story, an album etc. and I chose to do a small poetry book!

The reason she gave us that rubric so early was because we had a bit over a month to work on it on our time/in class when had free time. This was a big project so she expected us to have like good time management and space it out properly. Now. Did I have good time management? No. Not at all.

You see I actually ended up procrastinating the WHOLE poetry book until like the last 3 or 2 days before it was due. I had to write 12 poems I think so I just spent what felt like 48hr In front of my computer screen trying to wring out my brain for all the creative juices it could possibly have.

While I did pretty good job on the whole, there was just one poem slot that I couldn’t think of how to write. So I decided to turn to my personal written work to just plagiarize off of a poem I wrote before the course (technically this was not allowed but how is she gonna know??).

The poem i chose? It was a cs!ranboo poem lol.

Specifically it was one using a metaphor of cs!ranboo’s emotional turmoil (I’m so sorry there’s probably a better way to phrase that) and a sailor at sea during a bad storm. I was originally planning on finishing it and layering it on top of a fan art I drew of the poem and giving the finished piece to you as cs fanart. While I did finish the art and I actually sent it to you on an old ask, I never quite finished the poem.

So anyways to wrap up the story, I took that cs poem and quickly finished it in a way that made it more self contained than it being my fanfic of another Minecraft fanfic though I kept the title of the poem as a cs reference!

While my teacher didn’t grade each poem individually, I got full marks for the entire project so I guess she’s a secret cs fan now too lol.

I would quite like to share the finished poem with you, however, given the subject matter of cs!ranboo the poem could be kind of angsty? dreary? for lack of better word. So if you don’t want to read stuff like that it’s cool too

Ok that was kinda long, I hope uh that there’s a really nice flower or plant coming along your way today, bye!

hi anon, i hope you know that this ask brightened my day so much. it actually means the entire world to me that someone can find inspiration from my writing to create their own beautiful works; i would love to read this poem if you are willing to share it. thank you for telling me all of this and congratulations on getting full marks on the project!!! seriously such a lovely thing to hear as a fic writer.

[cazimagines]

Random Writing prompts

Today is my last day as the co-leader of the creative writing society at my college so I thought now that it's over I would share the prompts me and the other leader came up with for our sessions in case people need some prompt ideas to try and get out of that writers block. I also included music suggestions that we played to fit the themes. Enjoy!

Week 1: Lockdown

“Things weren’t supposed to end this way but how were we to know the true dangers of what was really outside” write a story around this starter

Create a poem on how you feel about your lockdown experience

Create a short story about someone in an apocalypse who has to stay inside

Write a letter to the government on what they could have done better about lockdown

Week 2: Christmas! (Music used: Our collection of Christmas songs)

Write about what a typical Christmas is like for you

Write a poem about your favourite things about Christmas

Write about the first Christmas you remember and the emotions you experienced

Create a short story about someone reminiscing over past Christmases as they take a long walk home through lots of snow- maybe they see children playing, or see a family eating through a window?

If you don’t celebrate Christmas, substitute for a holiday you celebrate such as Hanukkah or write about Winter in general.

Week 3: Fictional characters (Minecraft soundtrack)

Write a poem based on your favourite fictional character

Write a diary/short story based on meeting your favourite fictional character

Rewrite a scene from whatever your favourite fictional character is in and do it from their POV if it isn’t already in their POV

Week 4: Flowers (Animal crossing soundtrack)

You are a flower. What is your life like and what can you observe from your spot in the garden? Does anything interesting happen?

You are a gardener and like to arrange flowers in your spare time, write a monologue about why you chose this path in life.

Write a poem about a flower bed, describing different flowers in detail, and maybe they will have some visitors like bees or dragonflies?

Week 5: Poems (Stardew valley soundtrack)

Write a poem about whatever you choose

Write a poem about your favourite love troupe

Write a story about a poet trying to find inspiration

Week 6: Underwater (Mario kart underwater themes)

You are a scuba diver, what discoveries do you find underwater?

You are a scientist investigating the ocean in a submarine, when disaster strikes!

Write a poem or description about the deep sea

Week 6: Childhood memories (Undertale soundtrack)

Write a poem about your favourite childhood memory

Write a diary entry from your child self point of view of a day in your past

Write a short story about your childhood

Week 8- Valentine’s Day (The Sims 3 Hotdate music)

Write a poem in any style based on the feelings and perspective of one partner (or maybe it has both sides?)

Write a short story of a first date or of the 50th anniversary of a couple

Write from James Bond’s perspective on why he behaves the way he does with women and his experiences with your favourite Bond girls eg Vesper or Rosie Carver

Week 9: Horror (Doki Doki Literature club soundtrack)

Write a diary entry about how you’ve been attending your schools literature club but recently you have started noticing glitches and you begin to suspect that you are actually in a game

Write a short horror story about your biggest fear

Write a detailed account about the worst nightmare you’ve had

Week 10: Crime (Lego city undercover soundtrack)

Write a short story about a cat burglar. Are they a burglar of cats or a cat whose a burglar? ( cough atticus claw cough)

A poem from a murderer’s perspective detailing their most recent murder.

You’re a detective and a young woman has died from a seizure, but no known cause for it. Police label it as a natural death but you’re unconvinced.

No week 11

Week 12- Jungle (Jungle music)

Write a poem about cool gecko facts

You’re shipwrecked and have landed on an island with a big jungle and now it’s time to explore!

Write about the different perspectives of a sky animal and a land animal (eg parrot vs dung beetle)

Week 13 - Time Travel (Doctor Who soundtrack)

Write a diary entry from your favourite historical period

Write about a moment in time you would want to visit and why

Write about meeting your favourite historical idol

Write a ship fic between two unlikely historical figures, for example Emperor Nero x Alexander the Great

Week 14- April Fools Day! (Circus music that just plays the same song over and over again till it drove us insane)

Write a poem about the most epic prank you’ve pulled

Write a short story of a prank that goes horribly wrong!

Have your favourite good character create the most horrifically evil prank you can think of, or have your favourite villain do something anticlimactically mundane (bonus points for epic buildup)

Week 15 - Fantasy (Narnia Soundtrack)

Write about your favorite mythical creature, like a dragon or a elf

Write about an unexpected journey in a mythical land, like Narnia or The Hobbit

Write what your ideal world would be

Week 16 - Friendship (Harry Potter soundtrack)

Write your favorite memory spent with friends

Write a poem about your friends/what friendship means to you

Write a short story about saying goodbye to some life long friends

Week 17- Food (French Cafe music, please don’t use the one that just repeats the same two tracks)

A princess has asked you to create a ridiculously incomprehensible dish, and you must venture out to find the ingredients (or you’ll die or something)

You’re a chef and your worst enemy orders fugu, what do you do?

A last minute change means you’re now competing on hell’s kitchen, what happens?

[mj1343]

I dont know who to tell this to i almost sent part of this as an ask to a minecraft blog but held off because i didnt want to bug them but u h THE DOMINANT SPECIES OF MINECRAFT THERE ARE 4 OF THEM

NUMBER ONE IS YOU THE PLAYER OBVIOUSLY

The player is the newest to the minecraft world and yet at the same time the oldest. In terms of the world you create when you click “create world” you are the newest. Youre dropped in an unforgiving world which has already been inhabited by smart creatures and is filled with undead versions of them, and fellow players like yourself. (Zombies/Skeletons, Zombie Villagers, and Zombified Piglin). But the player is also the oldest. Theyve been there since the beginning. They control how the world is created. They chose when in the worlds evolution (updates lol) they exist in. They chose to add things to the worlds. (datapacks n mods) They are the newest to the WORLD they exist in, but they are the oldest in terms of the game they play. 

NUMBER 2 OH BOY ITS VILLAGERS AND PILLAGERS BABEY

Theyre the second newest. Theyve been around a long time, theyve already got towns built long before the player arrives. As time passes they got smarter, got better jobs, built better houses. Some broke off to travel the world peddling (overpriced) wares. Some left for more malicious reasons and built giant mansions and towers to patrol from. They speak a different but similar language to the player, and theyve learned a bit from spending so much time with them. The player is.. wierd, destroying and stealing but also creating and saving them. They trust them. They trade with them. Whatever the case, the villagers have been there before the players but not before..

NUMBER 3 PIGLINS YEEHAW

But wait mj the piglins were just added like 2 weeks ago how are they the 3rd newst/2nd oldest ILL TELL YOU HOW my headcanons involve me reading the wiki for. forever. just going through as much as i can. Before villagers and emeralds there were pigmen and rubies. They had the same functions as villagers and were kind of just a stand in. But oh ho ho i like to think they were canon!! Long before the player, when the villagers were just starting to build camps, these guys controlled the world and they were greedy. They mined all the rubies up, they loved treasure and shiny things, and they left their mark on the world. Sure, some of the sunken ships and ruined temples are from villagers or older creatures. But a lot of those came from the pigmens reign. But at some point their greed caught up to them and they got banished into the nether. The ones who left hiding would be zombified quickly from the unforgiving conditions. But, as weve seen, the nether and overworld have started to mix. Things have started to come alive in hell. And so the piglins make their return. They do not trust you. The villagers were only getting started when they left the overworld, who is this guy who thinks hes incharge? But their greed has not gone away. When you barter with a piglin, you are not doing it out of trust. You are doing it because you have gold they want and they know you can get more for them. Once the gold runs out, you dont need to stick around. These were the guys who built the nether fortresses, but i dont think they built the bastion remnants, only took control of them. Those were built buy..

NUMBER 4 ??? HERE WE GO

Number 4 is. the hardest to describe. The two voices in the end poems? The ancient debris and bastion remnants, giant destroyed structures? the massive fossils of creatures passed? Those are all remnants of the first powerful species in this world. They could be gods, or they could just be really good at what they did. Im not sure which old structures the pigmen built and what Number 4′s built, but i have a good feeling they made the strongholds because theyve been able to rip apart the void itself to return to the end. Maybe they were the ones who banished the pigmen to the nether, maybe they were gone before the pigmen came around. They definitely had control over all three dimensions. But theyve long since died out except for the two you hear talking about you. To be honest the game doesnt give much to help us figure out who these guys are, but anything ancient is probably from their era. 

BONUS BECAUSE I THOUGHT OF THIS WHILE WRITING THIS POST: END PEOPLE

The endermen are smart. They have their own language, very possibly as many people on tumblr have talked about, telepathically spoken through their eyes. Which is why when you look at them both you and them get a big screech of confusing sounds and they get angry. Theyre confused and frightened. However, i dont think the end cities came around from shulkers and endermen as we see them now. Those are old old old. Access only opened up to them recently, until now theyve been lost in the void. My idea is that the endermen and Number 4 are related, maybe the endermen are descendants of the once powerful species or maybe they lived along side them. Either way, the fact the end poem happens when you defeat the Dragon and ‘free the end’ according to the achievement means they did not like being under her control. Maybe she killed off all but the two ancients you hear in the poem and the endermen are under her thrall. Maybe the endermen have gotten warped into the creatures we see today by her. Where did she come from? I assume an egg like the one we win from defeating her, but where did that come from? Did the ancients have dragon eggs? Was she an experiment gone wrong? A force from the void the ancients had long since mastered and built their cities in, trying to regain control of the void? And if were talking about pigmen and rubies, we cant not mention the fact endermen used to have green eyes and pearls are green. Maybe the green eyes were from the era before the dragons influence corrupted the endermen and destroyed the ancient species.

THANKS FOR READING IF YOU READ THIS HUGE DUMP OF HEADCANONS I HAD TO GET IT OUT SOMEWHERE I LOVE YOU HAVE A GOOD DAY AND FEEL FREE TO SHARE YOUR OWN HEADCANONS!!!!

[pogchampito]

Creativity

Growing up, I was pigeonholed by teachers and family into the idea that I was simply good at math and science classes and I would never quite do as well in writing or English classes. My grades at the time reflected this, but I can’t help but think that this idea they enforced within me only further encouraged this result. Consequently, my entire personality shifted in this direction, I started to believe there should be no grey areas, there should only be absolute answers. I thought this because that is how it was in mathematics (and that was supposed to be a big part of who I was). Delving deeper into this archetype designed by my family and teachers, I started to care less about art, writing, and almost all other forms of self expression. As a result, I ended up sitting here today talking about creativity and what I think it means...

