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Unlocking the Power of Blueprint: A Free and Flexible LXP for Educators

Writer's picture: Alex AcostaAlex Acosta


Looking for a dynamic and engaging way to deliver online learning experiences? Look no further than Blueprint, a free Learning Experience Platform (LXP) designed with educators in mind.


This powerful platform offers:


  • Curriculum Management: Easily schedule and organize lessons, track student progress, and manage grades all in one location.

  • Content Creation: Design custom courses or leverage existing libraries covering a wide range of subjects, from esports and game design to traditional academic topics.

  • Interactive Activities: Engage students with discussion boards, assignments, journals, polls, and more.

  • Flexible Grading: Customize grading scales, provide feedback, and allow for assignment resubmissions.

Whether you're a classroom teacher, an esports coach, or a curriculum specialist, Blueprint provides the tools you need to create a rich and rewarding learning environment.


Ready to get started? Visit blueprint.study to create your free account today! Transcript - 00:00:00:00 - 00:00:21:19

Alex Hirbe: All right. Well, hi! Welcome, everybody, to season seven of the Gaming Concepts webinars. Glad to see everybody in here. Happy to see that you are here joining me on this Tuesday afternoon. Hopefully, you're getting to the end of the day, and you don't have much more. This is the last thing you've got to do, so try and make it a little enjoyable for you.

00:00:21:21 - 00:00:40:15

Alex Hirbe: ...to get some information about Blueprint, get some free PD hours, and, yeah, have a good chat about tech and stuff like that. So, a little bit of housekeeping here for the webinar today: If you wouldn't mind, any questions that you guys have out there in the audience, please throw those in the chat.

00:00:40:17 - 00:00:58:20

Alex Hirbe: Everyone should be able to chat. Throw those in the chat. I see those a lot easier than if you throw them in the Q&A. So please, at any time, if you have questions or comments, please throw those in chat. At the end, there will also be a Q&A if you have questions, or more in-depth questions.

00:00:58:22 - 00:01:22:18

Alex Hirbe: We can talk about that too. So, let's get started here. First webinar of 2025! Very excited about the season that we're going to have, with lots of different types of, you know, themes and presenters and speakers for this season. So, keep in mind and keep updated with the different webinars that we're going to put out on Gaming Concepts again, and also on the YouTube channel where this is going to be hosted.

00:01:22:20 - 00:01:45:06

Alex Hirbe: And again, thanks for everybody out there watching and those of you that are here with us this evening. My name is Alex Hirbe. I'm part of the education team at Generation Esports, working on the Gaming Concepts curriculum and also working on Blueprint. And I'm happy to share with you today; we're going to be talking about Blueprint, our LXP, or Learning Experience Platform.

00:01:45:08 - 00:02:08:12

Alex Hirbe: And we're going to go on kind of a deep dive into what it is and how it works and how you can use it. It's going to be a full overview, as if you know nothing about it. And so, hopefully, if you all have signed on with us, or you're going to use Blueprint for your classroom or your students, then you will have a leg up and understand how to use it fully.

00:02:08:12 - 00:02:33:09

Alex Hirbe: So, so here we go. All right. So what we're going to do... if you want to follow along, I, you know, you should, you should do that. Otherwise, this is going to be available for eternity on, on YouTube. So, I'm going to share my screen here, and we can get going.

00:02:33:11 - 00:03:01:12

Alex Hirbe: All right. Perfect. All right, so, we are here at blueprint.study. That is where our LXP lives. And so, blueprint.study is the website that you would go to to create an account or sign in. Depending on how you're connected through us, if you're not connected to us and you're just curious about Blueprint, go ahead, click "Sign Up," and you can sign up with many different things.

00:03:01:14 - 00:03:23:04

Alex Hirbe: You know, Google, Clever, Discord, EdLink... and we offer a host of other SSOs depending on your needs. So, if you have one of those, feel free to sign in through that. Otherwise, you can create an account through the traditional kind of online account creation, you know, first name, email, password.

00:03:23:06 - 00:03:35:19

Alex Hirbe: And we will get you in. I, of course, have an account already, so I'm going to sign in with that.

00:03:35:20 - 00:03:56:04

Alex Hirbe: And we are in. The only steps that we are going to skip over is the account creation process that just asks you a few questions. And then that's it, really. You're, you're, you're dropped into an environment much like this, where you see what you've got in front of you: your dashboard as a teacher or as an administrator.

00:03:56:06 - 00:04:15:23

Alex Hirbe: So, let's talk about what we're seeing here as we've logged in for the first time on Blueprint. We have an overview tab, a calendar section... that should not be tabs or sections... overview, calendar, and then "Recently Submitted." You know, this is going to add you as a teacher to look at your classroom from a bird's-eye view.

