Piktograph has 18 new users

Today I hoped to get my class using Piktograph. I got the projector sorted and I connected a computer as if i was one of the students.

I showed the children the steps to navigate to the Piktograph site using the PCs. When I got to the site I demonstrated the options for logging on.

At this point we had a vote they could either create an account using their email which would be harder in the sense they would have to practice previous skills or create an account with my email and I can confirm to set up the account(the easier option).

In the back of my mind I thought the old Room 5 would say take the easy option as that is their usual approach. Luckily they all voted for the harder option.

The option that required them to go  and create a user in Piktochart and then go to Gmail sign in, and confirm their account. I didn't get them to use Google + to sign on first because I wanted them to practise signing into a website as a new user.

I got one of the girls to create an account on Piktograph and when she went to Gmail for the confirmation email it wasn't there. At this point I changed the goal posts and said set up your user names and as homework you can confirm your account.

It felt really deflated as it was now another example of here is a cool website we can't get into it at school individually but imagine what it looks like.


So i regrouped and...

I logged in on my personal account and we created a 2 minute poster as a class. We talked about using images and creating templates/icons that matched the message we were trying to send. For sustainability we looked at the impact of waste and how we can capture our audiences attention.

I initially selected two flowers and then added the fridge. Although we were pressed for time we discussed taking away the pretty images and just having things that matter. The fridge needs work as it is currently transparent but it definitely promoted a rich discussion.

At this point we talked about purpose and what were we trying to achieve. The positive was we were set up for using Piktograph next week.

After about 20 minutes  and at the point of when we were going to give up the first user got a confirmation email. We then all created accounts for the whole class because the magic confirmation fairy at Piktograph was suddenly sending timely emails.

Although our learning time was cut down we talked about logging into and out of devices especially Gmail, usernames, passwords and appropriate talk in Gmail messages.

The lesson ended with another look at how to log out of devices. We then checked each others device to see we were not still logged in to Gmail.

Next week we are ready to begin our next attempt at using Piktograph as a class. No doubt there will be some early adopters that will be trialling it over the weekend.