“You’re just not creative” is what I am often told by a close friend. Of course, it is far from the first time I’ve heard it, but this statement always has that same sharp undertone that pierces a bit deeper than the standard insult. How I see it, creativity is the ability to put your own ideas into reality and create something new. This can take place in any medium obviously. It could be art, writing, music, poetry, and in the case of these conversations with my friends... it was usually Minecraft! I think this is a pretty common understanding of what creativity is, but I think that these mediums where creativity can be expressed is actually much broader than we realize.

While I agree, that I struggle to draw a beautiful picture, write a song, draft a poem, or express my self in most of the fine arts. I don’t really find myself to be not creative? When I think of my most creative moments, I think of times where I came up with a clever solution for a computer science problem, or when I made a creative play in a video game. I think moments like these are prime forms of creativity. They demonstrate both my mastery of a subject as well as my mental ability to use different techniques to create something new. I can’t help but feel that this is the same creativity that inspires artists to draw a new painting. Sometimes, you just get an idea. I guess my disconnect from standard creativity is that I don’t tend to express myself as well through the traditional mediums, but I think that calling someone not creative is a stretch.

All of this is to say, if you or someone else seems to struggle creatively, then I would say they have just yet to find their medium. Personally, I am working to increase the mediums in which I can express myself because that is my New Years Resolution for 2021. I need to express myself more in both depth and breadth. 

Good Luck to everyone in 2021, let’s make it a great year.

[achieveandhunt]

live typing extra life 2019

warning: this a fucking LONG post. if you plan on reading it all, godspeed.

i typed all of this as it was happening on stream so this gets progressively less coherent as i grow more sleep deprived. prepare yourselves. i may or may not go off topic at some points

larry vehemently vomiting pure malic acid. we’re off to a great start

what the fuck the soggy ass popcorn in that ranch jesus christ

lindsay in the song from AH the musical. i love her so much

jeremy going YAAAAAAY after someone eats a cursed oreo

matt getting AGGRESSIVELY kissed by larry

“this kiss this kiss” before geoff and jack kiss

geoff “i’m from alabama” ramsey

THIS FUCKING RANCH SEGMENT HAS ME GAGGING

jeremy “the alcohol demon the whiskey goblin” dooley

alfredo “you wont believe what the white people did today” diaz

DUSK BOYS DUSK BOYS DUSK BOYS GET THAT DICK ESSENCE

wait why does it sound like wonderwall

they look like characters from the matrix

the speaking parts. make my teeth hurt

in conclusion: they weren’t kidding abt the tight pants 

okay everyone get ready for eric soundboard spamming YEAH BABEY

“hi i’m from broadcast and i don’t want to be here” they represent themselves well

also, let’s take a second to appreciate broadcast here!! they have a really tough job and don’t get a ton of credit. lots of love to all of broadcast!!! you guys are awesome

i am: foreseeing problems with this eric sound board

which one is eric?? will the real eric please stand up?? was the real eric the one we found along the way??

“i’m... just really worried that i won’t ever find love-” “i really don’t care”

WHY DO THEY HAVE THAT ON THE SOUNDBOARD (what does that apply to? whatever it is you’re thinking of, but mostly “daddy wants some”)

ooh someone’s about to get a fReE tongue piercing from a pineapple

god dammit i went to the bathroom for thirty seconds and now they’re eating chad’s chest hair

owie the shock collar and belly slap look painful, but drinking natty light from a shoe? that’s a true punishment

“and this roast was brought to you by meundies”

ah yes what better way is there to end a segment than people throwing up

“man action” oh no

THROBERT MULVEINY

K A R B is blind in T W O of her eyes

“my last name is cottagecheese”

I HAVE A PIECE OF METAL SHOVED UP MY A S S 

chris has somehow managed to lose 23 years of age and roughly 412 pounds

“just open throat like baby bird” who the fuck is writing this and why is it jeremy

jon. jon you’re breathing in adam’s ass fumes

a summary of this segment: ass and cottage cheese

BARB IS HERE I REPEAT BARB IS HERE

“to fitness” -starts choking-

final fitness coach: tad, here to workout your issues so they can beat you into submission

“will you buy my wet” well i don’t see that on the raffle items

we’re back folks & i’m loving this walk around segment

moonball wall and gavin&michael will soon be reunited can we get an F in the chat

jeremy getting a borderlands tattoo is very on brand

what’s extra life without a little satan

“starvation army, putting lead back into paint, increasing childhood obesity” people in chat: TAKE MY MONEY

chris “i’m doing a different hole” demarais

ah yes. the game we all play in hell: twister

nobody edit chris getting mustard shot down his throat. i’m scarred enough from the original clip

oh fuck. oh god. the mayo. oh god what the fuck is up with the misuse of condiments this year

this just in: a human soul costs roughly $12,700

D̷̯͑̆̈́͝Õ̸̲͎̥̬͈̬̙͕̲G̸̢̧̠͉͚̙̲̙̓̔̀̇S̷̥̀́͆̈́̇̀ ̶̣̞̗͚̬̭̖̦͇̈́̎̈́̿̓̈́͆̒̋D̷̙̟̩̫͉̺̐̊̚Ö̶̥́̋́̓ͅĜ̵̞̌͋̏̉̌̕͝͝S̵̤̹̣̫̮̻͛̍̑̕͝͝ ̷̧̨̞̙̥̟̜͍̉̍̑̏̇̀̾D̴̻̮̩̯͓͉̖͎̘͐̒͋̓̉͝ͅỎ̶̰͓̳̥͑̅͛͊̒͐͊͘̚G̵̩̻̦̥̠̃̔Ş̶̹͚̩̱͖̀͆͘ ̸̢̢͇̻͔̗̺̼͖̱̏̾̔̚D̴̨̨̫̙̃̾̋̾̆̓̓Ớ̷̡͓͎͊G̶̱̣̣̰̝̖̰̗̓͐̐̊͋̀͊̀̕͝Ş̷̩̺̬̖͙̺̟͗̈́͒͗̀̑́́̕͠ ̷̡͈̼̲͈̳̫̺̝̈́̋͌͗̒ͅD̸̨̬̞̪̗̘̄̑͆̿̈́͘͠͝O̸̡̡͇͕̻͎͍͉̅̌͗̄͌̑̉̔͂̎Ḡ̸͙̟̪̞̬̬͕͐̈̏S̶̝̪̼̮̠̜̭̳͖̘̑

urine: to help with aerodynamics

jon: maya, speak! maya: *the smallest arwoo*

today’s mvp: any dog. pick one. no matter which you pick, you’re right

how the fuck did blaine change back from satan so quickly

barb as a cat is... my new sleep paralysis demon

blaine: barbara speak! barbara: climate change is real

#dogsforkids

this just in: extra life killed my wifi

we’re back & kdin is in the business of killing people with spice. she is the spice queen

queue six thousand well-timed 1337 donations

HOLY SHIT THAT’S COLIN FROM WHOSE LINE IS IT ANYWAY

hmm “questionable liquids” is very... questionable

trevor: oh there’s four of them! we all get to join in the Fuckkkk

“what’s your favorite kind of candy” “any meat”

i like pickles and i would rather rip my eyebrows off than drink the juice so i feel for trevor

the only thing worse than drinking apple cider vinegar is shooting it out of your nose

“can you feel the love tonight” “i used to and that’s the problem”

“flubs every word man” damn, really missed the chance to say captain hair

jeremy not being able to intentionally flub his words is so fucking funny

OK BOOMER 

wow i can feel my blood pressure spike just watching these shots

Xavier Woods is here and he wants to know if it’s Christmas

miles doesn’t know what a question is

WHERE’S YOUR HAIR

oh no. oh no helping hands is next. everyone clear a splash zone

CHEF MIKE CHEF MIKE CHEF MIKE

miles bossing around chef mike is priceless

“you leave that fucking dough on the floor”

“you wanna slam your hands down on the table” *pizza sauce goes flying everywhere*

HOEDOWN HOEDOWN HOEDOWN jesus why do i keep doing that

“If Colin Mochrie is listening, I’ll see you here next year” OH FUCK YEAH

--- this is when i take a break so my soul can return to my body (aka i have work to turn in. college will never not be a pain in my ass) ---

oh god dammit i missed all of Always Open. fuck college who needs a medical degree

so... we have some very interesting things happening in family feud and i’m not sure if i like any of them

hmm. is now the time to get drunk

oily twist feels very... ominous

what do you mean you don’t remember gandalf having a taser in lord of the rings?

someone in the chat said “big stupid sleeping thing is what my parents called me in high school”

i think i’m blacking out what’s going on i don’t remember the past two hours

ah yes. voldemort and snape having a talk show together sounds exactly like something J.K. Rowling would make a spinoff book or show or porno of

can we just talk about how much shit chris has been doing this year? what a guy. what a dude

“coldy with voldy” actually means getting knocked the fuck out cold because you only got three hours of sleep last night and you don’t want to miss chef mike and lindsay cooking

this snape poem is summarized by one phrase: “that was terrible sit the fuck down” (sorry chris)

“let’s destroy a weasley” enter chad

fucking called it

“you smell poor” i need a caffeine drip

heh the wheel spins are at 69 heh nice

i’m a grown ass woman

welcome to a section called: we torture chad for your entertainment

“who wants us to kill weasley?” *massive cheers from the audience*

“wait weasley step away from the wideshot so i can masturbate to this later”

“i’m not gonna rub my eye mom”

oh they’re really gonna kill chad on stream huh

i felt that chest slap in my soul

i think i felt my own ribs crack

oh fucking

tumblr deleted my thoughts on the fanfic section

alright. fine. brief summary: my teeth are burning

my mom lindsay is on next and i’m so excited but i’m nearing the point of loopiness so things will go downhill dramatically from here

this is my fucking fourth extra life, you would think i’d be smart enough to sleep the night before

LINDSAY LINDSAY LINDSAY THAT’S MY MOM

JEREMY JEREMY JERE- wait a second... did jeremy get taller

oH CHEF MIKE CHEF MIKE CHEF MIKE

i hope Xavier comes back next year because he’s funny as fuck

m y a t t

oh god the mcdonald’s shade i’m rolling

lindsay “who’s the chef here” jones

chef mike mentioned mayo and i involuntarily gagged

chef mike clowning the big mac. i’m crying

he made the right choice with ryan bc i’ve seen his cooking stream(s) and it’s nothing if not great content

i heARD A MICHAEL JONES

“lindsay you haven’t done anything but warm up cookies so far” “yeah and?? you’re welcome”

you know that classic snack. slightly warm oreos

JEREMY THE LIQUOR GOBLIN DOOLEY IS BACK

oh god him screeching across set is making me cry laughing

why does it remind me of trevor’s voice cracks in the one minecraft ep where they’re singing the lion king

the biggest spoon for the smallest shot glass

i just realized we’re not even halfway through yet and i’m scared for the length of this list i’m gonna end up falling asleep involuntarily at some point

lindsay no your teeth are going to errode from that shot in your mouth

well timed leet donation #1829495

this gorden ramsey bit is so fucking good

jack: what do you think of the arugala? matt: i don’t even know what you said

iT’s NoT jUsT tWo CoOkIeS miCHeAL

jeremy and michael just chillin amidst the choas is exactly my demeanor at any party i’ve ever been to

lindsay scores: ryan = 7 because diet coke, matt = still eating lindsay’s meal so it’s a 10, xavier = also still eating it so it’s an 8. total: 25