00:04:16:00 - 00:04:39:14

Alex Hirbe: So, you're going to see your classroom grade, and you're going to see assignments to grade. Obviously, this is a fresh build here, so I don't have anything in there. You'll see your calendar, which of course... and again, nothing in here, but we'll populate that during this webinar tonight. And then we have "Recently Submitted," so you can see where all your kids, or all your students, or all your teachers (if you're going to use this for PD, or maybe you'll use this for HR or something like that).

00:04:39:14 - 00:05:00:23

Alex Hirbe: All the students within your course are going to submit their work, and it'll show you there. And I'll show you how this looks populated from another, another view here later on. So that your dashboard kind of gives you an overview. Then, moving down the side navigation here: classrooms. You've got different classrooms that you can build.

00:05:01:01 - 00:05:29:10

Alex Hirbe: And we'll go through classroom creation here in a moment. And then you've got your library, things that you have access to, either, either things that you've created or your district has assigned to you for use in your classroom. Then we have grades. And you can see here that obviously we don't have any grades in here, but it is a full gradebook, able to be exported into CSV and uploaded into your different various formats of SISs or LMS reporting systems.

00:05:29:12 - 00:05:50:00

Alex Hirbe: Finally, we have "Help!" And the help is... I'm going to switch here... There we go. Help! So, help is our massive knowledge base. You can search for anything in here that you need help with. Today, we're going to be going through kind of getting started, and then a little bit of all of these. But mostly getting started and, you know, using the content library.

00:05:50:02 - 00:06:23:03

Alex Hirbe: And then understanding activities in the gradebook. So, we're going to get, get through all these. Another thing here on there is if you have any problems, you just click "Submit a ticket," and you can type up whatever you need, whatever issue you're having with. We have zero chatbots with Generation Esports. Everything is done by people that we have that are experts and understanding either the content knowledge, teaching, or the platform itself, to understand it and help you with any problem that you would have with, with Blueprint. And then a link to our webinars.

00:06:23:05 - 00:06:45:01

Alex Hirbe: That'll just take you right to our YouTube page for our webinar. So, all the help is here for you to be able to get anything you might need in terms of assistance on the platform. All the way to the down at the bottom, you have notifications here. You can see I don't have any notifications right now, but, you know, you may get some where students turn an assignment late or they're asking for a resubmission.

00:06:45:03 - 00:07:05:14

Alex Hirbe: Or there might be a set... error... system update. Things like that would come through your notifications. And then finally, your, your profile here. You can view your profile and your account settings, as well as log out down here. And then at the very bottom... shield your eyes... but you can switch from dark mode, which is what we're in right now, into light mode.

00:07:05:15 - 00:07:27:21

Alex Hirbe: And you can see that definitely flashes up on my face. It's a little dark in here, but, yeah, you can work in in light mode if you choose to. So that's kind of your left, left-side navigation area so that you can understand, like, where all these things go when they do. But we're going to go all the way back up to the top, and we're going to start by creating a classroom.

00:07:27:23 - 00:07:47:13

Alex Hirbe: So we understand how this functions with students and how it functions within our school. So, classrooms here, yours are most likely to be empty. So, we're going to click on "Create a Classroom." All right. And it's going to give us, you know, some things here. Oh, I'm in the wrong school. That would help. The guys on the right school.

00:07:47:15 - 00:08:00:05

Alex Hirbe: There we go. All right, so let's say we're going to say this is going to be... Well, I switched sites on it and it didn't like that.

00:08:00:07 - 00:08:23:08

Alex Hirbe: All right. There we go. So this is going to be our Gaming Concepts, Computer Applications 2024 classroom. And this is going to be, for your, you know, description could be anything, really. I'm just going to type in "description" for us here. But, you know, this might be your class summary or something that might be in your course guidebook that students are reading.

00:08:23:10 - 00:08:40:14

Alex Hirbe: Just to have some more filler there for students to know kind of what the class is that they're looking at here. You can upload your thumbnail banner images if you'd like. The thumbnail is going to be what the class looks like as students come into it. And then the banner image is going to be what is behind all of your content, behind, at the top.

00:08:40:16 - 00:08:58:21

Alex Hirbe: And those are images that you can pick or have students create for you to kind of drive home that kind of ownership of, of, of these classes. If you're doing it for esports, or you're doing it for graphic design, or whatever you want to use Blueprint for, because you can use it for anything, these banner images can be custom to what you want.

00:08:58:23 - 00:09:18:22

Alex Hirbe: Schedule settings below that for your classroom. This is going to affect this classroom only. So if you have multiple classrooms, this will only apply rules to this classroom. So know that if you have multiple classrooms, each of these can be different. We're going to just run on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And then Saturday and Sunday are not checked.

