Wixie is a publishing and creativity platform that allows students to “share their ideas, imagination, and understanding through their writing, their voice, and their art” (https://www.wixie.com, para. 1). With Wixie, students can add text and voice recording with their own artwork. As a teacher you can encourage the students’ love of technology as a way to share their knowledge with other peers and their teachers. Their work is stored on line and connected to teacher accounts. It’s accessible to all grade levels particularly the younger ones.
Tool Snapshot
| Price | Free trial version (can’t save work). Personal: $2/mo or $20/yr. Subscriptions: $0.75/student/mo or $5/student/yr. |
| Learning | Constructionism |
| Ease of Use | ★★★★✩ |
| Privacy | ★★★★✩ |
| Accessibility | ★★★✩✩ |
| Class Size | Depends on the account |
| ISTE*S | Knowledge Constructor, Creative Communicator, Global Collaborator |
| COPPA/ FERPA |
Yes |
Wixie Overview Video
Wixie & the SAMR Model
- Substitution: Students use Wixie to draw or write digitally instead of using traditional crayon, pencil, and paper.
- Augmentation: Students can use colorful drawings, text, audio and videos to create a multimodal piece of art.
- Modification: Peers and teachers can access your work and give you feedback on how to improve it. Students can also have a common “canvas” in which they all add to and use as a common starting point.
- Redefinition: Students can create digital work that can be shared with other schools or classrooms. Students can view what other classrooms and schools have done while studying the same subject matter and compare the work to theirs.
Learning Activities
Math: Kindergarten or first grade students can practice their counting skills by creating a counting book. The book can be related to the holidays that the kids are celebrating.
Science: Students can draw the life cycle of a Monarch Butterfly showing the different stages with pictures and labels.
English/Language Arts: ABC Book – students explore initial sounds through the creation of a classroom ABC book.
Writing: Students can use Wixie to draw and write a story. They draw and write a beginning, middle and end of their story as part of the Personal Narratives unit or the Realistic Fiction writing unit.
Social Studies: After studying folktales and tall tales, and identifying the main characteristics of these genres, upper elementary students create their own folktale or tall tale to teach a lesson or explain why something is the way it is.
Resources
- Wixie PD Party Choice Board
- Integrate Wixie in the Curriculum
- Wixie: Sign In Page
- Webinar Wixie Paint Tool
- Wixie Tutorials for Teachers
- Curriculum Integration Guides
- Teachers Sharing Wixie Ideas
How to Use Wixie
- Go to https://www.wixie.com
- Click on “Try Wixie”, you will be taken to a page set up to “Request an Evaluation Account”
- Fill in the submitting form and press the blue button that says “Request an account”.
- After submitting the form, a member of Wixie will prepare an account and email you with the information to access the account.
- Go back to https://www.wixie.com and press “Sign In”
- You will be asked to log in to your Wixie account using your Username and Password, press “Log In” OR you can press the link to “Log in with Google”, “Log in with Gaggle”, or “Log in with Clever”.
- Once you log in you will be taken to your Wixie Home Page.
- Once in your home page you will be able to access “Assignments”, “Projects”, “Students”, “Training”, “Activities”, and “Assessments”. You will also find “settings” where you will be able to add a profile picture, change password, and edit your account, authoring, and activities.
- From this page you can also click on “Create or edit a Wixie project”
- This link will take you to the actual Wixie application
- From here you can see your projects and your templates.
- To start a New project, go to the Wixie Hand on the upper left corner of your screen.This will activate a roll down menu.
- Click “New Project”.
To learn more, check out the YouTube video Wixie Introduction by Tech4Learning:
Research
McCrea, B., & Weil, M. (2011). On Cloud Nine: Cloud-Based Tools Are Giving K-12 Collaboration Efforts a Boost. THE Journal (Technological Horizons In Education), 38(6), 46.
Maker, R., & Maker, G. O. Engagement, Language, and Learning.