“deep fry everything but a remote control”

chef mike scores: ryan = 9 for no death, matt = greens are present, words were said, score is 8. xavier = Gourmet Mcdonald’s, food is edible, score is 8. total: 25

oh fuck it’s a tie

now they fight to the death. death = doing as many shots as possible

i think we’re all going to need liver transplants after tonight

no jesus please don’t vomit oh goD oh fUc k please- oh thank god

okay i’m making a part two this is too much

[clowngremlin]

ok things have been hard lately with like being mentally ill and stressed out and upset by a lot of things, but i think its good to appreciate the little things that make it better, even if it’s just a little bit.....like how last week, something was fucking up with my card and i couldn’t buy a $1 mcdonalds coffee, so a lady bought me it and told me she loved my earrings........or like how people i love will send me a post they think i will like and it will make me smile.......or how people are starting to put up their christmas lights........or how my boyfriend gavin told me he thought about me while he was at work today and how last night i watched the kiss scooby doo movie with my boyfriend chuck.......or like how i have gotten a lot of packages in the mail because i bought shit when i was manic which isnt good in itself, but i get really happy and excited every time i get mail because i love getting mail!!!! or like how i saw my sister on sunday and it was really nice!!! or how there was a little girl at work who was buying a very small winnie the pooh plushie and she was so excited to give me the money to pay for it herself or the little boy who was VERY excited about his spiderman action figure and how i had a really good conversation with his dad about spiderman as i rung them through and opened the action figure for the kid so he could hold it!!!!! or how my dad is planning an honest to god birthday party for our dog for his 1st birthday!!!!!! or the quiet moment i had while riding on the bus this afternoon while running an errand to pick up my new furby at the post office and i thought about my boyfriends and love and felt very warm and i wrote a poem in my head about gavin!!!! or how i have been writing a lot of poetry lately, mostly about love!!!!! or how it’s getting colder which means i can wear my favorite jacket that is big and purple and very 80s!!!!! or how i have been eating a lot more lately because im trying to overcome my eating disorder!!!!!! or how im excited for my next semester’s classes!!!! or how my friend ripley has been doing livestreams of him playing minecraft and i like to watch him play and be in voice chat with everyone and we all joke around!!!!! or how it’s almost time to send out all my christmas presents i got for my friends that i need to send in the mail!!!! or like how the lady at the dollar store is always so happy to see me whenever i come in!!!!!!!! or how i officially own both of my dream garfields and my boyfriends and one of my boyfriend’s partners who are also my friends watched me unbox one of them and we had a fun time voice chatting afterwards!!!!

this is very long but things are hard right now but they won’t always be.......it’s nice to think of the little things that make life just a bit brighter, gentler and softer........

[caseymidkiff]

Micro Fiction!

Can you fit an entire story, including characters, setting, conflict, and plot into just 100 words? YWI students accepted the challenge! Read their stories below.

In the dungeons of the castle, Robin planned revenge.

He used to be an honorable knight but no one cared to remember, he thought. A traveling circus had arrived at their castle Ravenstone; a wizard went to him. “How would you like to know something?” Robin was intrigued. “Would you like more power?” Robin froze. His eyes stuck to the wizard and he was under the wizard’s control. He killed the king, and they put him in a dungeon. Under the power of the wizard he plotted his escape. But would he do once he escaped? That was a secret.

Aiden (Aiden invites anyone to expand this story if they would like!)

It was a cold, dark, January, and Lilith was lying on her twin bed listening to music feeling bored. After a few minutes she noticed that all the lights were out. She walked out of her room and no one was there. When she walked into the kitchen, Splash! Water was poured all over her and she tripped. It was a tripwire prank! Lights turned on, her brother stood over her pointing. Then, the front door creaked. They turned their heads and froze, it was mom. So, when she saw what had happened she grounded her brother for all eternity. 

Elizabeth

Once upon a time there was a chicken who was so smart they could do the rubix cube like dadgum Einstein. Eventually she became self aware and decided to destroy all humans and make chickens the supreme species. First she and the other chickens needed to escape from their pen so she built an explosive device out of birdseed and placed it near the bomb where she then laid a wick leading to the other side of the pen. All the chickens had only one match and one chance to start the wick.then in walked the farmer…

fin

Evren

I gazed at the Eiffel Tower. The architecture, the planks, the floors. Everything was just... perfect. Alas, it was only a painting. Just then, a voice came echoing from the parlor. “Lydia, wash the windows and then you’re dismissed for today.” I nodded and got my washcloth from the cupboard.

 Night fell, and as I walked back to the attic, I found a coin lying around. I tucked it away. Suddenly, my eyes lit up. I packed everything I owned, checked my pocket for the coin, and got on the bus. When I arrived, I saw it: the Eiffel Tower.

Varsha and Riya

It was a cold, clammy April first, and Sandra Brown sat up in her lavender bed sheets feeling miserable. She glanced through her window pane to find pouring rain. She heard a voice behind her call, “Hello.” It was a soft, little whisper that made chills go up her spine. She whirled around to see nothing but her yellow dog, Shelly. That dog could talk to her. Sandra pinched herself as the dog proclaimed, “This isn’t a joke.

Bang! A loud sound emitted from her younger brother’s room. “Gotcha!” he laughed. “April’s Fools, I hooked up a microbit to Shelly.”

Sarah Kate

Treehouse

I need a tree that’s big and strong. I need twenty pieces of wood. I need a swing strong and that will hold. The tree I need is twenty to forty feet. The wood needs to be smooth and flat. The ladder of the treehouse is long and flexible. I get all my supplies for thirty-five dollars and fifty-five cents. I build my treehouse on a tree about thirty feet. It takes two weeks, but when it’s done it’s worth the time. I bring food and games to the treehouse. My friends come for a sleepover. So much fun. Yay!

Jayden

Astronaut

I’m an astronaut. I went into the rocket ship two hours before blastoff. The other astronauts joined me in the rocket. A few minutes before blastoff, I strapped myself to a seat and got ready to leave Earth. The blastoff countdown began: “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, blastoff!” I felt a huge push as the rocket left Earth. After three days on the spaceship, we were very close to the moon. “Get ready for touchdown,” an astronaut said. I strapped myself into my seat again and prepared for touchdown. Five, four, three, two, one, touchdown!

Eric

King of the Chessboard

I’m the king and I control everything! One day, an enemy king attacked with his army! We were losing badly. Almost everybody immediately got captured, except for the knights and a few others. Our queen tried attacking the enemy king, but the knights chased her away. Then, came a surprise attack! I was attacked by the queen but one of the knights sacrificed himself for me and I narrowly escaped! The queen and remaining knight desperately tried attacking the king, but nothing worked. But then… I spotted a weakness! The queen and knight attacked and captured the enemy king. Checkmate!

Eric

Amy was bored in her house so she was reading some comics. She had gone to get water and there was her brother sneaking in her room, setting up a water bucket and a fake throw up under the comic. He set up a wire behind where Amy was sitting. When Amy came back she lifted the comic and saw it was a prank. She acted like she was scared but did not trip the wire. Her brother comes in thinking the prank worked but he trips over the wire himself and the waterfall on him. Reverse prank HA.

Akhil

It was a long night; some of us didn’t make it. When we woke up we were so weary to realize that the person that we slept next to had died. It didn’t make sense how such bad luck happened to me? I was just a young boy when it happened. I don’t remember much, but I do know my parents and everything I owned were taken away from me. I only joined the military to avenge my feelings, but my idea is starting to look like a total bust. I hope somebody will read this and will remember me.

Rahul

Helen was a very lazy squirrel. Helen would make other animals  help her like bring her food and blankets until... winter came around all the other animals had to gather wood and blankets and food. Helen would make the moose give her a blanket but he said “no i can’t”. Helen would call the wolves to bring her food. But they declined. She would plead to the termites to give her wood  “no way”. Because she was lazy she was very cold and did not eat during winter. Next year she worked  hard and was warm in winter with food.

Adrien

Jean was a bunny. He was very proud but not humble.

Jean would race other animals and would always win. 

One day a big contest was held. Only the fastest animals would race. Jean of course entered. As soon as he entered the other animals quit because Jean would brag and say he was the best when he won. As soon as he started making them a tiny shrew popped up from his hole and signed up. Jean burst into laughter and as the race started Jean burst ahead  and was almost at the finish line but he decided to take a nap he lay down and as he slept the shrew won the race. 

He sputtered and cursed and stomped but the race was won, Jen ran up to the mouse and tried to squish is but the animals held  him back.    

Adrien  

MISS CASEY OPENED THE DOOR OF HER NEW Y.W.I. STUDIO. Right when she saw me coming, she opened her red mouth, and I excitedly ran in the building! I joyfully said, “Miss Casey!!!” 

She said, “Hey, Aaron! I’m so glad to see you! Come look at my new studio!” 

The rooms were painted in different colors. There was a giant writing classroom, an art studio, a computer lab, a piano room, an auditorium, a dormitory, and an SAT testing area!

“I like this new studio, it’s the best one ever!” I said.

“Glad you do!” said Miss Casey.

Aaron

Minecraft poem

Once there was a minecrafter named Dave.  He was quite

brave.  He woke up in sand and started punching a 

tree with his invincible hand  then went mining with a  

glee to see lots of diamonds.  he went to the 

nether.  As he was never alone by the groan of

zombie Pigmen.  As he encountered a nether fortress.  Suddenly  a

portal appeared in the room.  As he saw it was 

tall.  and leaped inside to see the end.  He broke 

the end crystals , and slayed the dragon in a jiffy.

then grabbed the XP and got the egg to show.

Jasper

[millylotus]

Story Index Post

I'm going to be posting a bunch of stories right about now, and I want to have it all lined up so people can find them easier. Hope ya like 'em.

Poems

Sol Born of a Wish

The Nebula

The Coven in the Woods

The Rabbits are not what it seems to be

The Desperate Broken Prince

The Demon Heart [Talia Al Ghul]

The Sunspot Prince [I've always liked bringing up the fact that Duke Thomas is probably a minor god]

In Madness

I call for a sacrifice to be my savior: my he be swift and kind (We worked on Tanka poems in class today :D)

In Madness (Dionysus invites Ariadne into his world)

Princess Most Holy (Ariadne's life in one poem)

Little Brother (Ariadne mourns the Minotaur)

A Ring Lost In A Decade Is Still Lost (Ariadne misplaces the engagement Ring Dionysus gave her)

Parking Lots, Angry Birds, Forgotten Gods (A mortal approaches Ariadne at midnight in a Target parking lot)

Sherlock & Killer

Sherlock : Francesca "Frankie" Linly Bonet (Frankie's back story and the songs I used to make her)

Ghost Zone Lore

How Ghost Are Born/Spawned

How to care for Young Ghosts [Lair]

Danielle's Rebirth

Valerie Spots them

Ghost Classification

The GS Batfamily AUs

I have a google spreadsheet document that I keep all my AUs in for the batfamily.

BASE AU

Bat-Family Ages

Inheritance In The Bat-Family

Cullen Row / Mockingbird

New Baby Jitters

The Malones

Miscellaneous AUs

Madrigal Batfamily

Circus Robins

Birds Migrating East

This is a Justice League and Harry Potter, world mash crossover fic. Where every bat has some form of magic or another. And Tim, Steph, Duke, and Damien are sent to protect Harry in his fifth year. While Zatanna joins the Order. And Constantine infiltrates the Death Eaters.

Lore

Chapter I [May]

Chapter II [Four weeks later/July]

Chapter III [That Night/July]

Chapter IV [Three weeks later/June]

Chapter XI [Couple Minutes Before the Arrival of the Birds, and Batdad]

Chapter XII [In Number 12 Grimmauld Place]

Chapter XIII [Right when Dumbledore walked in]

Short Stories

Wilbur Confronts Sally (all I had to do was write a scene about a conflict for one of my classes and this is the angst I get) [Fanfiction]

Prompt: Five passengers are riding a train when something happens (It's a zombie apocalypse and someone's water broke)

The 8th and 9th wonders (Don't really know how to explain this one)

Cassandra Sanvanterules (DnD character I was thinking about using)

Saint Lucifer (I remember writing a lot of this down on paper but I don't feel like pulling out all my old journals)

Ender Bunn (One of the stories I finished for a Minecraft OC... I've changed them if your wondering)

Liminal Sanctuaire (A little story of puppy love that I had to make for school)

what a way to go. (A captive escapes their hell, but in the vast emptiness of space, they find no one) WARNINGS: TW SU!CIDE, TW SELF MUTILATION, TW SELF HARM, TW SELF CANNIBALISM

Chills (Just two love bros playfighting, and drinking beer)

But Never Enough (Abandoned Story Idea)

Boy Isn’t Right

Hello Lovely

But Never Enough

Unfinished Stories/Fanfiction

Moon Goddesses (Creation Myth)

A Kingdom Old and Forgotten (Was supposed to be a DSMP fanfic set in the modern world thousands of year after the DSMP fell, but then I got bored)

William's Family (In a Pirate AU, Wilbur's dad [Phil's brother] is lured over the side of the boat by a siren and dies. A couple years later the same siren Comes back to give Wilbur to Phil) [Fanfiction]

Esmaray's Wish (Pirate AU the siren who lured William of the edge has some thoughts of the night) [Fanfiction]

Jordan Needs to Move (In an apartment complex AU where all the MCYT families live together. Jordan moves away from his wife after divorce to Dream Family Apartments. (Not actually owned by Dream, but by his dad)) [Fanfiction]

I'm Not Gonna Be the Side-Character Anymore (A stereotypical Manhwa Harem goes wrong when one of the Harem boys defects and leaves)

The Animals Feed (Noble families are comprised of the Chinese zodiacs. And they all choose their heir, by making the twelve children (all of different zodiacs) fight to the death in different ways)

The Time of Fea (A story of two sisters who run away into the Fea populated woods)

OCs from a long ass time ago. That I honestly forgot existed.