00:09:19:00 - 00:09:44:23

Alex Hirbe: This is not a huge component of scheduling, but it does make things a little bit easier because when you go to bulk schedule content from the content library, it will only schedule on days that you have checked. And so if you, if you pick every day, then you'll get seven days worth of content put in. Which isn't a big deal if you, if you mess up here because you can always just move everything.

00:09:44:23 - 00:10:12:16

Alex Hirbe: You can also come back and edit this if it's not the right, the right schedule for you. You can also have some kind of gates in place, some gatekeeping in place for your students, where you can hide lessons until a certain number of days before they're scheduled. So, you know, if you want students to be able to see, you know, just kind of one a day at a time, but you have assigned, maybe, you know, all the lessons within one of our courses or within the courses you have access to.

00:10:12:20 - 00:10:29:08

Alex Hirbe: So maybe that's a whole semester's worth of content. So, you know, one, one, one class or lesson every day. Maybe you only want them to see one day before they're scheduled. Or maybe you, you know, want them to see three because you're on a modified block. And so, they can see a little bit ahead because they have days off in between.

00:10:29:08 - 00:10:54:19

Alex Hirbe: So you can also enable course advancement requirements. And so you can add things like a minimum lesson score percentage. This is just really great to ensure that students are meeting a high bar. When I was a teacher, our virtual school had a threshold of 70%, and that students had to meet 70% to advance to the next lesson or activity.

00:10:54:21 - 00:11:16:01

Alex Hirbe: So this would be something that would make sure and ensure that students are meeting a high bar of expectation and rigor that you might be having at your school. As well as that, you may require, alternatively, I should say, full lesson completion regardless of score. So this is going to be making sure that they have read through and completed all the content, regardless of score, for them to move on.

00:11:16:02 - 00:11:33:17

Alex Hirbe: This would ensure that students are... make... are completing all of the content within it, so you know their, their background knowledge matches where you think they should be. Otherwise, they don't have access to anything. So, we're not going to do that for this one because it could throw some wrenches in without any students present.

00:11:33:17 - 00:11:49:20

Alex Hirbe: But we're going to also look at blocking out classroom holidays. So maybe you want to put in all your days off here. All the school holidays, all your breaks can be put in here, and then the system will schedule around all of that stuff, so you don't have to ever move things around if you've put all this stuff in here.

00:11:49:20 - 00:12:12:17

Alex Hirbe: So, you know, if I say, "Oh, you know, January 20th... Oh, yes. The 20th is MLK Day." Okay. Oops. Then we can, we can have that scheduled in, and we can add in more holidays as they come in, or, you know, bulk sit there and do the calendar like that. All right, let's create the classroom here.

00:12:12:19 - 00:12:34:02

Alex Hirbe: And there it goes. We are in it. Okay. So how do I get to this page? Normally, it would be I would click on my classrooms, and we can see here in my classrooms, then I have my Gaming Concepts, Computer Applications 2024. And I'm in this classroom. So then my classroom looks a little different than just out on the dashboard because the...

00:12:34:03 - 00:12:57:21

Alex Hirbe: Remember, the dashboard shows me an overview of the classroom and all of its components. And this is actually the working classroom in this screen. So my schedule is blank. We'll fill that in a little bit. But I have announcements where I can post to students, and I can post almost anything in this box for students to see or to kind of engage with because they can like it.

00:12:57:23 - 00:13:17:13

Alex Hirbe: The only option they have, but you can post, you know, content in here, like text, you can post a link, you can post a picture or image, a GIF, you can post a video. Lots of things. You can build a table in here. It's a full, rich text editor. So, almost anything you can, you can put in here for students to see.

00:13:17:14 - 00:13:37:00

Alex Hirbe: So whether that's a short announcement like "Happy Birthday" to a student, or that you're going to be gone for the day, up to, you know, detailed plans for what students are going to do, what they're going to watch, can all be facilitated like this, if you need to. Across the top again, students are here. And we can add students quickly.

00:13:37:02 - 00:14:01:21

Alex Hirbe: Right here. And this will give them a code that refreshes every hour. So this is not something... if, if you're sending stuff out before your class starts, don't send out this little code. This is going to be your in-person code for, for students to use to get in. What I would suggest, if you're going to send this out, and it's going to be longer than an hour, are you copy this invite link, and you send it out to your students.

00:14:01:23 - 00:14:23:03

Alex Hirbe: That way, through email, that way they can, they can join right in, and they will be dropped right into this classroom that you have created. Then across the top again. Another tab we have here is grades. Obviously, there's no grades, many students. But their grade book here, for this classroom, is here, as well as over on the left, like we talked about earlier.

00:14:23:05 - 00:14:43:07

Alex Hirbe: So those are what you have at the top. You also have settings up by your course name. If I click on settings, we can go back in here. And you see, this is all the stuff that we talked about earlier when we created our classroom. We can go back in and change these if we need to, change the thumbnail and banner images, change our schedule, change specific things, add dates.

