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Selecting a Platfom

What tool will best suit your needs?
Getting Started Teamwork Choosing a Theme Selecting a Platform Finding Activities Running Camp Evaluating Camp

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As with most Guiding activities these days, you have a few options for how to proceed. Which you go with will depend on internet access, your preference and the preferences of the girls and their families.

Option 1 - Solo camp: This option isn't ideal for sharing the sisterhood, but will work best if you're in a location with challenging access to the internet or where parents want girls to stay off the computer. You can prepare a package for girls, with or without supplies, with everything they will need for their camping weekend. Perhaps it will include instructions to open certain parts only at a given time or when a clue is solved. Depending on how close together your girls are, you might choose to mail this or drop it off.

Option 2 - Social Media Camp: This is a happy-medium option. Choose a platform like Facebook where you can create a group. Post short instructions or even videos with activities for the girls over the course of the weekend. Encourage them to share pictures of what they have been doing so they don't feel so alone.

Option 3 - Video Camp: This is the option that this site is most designed for. Here your schedule will have some elements (opening, closing and certain of the activities) occurring together over video with others where the girls can leave the computer and come back together later to show what they've been doing. If you go this route, make sure to remind families that if girls are getting zoomed-out, they can always take a longer break.

Regardless of the option you choose, remember that no girl has to participate in ALL of the activities.

In the table below, I compare the free plans from some of the most popular platforms.

teamchart

Other tools to consider



One of the benefits of an online camp is that you can use online tools that might be a challenge at your meetings if you don't have wifi or devices for everyone.

Girls First Platform: Since everyone is on a computer/phone/tablet anyways, now could be an interesting time to do some planning with girls using the Girls First platform. Alternatively, if you're using activities off the platform, you can share your screen and show some of the handouts that way so girls can see them and nobody has to print.

Visit somewhere new: Many museums, botanical gardens and zoos have installed webcams and/or have created ways to visit online. Check out one near you, or travel across the world!

Kahoot!: Kahoot! is a trivia game platform. You can create quizzes for the girls, have them create ones for each other or play ready-made ones on a variety of themes. Everyone will need 2 devices (one to play and one to see the shared screen) or to be able to split their screen in two with two browser pages displayed to see both at once.

Word Generator: This site will provide prompts in a variety of categories if you're playing Pictionary, charades or any other similar game.

Skribbl: Create a closed room and play a Pictionary-like game online.

Name, Place, Animal, Thing: Play a classic game where a letter of the alphabet is selected and players have to come up with a name, a place, an animal and a thing that begin with that letter. You can create a private room for your group.

Werewolf: You may have played werewolf in person, but now you can play online too. Create a private room and see whether you can save your village!

<< Previous topic: Choosing a Theme Next topic: Finding Activities >>


Github

After deciding to create a website from scratch rather than using pre-made templates, my first step involved looking for somewhere to host it. Many sources I consulted pointed to Github so I looked it up. It’s not overly user-friendly, but there are a lot of users (thus, many people asking and answering questions), it’s free and seemed like a good first step if ever I wanted to take this newfound interest even further after the course.

Learning HTML, CSS and Bootstrap

HTML, CSS and Bootstrap became my tools. HTML is the basic language that is used to write a website and CSS (cascading style sheet) is the code that determines how different elements are displayed. Bootstrap is a CSS framework that provides bits of code – HTML and CSS - to configure various elements such as tables, menus, colours, sliders, menus, etc.

I had never even heard of Bootstrap when I began this project, but it quickly proved incredibly helpful. I could take bits of code, modify them to suit my needs and combine them in various ways. It’s limited in terms of some choices (it provides only nine colours, for example), but I found ways around many of them.

Some of the most challenging parts of the website code to write were for the sliders (I experimented using them during a different assignment this semester), adding in the s’more font and linking all the pages together through the many buttons. Like in all coding, it’s often the little things that get the best of you. A simple missing semi-colon can cause hours of frustration and a typo can make you wonder why your page just won’t line up when you’ve clearly indicated “tetx-left.”

As I progressed I became more confident and learned to take breaks when I just couldn’t figure out why something wasn’t working. I bookmarked many forums and help pages and found that there was pretty much no problem that I could have that hadn’t been had before.

One of the nice things with creating a website is that there's nothing wrong with trial and error -- in fact, a lot of it is needed.

Other Tools

The main other tool I used was Canva, a free, online infographic builder. I appreciated the many templates and how intuitive it was to use. The was a variety of building blocks, but elements were very easy to edit as well.

I also made good use of Google Chrome extension called ColourPick Eyedropper. When you hover your mouse over anything on your screen, it gives you the hex colour code for it. This is what's used in HTML and Canva (as well as many other locations) to identify a particular colour. This helped me ensure accurate consistency in my colours.


This site was created by Elizabeth Knowles as part of EDU 5188 - Integration of Technology in Education - at the University of Ottawa in spring 2020.