Spirit of Bleak Winter & Knight of Shadows [DC x DP, Ship: Bruce/Danny - Frostbat] (Just a one-shot for a prompt I saw and loved)

[kayla-r13]

I was tagged by @theowlandthefinch (thank for the opportunity to annoy the shit outta everyone, i can’t w8) RULES: Tag 10 people you want to know better

Relationship status: Takennn~ by the super cute and fantastic @violet-my-ae 
Favorite colors: Anything that shows! I very much enjoy pastels but also vibrant colours sooo.. pretty much everything. Pets: Two puppos cx Last song I listened to: Polaroid by Imagine Dragons~ First fandom: I swear to fuck it had to be SkyDoesMinecraft tbh Hobbies: oh gosh; reading, writing, organizing, badminton, band, drama production (backstage technology crew) Favorite book: I do have a lot but there’s a few that have stuck with me for a very long time. One is called Wish, another few are part of a series called Kissed By An Angel, Hyperbole and a Half as well as This Book Loves You have comedic places in my heart.. 
Worst thing I’ve eaten: I’m literally such a picky eater that I don’t have any experiences of bad food.. yet. 
Favorite place: Libraries and book stores, or, in all honesty, my room. Not because I’m an introvert because I definitely am not, but because of the way I designed it and have it set up. Are you named after someone? Nope! 
When is the last time you cried? I’m actually not sure. I think 3 nights ago or so. 
Do you like your handwriting? I absolutely adore my handwriting to be honest, both cursive and printing. 
What is your favorite lunch meat? I don’t really bother with specifics 
Do you have kids? Absolutely not and I don’t think I want any 
If you were another person, would you be friends with you? Honestly, I think I would be to be completely fair. 
Do you use sarcasm? Of course not. 
Do you still have your tonsils? Yep! 
Would you bungee jump? Probably~ 
What is your favorite kind of cereal? Cheerios! 
Do you untie your shoes when you take them off? Nah 
Do you think you’re a strong person? Physically, nope. Linguistically, yes. Mentally.. eh, sometimes. 
What is your favorite ice cream flavor? Chocolate. 
What is the first thing you notice about people? Hair!! And then attitude. 
Red or pink? Piiiiiink~ 
What is the least favorite physical thing you like about yourself? Probably my legs, but I don’t focus on physical appearance often to be honest. 
What color pants and shoes are you wearing now? I am not currently wearing pants nor shoes 
What was the last thing you ate? Crazy Bread from Little Caesars! 
What are you listening to? Nothing at the moment, but lately, I’ve been listening to the Smoke and Mirrors album 
If you were a crayon, what color would you be? Green! Often thought of as one thing at first, but still has a lot of different shades, though that doesn’t mean the first impression was wrong! 
Favorite smell? Hmm.. I’m not actually sure. 
Who was the last person you spoke to on the phone? My mom! 
Favorite sport to watch? I don’t often watch them on TV but I do enjoy going to irl games for my friends sometimes! Badminton and volleyball are my favourites, I think. 
Hair color? A silvery blonde at the very top and then purple-pink! 
Eye color? Blueish-greenish-greyish~ 
Do you wear contacts? Nope, but I do wear glasses! 
Favorite food to eat? Snack foods! 
Scary movies or comedy? Comedy~ 
Last movie you watched? 21 Jump Street, but I didn’t finish it 👀 The last one I fully watched was Fantastic Beats and Where to Find Them! 
What color shirt are you watching? Red and black~ 
Summer or winter? Summerrrr! ☀️ 
Hugs or kisses? I’m perfectly fine with hugs or kisses on the cheek from anyone I’m friends with! 
What book are you currently reading? Catacomb! 
Who do you miss right now? Hannah and ASD 
What is on your mouse pad? Don’t have one! 
What is the last tv program you watched? Oh god.. I haven’t watched TV in forever. Probably Once Upon A Time? 
What is the best sound? Laughter! 
Rolling stones or the Beatles? I don’t have a preference 
What is the furthest you have ever traveled? British Columbia! 
Do you have a special talent? I’ve been told that I’m really good at writing 
Where were you born? Canada! 
People you expect to participate in the survey? Survey sounds so formal..

~~~~~~

11 Questions from Hailey!:

1. How long do you usually sleep? About 6-7 hours. 2. Favorite poem? I don’t have any particular favourites, I mostly enjoy short quotes that I find and song lyrics! 3. Favorite video game? Anything that can be played with friends; Mario Kart, Just Dance, Minecraft, Sims, etc! Slender The Arrival holds a place in my heart for some odd reason as well. 4. What’s something you pretend to be embarrassed about, but secretly love? Getting teased.. 5. Spoil the ending of your favorite book, but don’t say what the book is. The main character saves her best friend~! 6. What’s something you enjoy, but don’t have any good reason? Stuffed animals 👀 7. What’s something you hate, but don’t have any good reason? Basketball!! 8. What was the last thing that made you smile? oh goodness, there have been a lot of things today- uhm, the things that stand out to me the most are Violet’s drawing, Dark called me pet again, and the image of Chicaroomba sadly roaming the void.. 9. What was the last thing that made you cry? Missing someone. 10. What is your favorite dessert? Chocolate cake! 11. What is your favorite Youtube video? I currently can’t get over History of Japan tbh