00:14:43:09 - 00:15:18:01

Alex Hirbe: But also in here is where we can add an instructor, or maybe a para, or a co-teacher. This is somebody that would have access to the course and have access to what you see as a teacher. And they kind of will co-, co-teach with you. But it also is a great way for a para to be in here so that they could help out with students and see the course instructions and lesson instructions and kind of the teacher side, and not just the student side, where they might be missing vital information that, that you, as the teacher, have given out in class or have access to because you...

00:15:18:01 - 00:15:45:06

Alex Hirbe: ...are the teacher. This is also where you would archive your classroom or delete your classroom if needed. Would be down there. As settings. Also for you to do... another setting for you for this classroom is your gradebook setting. And so in your gradebook settings, you can disable the gradebook. Maybe this is just going to be kind of after-school content that you're going to be doing for team building or enrichment or something like that.

00:15:45:07 - 00:16:11:00

Alex Hirbe: Grades don't matter. And so you can disable your gradebook. Other than that, you can assign late assignments, percentages per day, per week, percentages according to your district or building's late grading policies. And then you can build out your specific letter grades. Highly customizable here for student, for teachers, and for districts to have this grading scale exactly how they have it.

00:16:11:00 - 00:16:39:09

Alex Hirbe: So you can disable certain letter grades. Maybe you only do A-B-C-D-F, and you don't do pluses, minuses. Maybe you want a different scale. You know, where A isn't your traditional A, you know, A, just for intents and purposes, A is going to be from 95, you know, to 100. Okay. So from... Oops. Well, it's kind of messed it up, though, because you can't have 97.

00:16:39:11 - 00:17:00:13

Alex Hirbe: So. Yeah. So what you can... 95. So 95 to 97. I was reading that backward. 95 to 97, 97 to 100. So, you know, you can, you can tweak all of these percentages so that you can have a custom grade book according to whatever your grading scheme would be. All right. Back out here to the main part of the, the classroom schedule.

00:17:00:15 - 00:17:17:06

Alex Hirbe: So you can see here our calendar is blank. And we want to assign some content. So if you are with us, with Generation Esports, and you're on the Gaming Concepts curriculum, right here is where you're going to click "Edit Schedule" in your classroom. Okay. So this is going to be one, one method that we can schedule content.

00:17:17:07 - 00:17:33:13

Alex Hirbe: This is going to open up the scheduler. And you can see here I've already got MLK Day down here. Remember I did that when I created my classroom? So that shows the good... that's there. But it shows our day that we're on. And then we can do a couple of things here. We can add content, or we can add more events.

00:17:33:15 - 00:17:55:14

Alex Hirbe: So you don't have to put all those events in when you build your classroom out. You might do a fun thing where you are getting your classroom ready, and you want to put all the students' birthdays in. And so from here, you can click or hover over the number of each day, and you can say, you know, right here, we're going to create an event, and this is going to be...

00:17:55:16 - 00:18:32:05

Alex Hirbe: ...Jack's birthday, right? It's 1/16. All right. So there's Jack's birthday. But obviously, other than putting in fun stuff for the calendar, you can also put in content. So let's say for today, we're going to click the plus, and we can schedule a lesson. So whatever you have access to will pop up and populate this lesson scheduler from... obviously, I can have access to all the courses, but, you know, you may have access to one, two, three, five, six... however many courses you might be with us, or you have created, or you and your teachers have created your own course.

00:18:32:07 - 00:18:47:02

Alex Hirbe: We'll talk about that later. And you would have access to that. So let's just pick this one here, the Rising Champions course. And I'm going to just put in this one, and it's going to ask me... Yes. So I'll put this in here, and I say yes. So there it is. It's put in there. Let me kind of talk you through...

00:18:47:03 - 00:19:15:09

Alex Hirbe: ...what it's showing you is what it's put into this calendar day. The gray is going to be your content. So this is going to be your reading materials and your overview. After that, then it's going to be discussion boards for these. Let me show you a different lesson that has some different colors. If I pick this one, and I pick, say, this one, you can see I got a discussion board and something else... I got an assignment.

00:19:15:11 - 00:19:40:19

Alex Hirbe: So there are several different types of activities or engagements that we have with students on the platform. One is discussion boards. So, you know, just like you would imagine and, you know, you know, collaborative discussion boards among students and yourself. But also, we have assignments where students are going to answer questions. They're going to engage with the platform for matching and sorting and order of operations.

00:19:40:21 - 00:20:02:01

Alex Hirbe: And, you know, uploading content and reviewing content, stuff like that. So that's going to be an assignment that students are going to do. Let's say we know that "Eyes on the Prize" is going to be a longer lesson. I've looked at that as a teacher, either through the library or click on it, I've looked at, "Oh, we're going to be... it's going to take a little bit more time."

