Get Unruly in the House with Virtual School Resources
Educators across the globe are working overtime to figure out new and creative ways to switch to virtual learning and connect with students remotely. To help educators during their transition to virtual classrooms, the Unruly team put together three free virtual school resources to bring a fun coding app for kids to students at home!
1) Unruly Splats Coding App for Kids Open to Teachers & Students
In addition to our Unruly COVID19 Educator Grant, educators and students now have free access to our entire virtual school resources online learning platform and virtual activities for students.
The Splats app is a coding app for kids that enables students to code their own games and music with a virtual version of Splats. The coding app for kids is compatible with an iPad or on a laptop with a Chrome browser. Here are the simple steps to access the Splats app online to get moving and coding:
- Open the Splats web app on Chrome browser or download our iPad app.
- Create a profile as either an Educator or a Student. No student information is collected.
- Create a profile name.
- Choose a profile avatar.
- Skip the connection screen. This is for connecting physical Splats!
- Test out a virtual lesson and get your Splat to light up, play sound, count points and create timers!
You can save games in the browser and access them again later as long as you use the same browser. Be careful not to clear your cache or you may lose your saved games. Students can also download their code and send it to their teachers for feedback.
2) Get Unruly In the House with Virtual Activities!
To get started, check out our Unruly in the House resources with training videos and virtual coding activities to send directly to students. To bust boredom at home, download the Virtual Splats guide and invite students to explore the virtual school resources and a set of coding activities led by Crash, our goofy gorilla. Crash loves to dance, so the first set of activities are designed to make music and have Crash going bananas for the beat. Students use the virtual school resources to code music with virtual Splats, and you send us the code for Crash to dance to! The activity pack is easier to follow than doing the floss blindfolded and is sure to delight students and their parents!
We can’t wait to hear about your virtual school resources experience and see how you're bringing a little Unruliness to students learning from home. We welcome your feedback, please reach out to us on twitter @unruly_studios with the hashtag #WeAreUnruly with any questions!
3) The Unruly COVID19 Educator Grant
We are excited to announce our Unruly COVID19 Educator Grant. Through this initiative, we are giving away 500 2-packs of our STEM learning product, Unruly Splats, to educators across the US and Canada. Grant winners will receive 2 Splats, virtual coding activities to use with students, online coaching, and a 3-year warranty.
With Splats, students can use the coding app for kids to program the rules that tell Splats when to light up, make sounds, and collect a point when they are stomped on! Using an iPad or Chromebook with the Unruly coding app for kids, students create games like whack-a-mole, relay races, or race-in-place to name a few.
Many teachers, like all of us, are thinking ahead for when the world returns to normal. They are planning for when schools reopen and kids can play together again, and having physical Splats at home helps kick-start the excitement by going back to class with cool new learning opportunities. With access to Splats now, you will be able to introduce STEM virtual school resources to your virtual classroom and start planning for the time when schools reopen.
COVID19 Grant Application Process
The grant is available to any educator in the US and Canada and it is free to apply! The application is open until April 28th at 12:00pm ET and takes 5 minutes to fill out (less time than it takes to finish your morning coffee!). We have already had over 500 applications and we are shipping out Splats to our first round of grant winners on April 25, 2020. If you are interested in bringing STEM and play to your virtual school resources, we recommend applying this week while applications are still open. Winners will be announced on a rolling basis!
Imagine a classroom full of movement and activity with STEM and coding learning outcomes tied in. If that sounds like something that would engage your students, then we encourage you to apply for the Unruly COVID19 Educator Grant!