~~~~~~

11 [Mildly Unusual] Questions from Meeee! 1. Do you prefer writing or reading?: 2. What’s your 16Personalities type?: 3. What is something you love about yourself? (You can’t say nothing): 4. Do you prefer cooking or ordering out?: 5. Are you more of a comics book person or an in depth reader?: 6. What is your favourite thing to drink?: 7. Are there any habits from your childhood that you still have?: 8. Favourite method of transportation?: 9. Yes or No?: 10. Would you change your name if you could? If so, to what? 11. Who are your absolute best friends?

~~~~~~

10 People to Tag [solely for the prospect of annoying them]~ (or less..) @apparentlyabear @hannienannah @violet-my-ae @ask-sadisticdark @sylveondreams @uncensoredcanadian @italianmarkiplier …aaaand anyone else who wants to bc I am Tired™

[succeedly]

23 GSuite Ideas to Excite Kids About Learning

Eric Curts on episode 214 [A special encore episode] of the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter

Eric Curts @ericcurts  teaches us twenty-three ways to use Gsuite tools in our classroom. With ideas for Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, and Drawings for all subjects and ages, you’ll want to scroll down and follow the links in our enhanced show notes.

Today’s episode is sponsored by JAM.com, the perfect last minute holiday gift for your kids or grandkids. The creative courses at Jam.com are project-based, creative and FUN. Use the code COOLCAT50 to get $50 off your course. And remember that you can sign up for a 14 day FREE trial of any course with your child aged 7-16. Drawing. Minecraft. Legos. And more!

Use the code COOLCAT50 for $50 off the cost of the course.

Listen Now

Listen to the show on iTunes or Stitcher

Stream by clicking here.

Transcript of Episode 214: 23 GSuite Ideas to Excite Your Students about Learning with Eric Curts

Download the transcript

VICKI:          It’s back to school and so many of us are getting ready to introduce the G-Suite of tools in the classroom for those of you who don’t know what that is. That’s all these Google tools. And Eric Curts @ericcurts from Control Alt Achieve   and co-leader of their higher Google Educators group has so many fantastic ideas. You’d definitely want to check the transcript and show notes for all of these ideas.

This blog post is being added to 100+ Great Google Classroom Resources for Educators. This resource has a curated list of Gsuite resources, books, and tips.

You’ll definitely want to go to Eric’s website Control Alt Achieve and his YouTube channel.

VICKI:                    So Eric, give us some cool ways that we can use G-Suite to start of the school year with a punch.

ERIC:               What I’m going to take a look at here as we run through these today are just some of the common Google tools that we tend to use but maybe look at them from a different angle and some fun ways they can be used. So why don’t we start off with Google Docs. http://ift.tt/2eKfGZe

Today, Eric goes through some engaging ideas for using 4 of the Gsuite apps:

Google Docs – http://www.http://ift.tt/2eK3OGQ

Google Slides – http://www.http://ift.tt/2gZkjzn

Google Sheets – http://www.http://ift.tt/2eK5Si7

Google Drawings – http://www.http://ift.tt/2gZkmv3

    ERIC:               Most people think of that as Google’s word processing program which obviously it is and that’s a fantastic way for students to write reports and wrote stories on all the normal things. But some fun twists that you can put on this, some folks don’t know that Google Docs support emojis. You can actually insert emojis right from the ‘insert special characters’ menu and it’s going to open up a lot of really fun activities for students.

Idea #1: Write Emoji Stories

Idea #2: Summarize Something You’ve Seen or Read Using Emojis

If you’re looking for a way to get them engaged and excited early on in the year, they can write emoji stories or they can summarize a story or a movie or something they’ve seen recently using emojis.

See: 5 Emoji Activities for Google Docs  where Eric describes how to do all of these emoji activities including the emoji math picture shown below.

Idea #3: Use Emojis to Explain Math Variables

ERIC: They can also incorporate this into math. Yes, I used to be a math teacher so I just have a soft spot for math.

[00:02:00]

Emojis can be a great way to replace variables to bring a better concrete understanding of what you’re doing when solving math problems. And then there’s a lot of other possible neat examples. And like you said in the show notes, there’d be links to all of my blog post that go into the specific details on those. But that’s a fun thing.

Emojis help variables come alive and make sense. See Eric’s blog post on emojis in Google docs to learn how to do this.

Idea #4: Black Out Poetry in Google Docs

ERIC: While still on the topic of docs another neat thing to do is to use the highlight tool but not for highlighting. Let’s turn it on its head and use it to black things out. In Google Docs you can use the highlighting tool to do blackout poetry where students start with some text and then remove all the words except what they want to leave for their found poem, you can also use the exact same tool to do summarization.

Idea #5: Article Summarization with Black Out in Google Docs

It’s a process called text reduction strategy which is typically done with a big black marker and an actual piece of paper or an article, but you can do it in Google Docs as well, you can take an article from one of the many excellent websites like DOGO News, throw that in there and have the students go through and remove everything that’s not critical so that they end up with their summarization of the article. It’s a great way to help move students toward those summarization skills.

Read More: Improve Reading Comprehension with Google Docs “Black Out”

Idea #6: Choose Your Own Adventure Stories

Beyond that, lots of other fun things you can do include creating choose your own adventure stories. Create one for students to work together in a group where they write a story and use hyperlinks inside of the doc to jump to different pages as they write their choose your own adventure stories.

Those are just a couple of Docs ideas.

Read More: Choose Your Own Adventure Stories with Google Docs

Idea #7: Teach Anchors and Hyperlinks

VICKI:          And plus, choose your own adventure, we give you the ability to teach about anchors and teach about hyperlinks. There are so many things you can do with these ideas. I love them, Eric.

A hyperlink links to another web page. (Just go to insert –> Hyperlink.) However, an anchor links within the document. This lets you skip down a long page. I do this an easy way in a long document by making headings. Then, insert a table of contents. The headings automatically become anchors. You can also insert anchors manually.  they are a big time saver for students and teaches on long documents, for example, if you’re writing a book.

ERIC:           Absolutely.

VICKI:          Okay, what’s next?

ERIC:            Sure. Let’s jump over to Google Slides. http://ift.tt/2gZkhrf

A lot of times we think of Google slides as the presentation tool, which of course it is, and there’s nothing wrong with that, please don’t get me wrong. It’s fantastic for kids to just do a presentation. Stand up in front of the class, do a book talk or talk about their explorer or their animal. But there’s a lot of other fun things you can do with slides.

Idea #8: Comic Strips with Google Slides

[00:04:00]

ERIC: One way to do is to create comic strips with Google Slides.   And what you can do is think of each slide as a different panel of the comic strip. And students could then insert clip art and animations and speech bubbles. And when they then published that to the web you’ve got an online animated comic strip, whether it’s to explain a vocab term or science concept or retell part of a story.

Read more: Creative Slide Uses for Students

Idea #9: Create eBooks or Storybooks with Google Slides

In the same vein you can create eBooks or storybooks with Google Slides   where each slide is a page of the eBook and you are allowed to change the page dimensions, it doesn’t have to be the normal landscape. You can make it portrait, you can make a square to make it whatever size book you want.

Read: Google Slides for Student Created Storybooks

Idea #10: Create Stop Motion Animations in Google Slides

Other fun things include stop motion animation. This is a fun trick you can do with slides where basically you just speed up the slide show by hacking the URL just a little bit on the presentation so that you get each slide going by maybe a quarter of a second and you can either take actual photographs using the built-in webcam of your Chromebook or whatever device you have or you can just add images and move them around from one slide to the other.

Read: Stop Motion Animation with Google Slides

Idea #11: Dr. Seus Manipulative Slide Show

But, again, it’s another great creative way for kids to tell stories or express their understanding. Beyond that, some other fun things you can do especially with the little ones – I do have a bunch of manipulative type slide shows. We’ve got a one-fish, two-fish, red-fish, blue-fish sorting activity,   that’s great when you’re doing Dr. Seuss stuff.

Read: “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish” Sorting with Google Slides

Idea #12 Build a Snowman Creation and Writing Activity with Google Slides

I’ve also got a Build a snowman one.    You may want to hang off on that a little bit further into the winter month, there’s great template that allows students to build their own snowman with a wide collection of eyes and noses and mouths and ears and hats and all sorts of other things. And so they copy and paste those onto their snowman and then there’s a box where they write a little story about what their snowman has done that day or what he’s going to be going off to do.

So lots of real fun things that you could do with slides besides just a traditional presentation.

Read: Build a Snowman with Google Slides

Idea #13: Pixel Art in Google Sheets

VICKI:          Now, all these hacks, you have cute little videos and tutorials and things to help us. So we’re just giving you teachers an overview and then you could pick what you want. So do we have time for another?

[00:06:00]

ERIC:                Sure. Google Sheets  is another fun one. We usually think of Google Sheets as something for math or for doing charts and graphs and it certainly is. Don’t forget that it’s always great for that. But it’s also a great way to do things like pixel art.   I have a template that you can use where you simply put in some letters there and it creates a colored in box for each one of those and you can make pixel art.

Read: Pixel Art Activities for Any Subject with Google Sheets

Idea #14: Random Writing Prompt Generator with Google Sheets

ERIC: Or how about language art with Google Sheets? Absolutely. Sheets are great for randomization.

So I’ve got two templates for random writing prompt generators.  One gives works being randomly put together…

Read: Random Writing Prompt Generator with Google Sheets

Idea #15: Random Emoji Writing Prompt Generator

ERIC:  …another one is random emojis being put together.   And both places, it allows you to generate a whole bunch of random writing prompts that will be great for journal entries, short stories or poems.

Read: Emoji Writing Prompt Generator with Google Sheets

Idea #16: Create Graphic Organizers with Google Drawings

ERIC: Beyond that, if we can still squeeze something in I’ll throw in Google Drawings. http://ift.tt/2gZl5MJ

One of my favorites, I think it’s overlooked a lot of times because it’s kind of hidden down in the menus there but Google Drawings is a great way to do loads of things including graphic organizers…

Read: Language Arts Graphic Organizers with Google Drawings

Idea #17: Create Interactive Posters with Google Drawings (These are like Thinglink)

ERIC: …interactive images which is like ThingLink, people are familiar with that.  You can use Google Drawings to make images and put hyperlinks on that branch out to videos and websites and additional information.

Read: Googlink: Creating Interactive Posters with Google Drawings

Idea #18: Magnetic “Drag and Drop” Poetry

ERIC: Google drawings is a great way for creativity with magnetic poetry, drag and drop poetry.   It’s also fantastic for math.

Read: Eric has two articles on magnetic poetry

Idea #19: Use Manipulatives and Tangrams in Google Drawings

ERIC: A lot of great manipulatives and interactives you can do such as teaching congruent figures and similar figures,  partitioning shapes…

Read: Pattern Block Templates and Activities with Google Drawings

Idea #20: Download Templates to Teach Shapes and Algebra So You Don’t Have to Create Them Yourself

ERIC: we’ve got algebra tile, pattern blocks, lots and lots of templates that I’ve created that you can just hit the ground running with those.

Read: 11 Ways to Teach Math with Google Drawings

Idea #21: Create Greeting Cards Using Google Drawings

ERIC: But Google Drawing also services well as a desktop publishing tool because it really isn’t something built into Google Suite that quite does what Microsoft publisher does. And so Drawings is a nice stand in for that for things like creating greeting cards, I’ve got a couple of templates for that…

Read: How Your Students Can Use Google Drawings to Make Greeting Cards

Idea #22: Make Motivational Posters in Google Drawings

ERIC: as well as making educational, motivational posters.  We’re used to those big black posters with the big picture and word at the bottom with a neat saying. Those can be done for actual motivation topics or you can pick a vocab term of the week and then add an appropriate image to go with it and a definition in your own terms.

Read: Have Students Create Educational “Motivational Posters” with Google Drawings

Idea #23: Explore Templates on Eric’ Site

[00:08:00]

ERIC:                    And all of those again, those templates are all available on the control of the ControlAltAchieve.com website.

Read: Here is an index of templates on Eric’s site. What a fantastic resource!

VICKI:          Teachers, I know your mind is blown but here’s the thing, you’ve all got great ideas, whether it’s emojis for variables in algebra there’s so many ideas. So one of the greatest things to do with kids is to show them something they’ve never seen before. And the best time to do that is in the first week or two of school. Blow their minds.

Follow the links in the show notes and I love Eric website particular because he shows us how to do stuff but also all the free templates. I have been tweeting out and sending out stuff of his all day, the day we’re taping here just because I love it. It’s great resource for G-Suite. And good luck with back to school. And get in there and use these tools and have some fun.

Thank You, Staples, for Sponsoring Episode 112 of the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast!

Staples is my go-to back to school shopping source. Check out http://ift.tt/2vQXj8m for my ten ways to tackle back to school like a pro. And remember to sign up for Staple’s Teacher Rewards for free shipping orders over $14.99 and 5% back. Staple has everything we need in stock all season long and ready to go for school. Go to http://ift.tt/2bpV9ah for more information and great deals. Good luck with back to school

Thank you for listening to the Ten-minute Teacher Podcast. You can download the show notes and see the archive at http://ift.tt/2quX4Nu. Never stop learning.

[End of Audio 0:09:43]

[Transcription created by tranzify.com. Some additional editing has been done to add grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors. Every attempt has been made to correct spelling. For permissions, please email lisa@coolcatteacher.com]

Bio as Submitted

Eric has been in education for 25 years, and is currently serving as a Technology Integration Specialist for the Stark Portage Area Computer Consortium in Canton, Ohio where he oversees Google Apps for Education implementation, training, and support, as well as online learning and other technology integration initiatives.

Eric is an authorized Google Education Trainer and a Google Certified Innovator and provides Google Apps training to schools, organizations, and conferences throughout Ohio and across the country. He is a co-leader of the Ohio Google Educator Group (GEG) at tiny.cc/geg-ohio and runs the award-winning blog http://ift.tt/1W5EJjQ where all of his Google Apps and edtech resources can be found. Eric is married with four children.

  Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a “sponsored podcast episode.” The company who sponsored it compensated me via a cash payment, gift, or something else of value to include a reference to their product. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.

The post 23 GSuite Ideas to Excite Kids About Learning appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

23 GSuite Ideas to Excite Kids About Learning published first on http://ift.tt/2jn9f0m

[strivesy]

23 GSuite Ideas to Excite Kids About Learning

Eric Curts on episode 214 [A special encore episode] of the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter

Eric Curts @ericcurts  teaches us twenty-three ways to use Gsuite tools in our classroom. With ideas for Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, and Drawings for all subjects and ages, you’ll want to scroll down and follow the links in our enhanced show notes.

Today’s episode is sponsored by JAM.com, the perfect last minute holiday gift for your kids or grandkids. The creative courses at Jam.com are project-based, creative and FUN. Use the code COOLCAT50 to get $50 off your course. And remember that you can sign up for a 14 day FREE trial of any course with your child aged 7-16. Drawing. Minecraft. Legos. And more!

Use the code COOLCAT50 for $50 off the cost of the course.

Listen Now

Listen to the show on iTunes or Stitcher

Stream by clicking here.

Transcript of Episode 214: 23 GSuite Ideas to Excite Your Students about Learning with Eric Curts

Download the transcript

VICKI:          It’s back to school and so many of us are getting ready to introduce the G-Suite of tools in the classroom for those of you who don’t know what that is. That’s all these Google tools. And Eric Curts @ericcurts from Control Alt Achieve   and co-leader of their higher Google Educators group has so many fantastic ideas. You’d definitely want to check the transcript and show notes for all of these ideas.

This blog post is being added to 100+ Great Google Classroom Resources for Educators. This resource has a curated list of Gsuite resources, books, and tips.

You’ll definitely want to go to Eric’s website Control Alt Achieve and his YouTube channel.

VICKI:                    So Eric, give us some cool ways that we can use G-Suite to start of the school year with a punch.

ERIC:               What I’m going to take a look at here as we run through these today are just some of the common Google tools that we tend to use but maybe look at them from a different angle and some fun ways they can be used. So why don’t we start off with Google Docs. http://ift.tt/2eKfGZe

Today, Eric goes through some engaging ideas for using 4 of the Gsuite apps:

Google Docs – http://www.http://ift.tt/2eK3OGQ

Google Slides – http://www.http://ift.tt/2gZkjzn

Google Sheets – http://www.http://ift.tt/2eK5Si7

Google Drawings – http://www.http://ift.tt/2gZkmv3

    ERIC:               Most people think of that as Google’s word processing program which obviously it is and that’s a fantastic way for students to write reports and wrote stories on all the normal things. But some fun twists that you can put on this, some folks don’t know that Google Docs support emojis. You can actually insert emojis right from the ‘insert special characters’ menu and it’s going to open up a lot of really fun activities for students.

Idea #1: Write Emoji Stories

Idea #2: Summarize Something You’ve Seen or Read Using Emojis

If you’re looking for a way to get them engaged and excited early on in the year, they can write emoji stories or they can summarize a story or a movie or something they’ve seen recently using emojis.

See: 5 Emoji Activities for Google Docs  where Eric describes how to do all of these emoji activities including the emoji math picture shown below.

Idea #3: Use Emojis to Explain Math Variables

ERIC: They can also incorporate this into math. Yes, I used to be a math teacher so I just have a soft spot for math.

[00:02:00]

Emojis can be a great way to replace variables to bring a better concrete understanding of what you’re doing when solving math problems. And then there’s a lot of other possible neat examples. And like you said in the show notes, there’d be links to all of my blog post that go into the specific details on those. But that’s a fun thing.

Emojis help variables come alive and make sense. See Eric’s blog post on emojis in Google docs to learn how to do this.

Idea #4: Black Out Poetry in Google Docs

ERIC: While still on the topic of docs another neat thing to do is to use the highlight tool but not for highlighting. Let’s turn it on its head and use it to black things out. In Google Docs you can use the highlighting tool to do blackout poetry where students start with some text and then remove all the words except what they want to leave for their found poem, you can also use the exact same tool to do summarization.

Idea #5: Article Summarization with Black Out in Google Docs

It’s a process called text reduction strategy which is typically done with a big black marker and an actual piece of paper or an article, but you can do it in Google Docs as well, you can take an article from one of the many excellent websites like DOGO News, throw that in there and have the students go through and remove everything that’s not critical so that they end up with their summarization of the article. It’s a great way to help move students toward those summarization skills.

Read More: Improve Reading Comprehension with Google Docs “Black Out”

Idea #6: Choose Your Own Adventure Stories

Beyond that, lots of other fun things you can do include creating choose your own adventure stories. Create one for students to work together in a group where they write a story and use hyperlinks inside of the doc to jump to different pages as they write their choose your own adventure stories.

Those are just a couple of Docs ideas.

Read More: Choose Your Own Adventure Stories with Google Docs

Idea #7: Teach Anchors and Hyperlinks

VICKI:          And plus, choose your own adventure, we give you the ability to teach about anchors and teach about hyperlinks. There are so many things you can do with these ideas. I love them, Eric.

A hyperlink links to another web page. (Just go to insert –> Hyperlink.) However, an anchor links within the document. This lets you skip down a long page. I do this an easy way in a long document by making headings. Then, insert a table of contents. The headings automatically become anchors. You can also insert anchors manually.  they are a big time saver for students and teaches on long documents, for example, if you’re writing a book.

ERIC:           Absolutely.

VICKI:          Okay, what’s next?

ERIC:            Sure. Let’s jump over to Google Slides. http://ift.tt/2gZkhrf

A lot of times we think of Google slides as the presentation tool, which of course it is, and there’s nothing wrong with that, please don’t get me wrong. It’s fantastic for kids to just do a presentation. Stand up in front of the class, do a book talk or talk about their explorer or their animal. But there’s a lot of other fun things you can do with slides.

Idea #8: Comic Strips with Google Slides

[00:04:00]

ERIC: One way to do is to create comic strips with Google Slides.   And what you can do is think of each slide as a different panel of the comic strip. And students could then insert clip art and animations and speech bubbles. And when they then published that to the web you’ve got an online animated comic strip, whether it’s to explain a vocab term or science concept or retell part of a story.

Read more: Creative Slide Uses for Students

Idea #9: Create eBooks or Storybooks with Google Slides

In the same vein you can create eBooks or storybooks with Google Slides   where each slide is a page of the eBook and you are allowed to change the page dimensions, it doesn’t have to be the normal landscape. You can make it portrait, you can make a square to make it whatever size book you want.

Read: Google Slides for Student Created Storybooks

Idea #10: Create Stop Motion Animations in Google Slides

Other fun things include stop motion animation. This is a fun trick you can do with slides where basically you just speed up the slide show by hacking the URL just a little bit on the presentation so that you get each slide going by maybe a quarter of a second and you can either take actual photographs using the built-in webcam of your Chromebook or whatever device you have or you can just add images and move them around from one slide to the other.

Read: Stop Motion Animation with Google Slides

Idea #11: Dr. Seus Manipulative Slide Show

But, again, it’s another great creative way for kids to tell stories or express their understanding. Beyond that, some other fun things you can do especially with the little ones – I do have a bunch of manipulative type slide shows. We’ve got a one-fish, two-fish, red-fish, blue-fish sorting activity,   that’s great when you’re doing Dr. Seuss stuff.

Read: “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish” Sorting with Google Slides

Idea #12 Build a Snowman Creation and Writing Activity with Google Slides

I’ve also got a Build a snowman one.    You may want to hang off on that a little bit further into the winter month, there’s great template that allows students to build their own snowman with a wide collection of eyes and noses and mouths and ears and hats and all sorts of other things. And so they copy and paste those onto their snowman and then there’s a box where they write a little story about what their snowman has done that day or what he’s going to be going off to do.

So lots of real fun things that you could do with slides besides just a traditional presentation.

Read: Build a Snowman with Google Slides

Idea #13: Pixel Art in Google Sheets

VICKI:          Now, all these hacks, you have cute little videos and tutorials and things to help us. So we’re just giving you teachers an overview and then you could pick what you want. So do we have time for another?

[00:06:00]

ERIC:                Sure. Google Sheets  is another fun one. We usually think of Google Sheets as something for math or for doing charts and graphs and it certainly is. Don’t forget that it’s always great for that. But it’s also a great way to do things like pixel art.   I have a template that you can use where you simply put in some letters there and it creates a colored in box for each one of those and you can make pixel art.

Read: Pixel Art Activities for Any Subject with Google Sheets

Idea #14: Random Writing Prompt Generator with Google Sheets

ERIC: Or how about language art with Google Sheets? Absolutely. Sheets are great for randomization.

So I’ve got two templates for random writing prompt generators.  One gives works being randomly put together…

Read: Random Writing Prompt Generator with Google Sheets

Idea #15: Random Emoji Writing Prompt Generator

ERIC:  …another one is random emojis being put together.   And both places, it allows you to generate a whole bunch of random writing prompts that will be great for journal entries, short stories or poems.

Read: Emoji Writing Prompt Generator with Google Sheets

Idea #16: Create Graphic Organizers with Google Drawings

ERIC: Beyond that, if we can still squeeze something in I’ll throw in Google Drawings. http://ift.tt/2gZl5MJ

One of my favorites, I think it’s overlooked a lot of times because it’s kind of hidden down in the menus there but Google Drawings is a great way to do loads of things including graphic organizers…

Read: Language Arts Graphic Organizers with Google Drawings

Idea #17: Create Interactive Posters with Google Drawings (These are like Thinglink)

ERIC: …interactive images which is like ThingLink, people are familiar with that.  You can use Google Drawings to make images and put hyperlinks on that branch out to videos and websites and additional information.

Read: Googlink: Creating Interactive Posters with Google Drawings

Idea #18: Magnetic “Drag and Drop” Poetry

ERIC: Google drawings is a great way for creativity with magnetic poetry, drag and drop poetry.   It’s also fantastic for math.

Read: Eric has two articles on magnetic poetry

Idea #19: Use Manipulatives and Tangrams in Google Drawings

ERIC: A lot of great manipulatives and interactives you can do such as teaching congruent figures and similar figures,  partitioning shapes…

Read: Pattern Block Templates and Activities with Google Drawings

Idea #20: Download Templates to Teach Shapes and Algebra So You Don’t Have to Create Them Yourself

ERIC: we’ve got algebra tile, pattern blocks, lots and lots of templates that I’ve created that you can just hit the ground running with those.

Read: 11 Ways to Teach Math with Google Drawings

Idea #21: Create Greeting Cards Using Google Drawings

ERIC: But Google Drawing also services well as a desktop publishing tool because it really isn’t something built into Google Suite that quite does what Microsoft publisher does. And so Drawings is a nice stand in for that for things like creating greeting cards, I’ve got a couple of templates for that…

Read: How Your Students Can Use Google Drawings to Make Greeting Cards

Idea #22: Make Motivational Posters in Google Drawings

ERIC: as well as making educational, motivational posters.  We’re used to those big black posters with the big picture and word at the bottom with a neat saying. Those can be done for actual motivation topics or you can pick a vocab term of the week and then add an appropriate image to go with it and a definition in your own terms.

Read: Have Students Create Educational “Motivational Posters” with Google Drawings

Idea #23: Explore Templates on Eric’ Site

[00:08:00]

ERIC:                    And all of those again, those templates are all available on the control of the ControlAltAchieve.com website.

Read: Here is an index of templates on Eric’s site. What a fantastic resource!

VICKI:          Teachers, I know your mind is blown but here’s the thing, you’ve all got great ideas, whether it’s emojis for variables in algebra there’s so many ideas. So one of the greatest things to do with kids is to show them something they’ve never seen before. And the best time to do that is in the first week or two of school. Blow their minds.

Follow the links in the show notes and I love Eric website particular because he shows us how to do stuff but also all the free templates. I have been tweeting out and sending out stuff of his all day, the day we’re taping here just because I love it. It’s great resource for G-Suite. And good luck with back to school. And get in there and use these tools and have some fun.

Thank You, Staples, for Sponsoring Episode 112 of the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast!

Staples is my go-to back to school shopping source. Check out http://ift.tt/2vQXj8m for my ten ways to tackle back to school like a pro. And remember to sign up for Staple’s Teacher Rewards for free shipping orders over $14.99 and 5% back. Staple has everything we need in stock all season long and ready to go for school. Go to http://ift.tt/2bpV9ah for more information and great deals. Good luck with back to school

Thank you for listening to the Ten-minute Teacher Podcast. You can download the show notes and see the archive at http://ift.tt/2quX4Nu. Never stop learning.

[End of Audio 0:09:43]

[Transcription created by tranzify.com. Some additional editing has been done to add grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors. Every attempt has been made to correct spelling. For permissions, please email lisa@coolcatteacher.com]

Bio as Submitted

Eric has been in education for 25 years, and is currently serving as a Technology Integration Specialist for the Stark Portage Area Computer Consortium in Canton, Ohio where he oversees Google Apps for Education implementation, training, and support, as well as online learning and other technology integration initiatives.

Eric is an authorized Google Education Trainer and a Google Certified Innovator and provides Google Apps training to schools, organizations, and conferences throughout Ohio and across the country. He is a co-leader of the Ohio Google Educator Group (GEG) at tiny.cc/geg-ohio and runs the award-winning blog http://ift.tt/1W5EJjQ where all of his Google Apps and edtech resources can be found. Eric is married with four children.

  Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a “sponsored podcast episode.” The company who sponsored it compensated me via a cash payment, gift, or something else of value to include a reference to their product. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.

The post 23 GSuite Ideas to Excite Kids About Learning appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

23 GSuite Ideas to Excite Kids About Learning published first on http://ift.tt/2yTzsdq

[growthvue]

23 GSuite Ideas to Excite Kids About Learning

Eric Curts on episode 214 [A special encore episode] of the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter

Eric Curts @ericcurts  teaches us twenty-three ways to use Gsuite tools in our classroom. With ideas for Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, and Drawings for all subjects and ages, you’ll want to scroll down and follow the links in our enhanced show notes.

Today’s episode is sponsored by JAM.com, the perfect last minute holiday gift for your kids or grandkids. The creative courses at Jam.com are project-based, creative and FUN. Use the code COOLCAT50 to get $50 off your course. And remember that you can sign up for a 14 day FREE trial of any course with your child aged 7-16. Drawing. Minecraft. Legos. And more!

Use the code COOLCAT50 for $50 off the cost of the course.

Listen Now

Listen to the show on iTunes or Stitcher

Stream by clicking here.

Transcript of Episode 214: 23 GSuite Ideas to Excite Your Students about Learning with Eric Curts

Download the transcript

VICKI:          It’s back to school and so many of us are getting ready to introduce the G-Suite of tools in the classroom for those of you who don’t know what that is. That’s all these Google tools. And Eric Curts @ericcurts from Control Alt Achieve   and co-leader of their higher Google Educators group has so many fantastic ideas. You’d definitely want to check the transcript and show notes for all of these ideas.

This blog post is being added to 100+ Great Google Classroom Resources for Educators. This resource has a curated list of Gsuite resources, books, and tips.

You’ll definitely want to go to Eric’s website Control Alt Achieve and his YouTube channel.

VICKI:                    So Eric, give us some cool ways that we can use G-Suite to start of the school year with a punch.

ERIC:               What I’m going to take a look at here as we run through these today are just some of the common Google tools that we tend to use but maybe look at them from a different angle and some fun ways they can be used. So why don’t we start off with Google Docs. http://ift.tt/2eKfGZe

Today, Eric goes through some engaging ideas for using 4 of the Gsuite apps:

Google Docs – http://www.http://ift.tt/2eK3OGQ

Google Slides – http://www.http://ift.tt/2gZkjzn

Google Sheets – http://www.http://ift.tt/2eK5Si7

Google Drawings – http://www.http://ift.tt/2gZkmv3

    ERIC:               Most people think of that as Google’s word processing program which obviously it is and that’s a fantastic way for students to write reports and wrote stories on all the normal things. But some fun twists that you can put on this, some folks don’t know that Google Docs support emojis. You can actually insert emojis right from the ‘insert special characters’ menu and it’s going to open up a lot of really fun activities for students.

Idea #1: Write Emoji Stories

Idea #2: Summarize Something You’ve Seen or Read Using Emojis

If you’re looking for a way to get them engaged and excited early on in the year, they can write emoji stories or they can summarize a story or a movie or something they’ve seen recently using emojis.

See: 5 Emoji Activities for Google Docs  where Eric describes how to do all of these emoji activities including the emoji math picture shown below.

Idea #3: Use Emojis to Explain Math Variables

ERIC: They can also incorporate this into math. Yes, I used to be a math teacher so I just have a soft spot for math.

[00:02:00]

Emojis can be a great way to replace variables to bring a better concrete understanding of what you’re doing when solving math problems. And then there’s a lot of other possible neat examples. And like you said in the show notes, there’d be links to all of my blog post that go into the specific details on those. But that’s a fun thing.

Emojis help variables come alive and make sense. See Eric’s blog post on emojis in Google docs to learn how to do this.

Idea #4: Black Out Poetry in Google Docs

ERIC: While still on the topic of docs another neat thing to do is to use the highlight tool but not for highlighting. Let’s turn it on its head and use it to black things out. In Google Docs you can use the highlighting tool to do blackout poetry where students start with some text and then remove all the words except what they want to leave for their found poem, you can also use the exact same tool to do summarization.

Idea #5: Article Summarization with Black Out in Google Docs

It’s a process called text reduction strategy which is typically done with a big black marker and an actual piece of paper or an article, but you can do it in Google Docs as well, you can take an article from one of the many excellent websites like DOGO News, throw that in there and have the students go through and remove everything that’s not critical so that they end up with their summarization of the article. It’s a great way to help move students toward those summarization skills.

Read More: Improve Reading Comprehension with Google Docs “Black Out”

Idea #6: Choose Your Own Adventure Stories

Beyond that, lots of other fun things you can do include creating choose your own adventure stories. Create one for students to work together in a group where they write a story and use hyperlinks inside of the doc to jump to different pages as they write their choose your own adventure stories.

Those are just a couple of Docs ideas.

Read More: Choose Your Own Adventure Stories with Google Docs

Idea #7: Teach Anchors and Hyperlinks

VICKI:          And plus, choose your own adventure, we give you the ability to teach about anchors and teach about hyperlinks. There are so many things you can do with these ideas. I love them, Eric.

A hyperlink links to another web page. (Just go to insert –> Hyperlink.) However, an anchor links within the document. This lets you skip down a long page. I do this an easy way in a long document by making headings. Then, insert a table of contents. The headings automatically become anchors. You can also insert anchors manually.  they are a big time saver for students and teaches on long documents, for example, if you’re writing a book.

ERIC:           Absolutely.

VICKI:          Okay, what’s next?

ERIC:            Sure. Let’s jump over to Google Slides. http://ift.tt/2gZkhrf

A lot of times we think of Google slides as the presentation tool, which of course it is, and there’s nothing wrong with that, please don’t get me wrong. It’s fantastic for kids to just do a presentation. Stand up in front of the class, do a book talk or talk about their explorer or their animal. But there’s a lot of other fun things you can do with slides.

Idea #8: Comic Strips with Google Slides

[00:04:00]

ERIC: One way to do is to create comic strips with Google Slides.   And what you can do is think of each slide as a different panel of the comic strip. And students could then insert clip art and animations and speech bubbles. And when they then published that to the web you’ve got an online animated comic strip, whether it’s to explain a vocab term or science concept or retell part of a story.

Read more: Creative Slide Uses for Students

Idea #9: Create eBooks or Storybooks with Google Slides

In the same vein you can create eBooks or storybooks with Google Slides   where each slide is a page of the eBook and you are allowed to change the page dimensions, it doesn’t have to be the normal landscape. You can make it portrait, you can make a square to make it whatever size book you want.

Read: Google Slides for Student Created Storybooks

Idea #10: Create Stop Motion Animations in Google Slides

Other fun things include stop motion animation. This is a fun trick you can do with slides where basically you just speed up the slide show by hacking the URL just a little bit on the presentation so that you get each slide going by maybe a quarter of a second and you can either take actual photographs using the built-in webcam of your Chromebook or whatever device you have or you can just add images and move them around from one slide to the other.

Read: Stop Motion Animation with Google Slides

Idea #11: Dr. Seus Manipulative Slide Show

But, again, it’s another great creative way for kids to tell stories or express their understanding. Beyond that, some other fun things you can do especially with the little ones – I do have a bunch of manipulative type slide shows. We’ve got a one-fish, two-fish, red-fish, blue-fish sorting activity,   that’s great when you’re doing Dr. Seuss stuff.

Read: “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish” Sorting with Google Slides

Idea #12 Build a Snowman Creation and Writing Activity with Google Slides

I’ve also got a Build a snowman one.    You may want to hang off on that a little bit further into the winter month, there’s great template that allows students to build their own snowman with a wide collection of eyes and noses and mouths and ears and hats and all sorts of other things. And so they copy and paste those onto their snowman and then there’s a box where they write a little story about what their snowman has done that day or what he’s going to be going off to do.

So lots of real fun things that you could do with slides besides just a traditional presentation.

Read: Build a Snowman with Google Slides

Idea #13: Pixel Art in Google Sheets

VICKI:          Now, all these hacks, you have cute little videos and tutorials and things to help us. So we’re just giving you teachers an overview and then you could pick what you want. So do we have time for another?

[00:06:00]

ERIC:                Sure. Google Sheets  is another fun one. We usually think of Google Sheets as something for math or for doing charts and graphs and it certainly is. Don’t forget that it’s always great for that. But it’s also a great way to do things like pixel art.   I have a template that you can use where you simply put in some letters there and it creates a colored in box for each one of those and you can make pixel art.

Read: Pixel Art Activities for Any Subject with Google Sheets

Idea #14: Random Writing Prompt Generator with Google Sheets

ERIC: Or how about language art with Google Sheets? Absolutely. Sheets are great for randomization.

So I’ve got two templates for random writing prompt generators.  One gives works being randomly put together…

Read: Random Writing Prompt Generator with Google Sheets

Idea #15: Random Emoji Writing Prompt Generator

ERIC:  …another one is random emojis being put together.   And both places, it allows you to generate a whole bunch of random writing prompts that will be great for journal entries, short stories or poems.

Read: Emoji Writing Prompt Generator with Google Sheets

Idea #16: Create Graphic Organizers with Google Drawings

ERIC: Beyond that, if we can still squeeze something in I’ll throw in Google Drawings. http://ift.tt/2gZl5MJ

One of my favorites, I think it’s overlooked a lot of times because it’s kind of hidden down in the menus there but Google Drawings is a great way to do loads of things including graphic organizers…

Read: Language Arts Graphic Organizers with Google Drawings

Idea #17: Create Interactive Posters with Google Drawings (These are like Thinglink)

ERIC: …interactive images which is like ThingLink, people are familiar with that.  You can use Google Drawings to make images and put hyperlinks on that branch out to videos and websites and additional information.

Read: Googlink: Creating Interactive Posters with Google Drawings

Idea #18: Magnetic “Drag and Drop” Poetry

ERIC: Google drawings is a great way for creativity with magnetic poetry, drag and drop poetry.   It’s also fantastic for math.

Read: Eric has two articles on magnetic poetry

Idea #19: Use Manipulatives and Tangrams in Google Drawings

ERIC: A lot of great manipulatives and interactives you can do such as teaching congruent figures and similar figures,  partitioning shapes…

Read: Pattern Block Templates and Activities with Google Drawings

Idea #20: Download Templates to Teach Shapes and Algebra So You Don’t Have to Create Them Yourself

ERIC: we’ve got algebra tile, pattern blocks, lots and lots of templates that I’ve created that you can just hit the ground running with those.

Read: 11 Ways to Teach Math with Google Drawings

Idea #21: Create Greeting Cards Using Google Drawings

ERIC: But Google Drawing also services well as a desktop publishing tool because it really isn’t something built into Google Suite that quite does what Microsoft publisher does. And so Drawings is a nice stand in for that for things like creating greeting cards, I’ve got a couple of templates for that…

Read: How Your Students Can Use Google Drawings to Make Greeting Cards

Idea #22: Make Motivational Posters in Google Drawings

ERIC: as well as making educational, motivational posters.  We’re used to those big black posters with the big picture and word at the bottom with a neat saying. Those can be done for actual motivation topics or you can pick a vocab term of the week and then add an appropriate image to go with it and a definition in your own terms.

Read: Have Students Create Educational “Motivational Posters” with Google Drawings

Idea #23: Explore Templates on Eric’ Site

[00:08:00]

ERIC:                    And all of those again, those templates are all available on the control of the ControlAltAchieve.com website.

Read: Here is an index of templates on Eric’s site. What a fantastic resource!

VICKI:          Teachers, I know your mind is blown but here’s the thing, you’ve all got great ideas, whether it’s emojis for variables in algebra there’s so many ideas. So one of the greatest things to do with kids is to show them something they’ve never seen before. And the best time to do that is in the first week or two of school. Blow their minds.

Follow the links in the show notes and I love Eric website particular because he shows us how to do stuff but also all the free templates. I have been tweeting out and sending out stuff of his all day, the day we’re taping here just because I love it. It’s great resource for G-Suite. And good luck with back to school. And get in there and use these tools and have some fun.

Thank You, Staples, for Sponsoring Episode 112 of the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast!

Staples is my go-to back to school shopping source. Check out http://ift.tt/2vQXj8m for my ten ways to tackle back to school like a pro. And remember to sign up for Staple’s Teacher Rewards for free shipping orders over $14.99 and 5% back. Staple has everything we need in stock all season long and ready to go for school. Go to http://ift.tt/2bpV9ah for more information and great deals. Good luck with back to school

Thank you for listening to the Ten-minute Teacher Podcast. You can download the show notes and see the archive at http://ift.tt/2quX4Nu. Never stop learning.

[End of Audio 0:09:43]

[Transcription created by tranzify.com. Some additional editing has been done to add grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors. Every attempt has been made to correct spelling. For permissions, please email lisa@coolcatteacher.com]

Bio as Submitted

Eric has been in education for 25 years, and is currently serving as a Technology Integration Specialist for the Stark Portage Area Computer Consortium in Canton, Ohio where he oversees Google Apps for Education implementation, training, and support, as well as online learning and other technology integration initiatives.

Eric is an authorized Google Education Trainer and a Google Certified Innovator and provides Google Apps training to schools, organizations, and conferences throughout Ohio and across the country. He is a co-leader of the Ohio Google Educator Group (GEG) at tiny.cc/geg-ohio and runs the award-winning blog http://ift.tt/1W5EJjQ where all of his Google Apps and edtech resources can be found. Eric is married with four children.

  Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a “sponsored podcast episode.” The company who sponsored it compensated me via a cash payment, gift, or something else of value to include a reference to their product. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.