00:20:02:03 - 00:20:23:12

Alex Hirbe: So, similar to other LMS systems, right? This is going to be the content that's on that day, is scheduled, assigned, and due on that day. But maybe you want the due date to be later. Well, in other systems, you might have to go in, change the preferences or settings for the assignment, save it, make sure it's on the right section...

00:20:23:14 - 00:20:46:20

Alex Hirbe: ...go back, check it, you know, like that. But in Blueprint, what you're able to do is just to move it like this, right? And so now my due date for this content is tomorrow... err... sorry, is on Thursday. So, all I had to do was drag it, and it sticks like that. And automatically, as soon as I hit save up here, will update that for students for them to see that the...

00:20:46:22 - 00:21:03:15

Alex Hirbe: ...the due date is now on Thursday, and they have an additional day. So, it's a really simple way to do that. Maybe the discussion board gets away from us. Maybe we go crazy on the discussion board, and the kids are, you know, super into it. And we go really in-depth, and we have an awesome conversation. The bell rings.

00:21:03:15 - 00:21:17:15

Alex Hirbe: We forgot to talk about screens and eyestrain. Well, we are going to ungroup our activities. As you saw, I was trying to grab it, ungroup it, and I'm going to move it...

00:21:17:17 - 00:21:36:15

Alex Hirbe: ...right over there. So now we can do that tomorrow. So you can tear this however you want. You want to do content one day. You want to do one activity the next day, you want to do another activity the following day. You know, all of this can be kind of expanded, contracted, and modified however your classroom functions and how it... what best fits for you.

00:21:36:17 - 00:21:55:13

Alex Hirbe: So now you can see I do content, and I do the discussion board Wednesday, Thursday. And then I start the "Screens and Eyestrain" assignment on Thursday. It ends and is due, due on Friday. So that's how we, we assign all that. So that's how we, we add, we move, or we add content individually. So this would be, you know, kind of your one at a time.

00:21:55:14 - 00:22:12:12

Alex Hirbe: You're going to kind of choice-pick lessons you want to use, and you want to go day by day. Totally fine. I love that idea because it's a lot less, you know, kind of set up, you know, and I may have done that as a teacher as well. Big thing on here: Please make sure you hit save right up here in the corner.

00:22:12:14 - 00:22:29:19

Alex Hirbe: Hit save. Make sure that that checkmark shows up so that everything is saved. Everything you've done. Okay. From there, up at the top, you still have the same buttons as when you go over the, the, the, the numbers on each day. So that's the same thing. And you have some bulk actions. You can clear your calendar if you want to clear it.

00:22:29:21 - 00:22:56:11

Alex Hirbe: Okay. And then you're grouping activities together so you can't move things individually. This is on by default. So everything groups together. So it's not going to move individually by default. Okay. So that's how we add content to it individually. Let's add content as a bulk action. So if I go to my next navigation tile here on the left, and I click on "Library," you can see I've got access to a good amount of stuff.

00:22:56:14 - 00:23:15:19

Alex Hirbe: So I'm going to open up our streaming course that I have access to. Maybe I have access to a different one or some other ones. And so you can see here, it's gotten about... It's got a little course commercial here describing what it is. It's got a table of contents here. And you can see I've got all my content here on my, all my units.

00:23:15:20 - 00:23:42:00

Alex Hirbe: And it says how many lessons are in each unit and how many activities are within that unit. Okay. So, quite a bit of activities. This course, in particular, is a whole semester. And it covers, you know, streaming, which overwrites, for many schools in the US, public speaking standards, one-to-one. So if you have public speaking in your school, you could use this course and get the exact same standards that your state is requiring for public speaking.

00:23:42:02 - 00:24:10:01

Alex Hirbe: Just a little tidbit on that. So, let's say this is the course I have. This is what I'm going to teach. A couple of levels of customization here on what you want to schedule. At the very top here, you can click on "Schedule Course," and that will schedule all 86... something lessons... 91 lessons, according to your classroom settings. If you want to schedule just units at a time, you can come down here to the unit and click "Schedule."

00:24:10:01 - 00:24:28:16

Alex Hirbe: And then you will schedule that entire unit. If you want to go in deeper... and I can open the unit, and you can see... or I can schedule the individual lesson if this is how you want to do it. Very similar to how we were doing it on the calendar one by one. But we want to see the, the magic here and kind of set it and forget it.

00:24:28:16 - 00:24:47:11

Alex Hirbe: So I'm going to click "Schedule Course." I'm going to pick my classroom, "Computer Applications." I'm going to pick my start date. We're going to start February 1st... sort of get all my dates all mixed up... actually, it'll be the third because it's the first day in February that we would have class. And I'm going to click "Schedule." Okay.

00:24:47:11 - 00:25:10:09

Alex Hirbe: So, we'll spin for a second, and then go away. It has been scheduled to our classroom. So, let's go back and check my classroom. Here's my classroom, and let's go to the month view. And here we go. You can see that streaming has been scheduled in here. So as I go through, you can see everything has been scheduled.

00:25:10:11 - 00:25:33:02

Alex Hirbe: Students will have access to all of this according to my rules of students. What they can have access to, you know, their visibility rules, and can work through this. Either, you know, asynchronously or synchronously with you, even according to the grading requirement rules. And so, great courses for students to... great, a great way for students to, to work through this according to the rules you have set up.

00:25:33:04 - 00:25:54:03

Alex Hirbe: So everything's in here. You don't have to do anything. You just, you know, day by day. You know, today is Tuesday, March 25th. And we're going to open up this one. "Staying Safe While Streaming." All right. I'm here. I'm the teacher. Click it. Open. And away we go. We're going to start teaching. I got everything here.

00:25:54:05 - 00:26:14:23

Alex Hirbe: Let's talk about what a lesson looks like. We've scheduled them all. Let's teach it. So, let's figure out how this goes. The courses are all designed, especially by us, so that you don't necessarily have to know anything. You, you can be that champion of esports, that facilitator of esports, or, of this class, because you might not be using this for esports.

00:26:15:01 - 00:26:37:19

Alex Hirbe: But you can have your cheat sheet here at the beginning if you're, if you're using our courses. So over here on the overview, this is what students are not going to see. This is going to be what you see as the teacher. And this goes for either our content or your content. So if you have stuff that you don't want the users of your course seeing, all of that content will go in the overview section.

00:26:37:21 - 00:26:59:17

Alex Hirbe: So for us, and talking about Gaming Concepts, that's going to be the lesson overview: the objectives, materials needed, standards alignment, and then the directions for instruction. And so these are detailed instructions that the, the teacher... use... the teacher needs to go through this content sequentially with your students. Students will start here on the lesson overview.

00:26:59:17 - 00:27:23:09

Alex Hirbe: And they get some of the same stuff. Not just... not exactly, just what they need to be successful here, which is their objective, basically, and the materials. Then you work through sequentially going down the row here. We're going to start with this, this... sorry. Excuse me. They're going to start with this little video, and then we're going to move into understanding...

00:27:23:11 - 00:27:43:09

Alex Hirbe: ...what we're going to do for today. We're going to learn about peer review strategies and being impromptu... how to give an impromptu speech. We're going to go through a lot of this stuff. We're going to try again. We're going to do it again, and we're going to journal about it. Okay. A big component of the Gaming Concepts curriculum is the journaling and ELA component that's built in.

00:27:43:11 - 00:28:00:03

Alex Hirbe: And so that's built into all of our lessons. Your lessons that you create, which you can... are... could be obviously wildly different. It could be a science lesson. It could be a health lesson. It could be a math lesson. But these are kind of the overviews of how all of that works and how it looks for students.

00:28:00:05 - 00:28:21:04

Alex Hirbe: If you are using our stuff, or you have been given content from another entity, you are always able to edit your lesson to be custom to you and cater to your, your school, your demographic, anything you want. So, let's say, you know, you're doing this lesson overview. And you want to change these videos. Great. You just click "Edit Lesson."

00:28:21:06 - 00:28:38:20

Alex Hirbe: Here it is. You're in the lesson editor. I click "Lesson Overview," and I pop in... type that... and I put in the link that I want. Okay. And you just want to click "Create Lesson" when you're done. You don't necessarily have to save it to a specific site. You more than likely will only have one. But I'm not going to save that.

00:28:38:20 - 00:28:58:18

Alex Hirbe: But you can make any changes you want. Add, remove. You know, enhance, however you'd like to do it. So that your students can have the best experience based on, you know, your knowledge of what you want to teach them. So that's what a lesson would look like with students following along. And I mentioned that you can create your own.

00:28:58:18 - 00:29:17:22

Alex Hirbe: So if we go back out to the library, which is where we found this stuff, you can create your own courses in Blueprint. So it's, it's awesome that you can put things that you might have in notebooks or things that you have gathered over the years as a teacher and put that into an online platform that students can use.

00:29:18:00 - 00:29:39:06

Alex Hirbe: That's, you know, it's, you know, safe. It's, it's well-built and something that can offer them an enhanced experience over other free platforms. So you put your image in here. Title, description, outline, and then your units. And so then you can just start planning lessons. When I click "Plan a Lesson," it puts me into the lesson planner.

00:29:39:06 - 00:30:04:13

Alex Hirbe: So here's your teacher instructions I talked about. Just a big box. You need to type everything in you want. But you can also add videos and images and links and tables and formatting. You can do all those things in here. And then you can add an activity, like adding an assignment, a discussion board, a journal, another rich text box where students would be reading a lengthy bit of text that you might have gotten from an article or something that you've typed out.