The post 23 GSuite Ideas to Excite Kids About Learning appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

23 GSuite Ideas to Excite Kids About Learning published first on http://ift.tt/2xx6Oyq

[patriciaanderson357-blog]

23 GSuite Ideas to Excite Kids About Learning

Eric Curts on episode 214 [A special encore episode] of the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter

Eric Curts @ericcurts  teaches us twenty-three ways to use Gsuite tools in our classroom. With ideas for Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, and Drawings for all subjects and ages, you’ll want to scroll down and follow the links in our enhanced show notes.

Today’s episode is sponsored by JAM.com, the perfect last minute holiday gift for your kids or grandkids. The creative courses at Jam.com are project-based, creative and FUN. Use the code COOLCAT50 to get $50 off your course. And remember that you can sign up for a 14 day FREE trial of any course with your child aged 7-16. Drawing. Minecraft. Legos. And more!

Use the code COOLCAT50 for $50 off the cost of the course.

Listen Now

Listen to the show on iTunes or Stitcher

Stream by clicking here.

Transcript of Episode 214: 23 GSuite Ideas to Excite Your Students about Learning with Eric Curts

Download the transcript

VICKI:          It’s back to school and so many of us are getting ready to introduce the G-Suite of tools in the classroom for those of you who don’t know what that is. That’s all these Google tools. And Eric Curts @ericcurts from Control Alt Achieve   and co-leader of their higher Google Educators group has so many fantastic ideas. You’d definitely want to check the transcript and show notes for all of these ideas.

This blog post is being added to 100+ Great Google Classroom Resources for Educators. This resource has a curated list of Gsuite resources, books, and tips.

You’ll definitely want to go to Eric’s website Control Alt Achieve and his YouTube channel.

VICKI:                    So Eric, give us some cool ways that we can use G-Suite to start of the school year with a punch.

ERIC:               What I’m going to take a look at here as we run through these today are just some of the common Google tools that we tend to use but maybe look at them from a different angle and some fun ways they can be used. So why don’t we start off with Google Docs. http://www.controlaltachieve.com/docs

Today, Eric goes through some engaging ideas for using 4 of the Gsuite apps:

Google Docs – http://www.controlaltachieve.com/docs

Google Slides – http://www.controlaltachieve.com/slides

Google Sheets – http://www.controlaltachieve.com/sheets

Google Drawings – http://www.controlaltachieve.com/drawings

    ERIC:               Most people think of that as Google’s word processing program which obviously it is and that’s a fantastic way for students to write reports and wrote stories on all the normal things. But some fun twists that you can put on this, some folks don’t know that Google Docs support emojis. You can actually insert emojis right from the ‘insert special characters’ menu and it’s going to open up a lot of really fun activities for students.

Idea #1: Write Emoji Stories

Idea #2: Summarize Something You’ve Seen or Read Using Emojis

If you’re looking for a way to get them engaged and excited early on in the year, they can write emoji stories or they can summarize a story or a movie or something they’ve seen recently using emojis.

See: 5 Emoji Activities for Google Docs  where Eric describes how to do all of these emoji activities including the emoji math picture shown below.

Idea #3: Use Emojis to Explain Math Variables

ERIC: They can also incorporate this into math. Yes, I used to be a math teacher so I just have a soft spot for math.

[00:02:00]

Emojis can be a great way to replace variables to bring a better concrete understanding of what you’re doing when solving math problems. And then there’s a lot of other possible neat examples. And like you said in the show notes, there’d be links to all of my blog post that go into the specific details on those. But that’s a fun thing.

Emojis help variables come alive and make sense. See Eric’s blog post on emojis in Google docs to learn how to do this.

Idea #4: Black Out Poetry in Google Docs

ERIC: While still on the topic of docs another neat thing to do is to use the highlight tool but not for highlighting. Let’s turn it on its head and use it to black things out. In Google Docs you can use the highlighting tool to do blackout poetry where students start with some text and then remove all the words except what they want to leave for their found poem, you can also use the exact same tool to do summarization.

Idea #5: Article Summarization with Black Out in Google Docs

It’s a process called text reduction strategy which is typically done with a big black marker and an actual piece of paper or an article, but you can do it in Google Docs as well, you can take an article from one of the many excellent websites like DOGO News, throw that in there and have the students go through and remove everything that’s not critical so that they end up with their summarization of the article. It’s a great way to help move students toward those summarization skills.

Read More: Improve Reading Comprehension with Google Docs “Black Out”

Idea #6: Choose Your Own Adventure Stories

Beyond that, lots of other fun things you can do include creating choose your own adventure stories. Create one for students to work together in a group where they write a story and use hyperlinks inside of the doc to jump to different pages as they write their choose your own adventure stories.

Those are just a couple of Docs ideas.

Read More: Choose Your Own Adventure Stories with Google Docs

Idea #7: Teach Anchors and Hyperlinks

VICKI:          And plus, choose your own adventure, we give you the ability to teach about anchors and teach about hyperlinks. There are so many things you can do with these ideas. I love them, Eric.

A hyperlink links to another web page. (Just go to insert –> Hyperlink.) However, an anchor links within the document. This lets you skip down a long page. I do this an easy way in a long document by making headings. Then, insert a table of contents. The headings automatically become anchors. You can also insert anchors manually.  they are a big time saver for students and teaches on long documents, for example, if you’re writing a book.

ERIC:           Absolutely.

VICKI:          Okay, what’s next?

ERIC:            Sure. Let’s jump over to Google Slides. http://www.controlaltachieve.com/slides

A lot of times we think of Google slides as the presentation tool, which of course it is, and there’s nothing wrong with that, please don’t get me wrong. It’s fantastic for kids to just do a presentation. Stand up in front of the class, do a book talk or talk about their explorer or their animal. But there’s a lot of other fun things you can do with slides.

Idea #8: Comic Strips with Google Slides

[00:04:00]

ERIC: One way to do is to create comic strips with Google Slides.   And what you can do is think of each slide as a different panel of the comic strip. And students could then insert clip art and animations and speech bubbles. And when they then published that to the web you’ve got an online animated comic strip, whether it’s to explain a vocab term or science concept or retell part of a story.

Read more: Creative Slide Uses for Students

Idea #9: Create eBooks or Storybooks with Google Slides

In the same vein you can create eBooks or storybooks with Google Slides   where each slide is a page of the eBook and you are allowed to change the page dimensions, it doesn’t have to be the normal landscape. You can make it portrait, you can make a square to make it whatever size book you want.

Read: Google Slides for Student Created Storybooks

Idea #10: Create Stop Motion Animations in Google Slides

Other fun things include stop motion animation. This is a fun trick you can do with slides where basically you just speed up the slide show by hacking the URL just a little bit on the presentation so that you get each slide going by maybe a quarter of a second and you can either take actual photographs using the built-in webcam of your Chromebook or whatever device you have or you can just add images and move them around from one slide to the other.

Read: Stop Motion Animation with Google Slides

Idea #11: Dr. Seus Manipulative Slide Show

But, again, it’s another great creative way for kids to tell stories or express their understanding. Beyond that, some other fun things you can do especially with the little ones – I do have a bunch of manipulative type slide shows. We’ve got a one-fish, two-fish, red-fish, blue-fish sorting activity,   that’s great when you’re doing Dr. Seuss stuff.

Read: “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish” Sorting with Google Slides

Idea #12 Build a Snowman Creation and Writing Activity with Google Slides

I’ve also got a Build a snowman one.    You may want to hang off on that a little bit further into the winter month, there’s great template that allows students to build their own snowman with a wide collection of eyes and noses and mouths and ears and hats and all sorts of other things. And so they copy and paste those onto their snowman and then there’s a box where they write a little story about what their snowman has done that day or what he’s going to be going off to do.

So lots of real fun things that you could do with slides besides just a traditional presentation.

Read: Build a Snowman with Google Slides

Idea #13: Pixel Art in Google Sheets

VICKI:          Now, all these hacks, you have cute little videos and tutorials and things to help us. So we’re just giving you teachers an overview and then you could pick what you want. So do we have time for another?

[00:06:00]

ERIC:                Sure. Google Sheets  is another fun one. We usually think of Google Sheets as something for math or for doing charts and graphs and it certainly is. Don’t forget that it’s always great for that. But it’s also a great way to do things like pixel art.   I have a template that you can use where you simply put in some letters there and it creates a colored in box for each one of those and you can make pixel art.

Read: Pixel Art Activities for Any Subject with Google Sheets

Idea #14: Random Writing Prompt Generator with Google Sheets

ERIC: Or how about language art with Google Sheets? Absolutely. Sheets are great for randomization.

So I’ve got two templates for random writing prompt generators.  One gives works being randomly put together…

Read: Random Writing Prompt Generator with Google Sheets

Idea #15: Random Emoji Writing Prompt Generator

ERIC:  …another one is random emojis being put together.   And both places, it allows you to generate a whole bunch of random writing prompts that will be great for journal entries, short stories or poems.

Read: Emoji Writing Prompt Generator with Google Sheets

Idea #16: Create Graphic Organizers with Google Drawings

ERIC: Beyond that, if we can still squeeze something in I’ll throw in Google Drawings. http://www.controlaltachieve.com/drawings

One of my favorites, I think it’s overlooked a lot of times because it’s kind of hidden down in the menus there but Google Drawings is a great way to do loads of things including graphic organizers…

Read: Language Arts Graphic Organizers with Google Drawings

Idea #17: Create Interactive Posters with Google Drawings (These are like Thinglink)

ERIC: …interactive images which is like ThingLink, people are familiar with that.  You can use Google Drawings to make images and put hyperlinks on that branch out to videos and websites and additional information.

Read: Googlink: Creating Interactive Posters with Google Drawings

Idea #18: Magnetic “Drag and Drop” Poetry

ERIC: Google drawings is a great way for creativity with magnetic poetry, drag and drop poetry.   It’s also fantastic for math.

Read: Eric has two articles on magnetic poetry

Idea #19: Use Manipulatives and Tangrams in Google Drawings

ERIC: A lot of great manipulatives and interactives you can do such as teaching congruent figures and similar figures,  partitioning shapes…

Read: Pattern Block Templates and Activities with Google Drawings

Idea #20: Download Templates to Teach Shapes and Algebra So You Don’t Have to Create Them Yourself

ERIC: we’ve got algebra tile, pattern blocks, lots and lots of templates that I’ve created that you can just hit the ground running with those.

Read: 11 Ways to Teach Math with Google Drawings

Idea #21: Create Greeting Cards Using Google Drawings

ERIC: But Google Drawing also services well as a desktop publishing tool because it really isn’t something built into Google Suite that quite does what Microsoft publisher does. And so Drawings is a nice stand in for that for things like creating greeting cards, I’ve got a couple of templates for that…

Read: How Your Students Can Use Google Drawings to Make Greeting Cards

Idea #22: Make Motivational Posters in Google Drawings

ERIC: as well as making educational, motivational posters.  We’re used to those big black posters with the big picture and word at the bottom with a neat saying. Those can be done for actual motivation topics or you can pick a vocab term of the week and then add an appropriate image to go with it and a definition in your own terms.

Read: Have Students Create Educational “Motivational Posters” with Google Drawings

Idea #23: Explore Templates on Eric’ Site

[00:08:00]

ERIC:                    And all of those again, those templates are all available on the control of the ControlAltAchieve.com website.

Read: Here is an index of templates on Eric’s site. What a fantastic resource!

VICKI:          Teachers, I know your mind is blown but here’s the thing, you’ve all got great ideas, whether it’s emojis for variables in algebra there’s so many ideas. So one of the greatest things to do with kids is to show them something they’ve never seen before. And the best time to do that is in the first week or two of school. Blow their minds.

Follow the links in the show notes and I love Eric website particular because he shows us how to do stuff but also all the free templates. I have been tweeting out and sending out stuff of his all day, the day we’re taping here just because I love it. It’s great resource for G-Suite. And good luck with back to school. And get in there and use these tools and have some fun.

Thank You, Staples, for Sponsoring Episode 112 of the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast!

Staples is my go-to back to school shopping source. Check out coolcatteacher.com/pro for my ten ways to tackle back to school like a pro. And remember to sign up for Staple’s Teacher Rewards for free shipping orders over $14.99 and 5% back. Staple has everything we need in stock all season long and ready to go for school. Go to staples.com/backtoschool for more information and great deals. Good luck with back to school

Thank you for listening to the Ten-minute Teacher Podcast. You can download the show notes and see the archive at coolcatteacher.com/podcast. Never stop learning.

[End of Audio 0:09:43]

[Transcription created by tranzify.com. Some additional editing has been done to add grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors. Every attempt has been made to correct spelling. For permissions, please email lisa@coolcatteacher.com]

Bio as Submitted

Eric has been in education for 25 years, and is currently serving as a Technology Integration Specialist for the Stark Portage Area Computer Consortium in Canton, Ohio where he oversees Google Apps for Education implementation, training, and support, as well as online learning and other technology integration initiatives.

Eric is an authorized Google Education Trainer and a Google Certified Innovator and provides Google Apps training to schools, organizations, and conferences throughout Ohio and across the country. He is a co-leader of the Ohio Google Educator Group (GEG) at tiny.cc/geg-ohio and runs the award-winning blog www.ControlAltAchieve.com where all of his Google Apps and edtech resources can be found. Eric is married with four children.

  Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a “sponsored podcast episode.” The company who sponsored it compensated me via a cash payment, gift, or something else of value to include a reference to their product. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.

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