00:30:04:13 - 00:30:32:07

Alex Hirbe: The detailed instructions for a project, maybe they're going to do a survey or a short poll or a quick check, or they're going to do a test. So all of these items are on here for you to build awesome content with Blueprint. So I encourage you, you know, if you're, if you're with us or not with us, check out some of these functions and features because there's so much in here that we could spend double the amount of time on this webinar for sure.

00:30:32:09 - 00:30:50:05

Alex Hirbe: In, in how we, you know, do things like custom content, building courses, online learning, and all that stuff. But, you know, as a brief overview, know that you have the ability to create all of this yourself. And then it's safe to your site, your, you know, when you log in and you create... you, as a, as a site...

00:30:50:06 - 00:31:19:17

Alex Hirbe: ...whether you're creating that for your, your school, or whether your school has purchased this for you, you have the ability to create your own stuff or add your own stuff. It does have to be our stuff. Like I said, it could be math, science, P.E., social studies, whatever you want. And you can add in question types like this: file upload, fill-in-the-blank, matching, multiple choice, multiple select, sort into boxes, a text answer, a text break for further information.

00:31:19:22 - 00:31:41:07

Alex Hirbe: Sometimes when you're, you know, having these online interactions with students, you get so far with one question that you've started at the top, but you want to drill down a little deeper, and you need to give them a little bit more information to get to the point where you want them to be. So, "text break" is for you to add more content for the students to drill down deeper into the, into the question or into the, the learning you're doing.

00:31:41:09 - 00:32:02:10

Alex Hirbe: And then finally, true/false. So those are the question types that you can do in tests and in assignments. If you look at surveys, it's the other kind of engagement that we do, like, "add section," click into the section, add questions. We can do a quick poll. All right. So students can have a question. They can vote on that question.

00:32:02:16 - 00:32:20:14

Alex Hirbe: This is really neat because it shows in real-time if students answer it up on the board. So, as the teacher, you have this open, you're on page two here of your lesson. And they're voting on this question that you put on. It's going to show that in real-time, okay? So you can say here, "Mark results public to the classroom."

00:32:20:16 - 00:32:44:20

Alex Hirbe: You can also mark anything grade level or automatically submit... submitted as passed. Another thing in here is the slider scale. Okay. Nothing fancy here. But students will have to slide and interact with the platform a little bit to see what they're doing. Maybe it's a question on social-emotional learning. Maybe it's a question on math, or how you're feeling, or something like that.

00:32:44:22 - 00:32:57:19

Alex Hirbe: Or a rating scale, or something like that. You might use a slider scale for. And then finally, "quick rate," "quick rates." My, my favorite a little bit, but only because it's got all the icons here. This is great, like I just mentioned, for scale, but this is great for just a quick check. How did the lesson go today?

00:32:58:00 - 00:33:20:14

Alex Hirbe: Right. Quick exit ticket. Quick bell ringer. These are great for those if you want to add those in or start building content with that. So you get smiles. You've got numbers. And then you've got thumbs up, thumbs down. So, a really great, quick, informal assessment tool here that you can have... it's graded or non-graded and can really build content out to, to your heart's content.

00:33:20:16 - 00:33:44:21

Alex Hirbe: And see how students are doing and interacting with your, with your, your content. Sure. I'll say that. So, so that's how you build it, and you just keep adding, you know, new lesson, new lesson, however you want to. You want to build a new unit. And we have teachers that are building, you know, awesome, amazing courses on here with us, that are doing all kinds of things with Blueprint, like, there's an auto mechanics course on here.

00:33:44:21 - 00:34:07:21

Alex Hirbe: There's a welding course on here. There are some, you know, ad hoc, kind of on your own, you know, esports... custom esports programs that kids are... that, that teachers are building based off of our stuff. So many cool things that are being built on here for, for teachers to use. Within your course that you make, you can allow custom lessons.

00:34:07:21 - 00:34:28:05

Alex Hirbe: So maybe you, you build something, maybe you're an instructional designer, or your curriculum specialist for your district, or you're an HR manager. And you're going to put something out... this, for your employees or for your users. This toggle here in the course allows you to allow for this, the teachers of your course, to use custom lessons and edit the content.

00:34:28:05 - 00:34:43:21

Alex Hirbe: So whether that's, that's good or bad, it's up to you. So we always allow it on all our content. So if you want to do that, great, people can, can edit it. And then finally, you know, is this going to be private? Is it going to be public to the sites you select, or is it going to be public to all my sites?

00:34:43:21 - 00:35:05:17

Alex Hirbe: Like I said, if you're a curriculum specialist or a designer, you might have the public to certain sites because you're building... helping to build content for middle schools. So maybe you're at the middle schools in your district. You would select and, and you can put those in there. And then finally, you can clone and delete, you know, if you need to make a slight alteration for differentiation, or you need a course... it's a little bit higher level, but you don't want to lose all your content.

00:35:05:19 - 00:35:27:11

Alex Hirbe: You just want to expand upon it. That's where this "Clone Course" tool is really great if you want to build upon all the work you've already done. Oops. "Save Changes." Can't say that I don't have any content in there, so we'll just go back to the library. All right. So that is a lot. And I, I apologize because I do talk... tend to talk kind of fast.

00:35:27:11 - 00:35:53:04

Alex Hirbe: Does anyone have any questions, or something that they'd like me to go over again or kind of go into a little bit more depth on? Blueprint and its functions await for appropriate wait time.

00:35:53:06 - 00:36:18:17

Alex Hirbe: Oh, good question. Okay. Yes. Yeah. So the question we got is: Students are taking it, but they... you mentioned resubmit. Yes. So if students have completed an assignment, they are always able to go back in and edit the activity. So let's, let's just click into an activity here. Okay. So here we are, "Fun Activity Log" that students are going to do, right?

00:36:18:19 - 00:36:44:15

Alex Hirbe: So let's say they completed this on, on Friday. And you are going to grade it on Wednesday... not the next week, it's just when you decide to grade it. As long as you haven't graded it, students are always able to go back in and edit their answers because we haven't graded it yet. If you have graded it in their grade book, they can, they will see the grade, and there is an option for asking for a retake.

00:36:44:15 - 00:36:57:02

Alex Hirbe: And then you will be notified, whether you allow that or not. So yeah, good question. You will, you'll always have that option to, to do that.

00:36:57:04 - 00:37:06:07

Alex Hirbe: Any other questions?

00:37:06:09 - 00:37:32:08

Alex Hirbe: A chat, Q&A, because some people came in later. Make sure nobody has any Q&A questions. Perfect. Okay, great. All right. So let's, let's talk about a few more things. Let's kind of look at it when we have students in here. I'm going to switch to a new site.

00:37:32:10 - 00:37:37:15

Alex Hirbe: All right. So let's say I've got students...

00:37:37:17 - 00:37:59:09

Alex Hirbe: ...in here. I don't always remember where I have students, but here we go. Okay, so you can see here, you know, I've got this class running right now. Class grade, super low. Yeah. I'm not a very good... at... I'm not... kids... Kids aren't doing too great. Whether that's me or them, hard to say. I have two grade, assignments to grade.

00:37:59:11 - 00:38:19:11

Alex Hirbe: You can see here is my dashboard. This is, like, a lot of content going on. And then I can see here everything that has been submitted by my students. What has been submitted? And then when it was due, and then when it was submitted. Okay. This is where I can visit my gradebook. It'll take me right to my big gradebook here.

00:38:19:13 - 00:38:42:19

Alex Hirbe: Or fundamentals. You can see here, lots of stuff. They, they aren't doing too hot. So let's take a look at the gradebook. All right. There's some submissions here that need to be graded. So I'm going to look at this one here. And if I... I've got a couple of options here. So if I click on this arrow, then it's going to open up my grading tray, and I can put my grade in here.

00:38:42:20 - 00:39:05:21

Alex Hirbe: I could also type... just type it in here in the, in the, in the spreadsheet... I do air quotes on that... "type it in the spreadsheet," but also here, what... I'm to put a grading for. I can also mark it excused, late. And I can also offer comments for students that they will get notification about. I can enter the submission view here, and I can see what was submitted.

00:39:05:23 - 00:39:27:07

Alex Hirbe: So, section one, you know, what, what are we looking at here? So, these students did not answer all of these questions, right? I can just go through here, and I can, you know, put my points in as needed. Right? Obviously, it's ungraded. So it doesn't have to be graded. That's because this assignment specifically is an ungraded one.

00:39:27:07 - 00:39:43:03

Alex Hirbe: But, you know, you would have one that was, is graded. So you put all your questions in here... Are you all... show you all your points in here for this assignment. And then you can submit a grade. It will tally everything as you put them in over here if you decided to just put them in here. Right.

00:39:43:03 - 00:40:02:21

Alex Hirbe: So if I put one, one, one, one, then it's going to see, it's going to keep track over here. So... and I apologize, I misspoke, "ungraded," it... because I have not put a grade in here, even though it is for zero points. So I put it in there. "Upload a recording." This one, out of ten. We have supplied point values for you.

00:40:03:02 - 00:40:22:02

Alex Hirbe: You don't have to use that. But we have supplied a generic point grading scheme. So any question that the... bit that the platform has is usually one point. And then a discussion board post is worth five points. A journal entry is worth five points. And then anything that students are going to upload, like a larger project, is worth ten.

00:40:22:02 - 00:40:39:19

Alex Hirbe: It's kind of the scheme that we have, but you don't have to follow that at all. You can change anything you want. Okay, it looks like they uploaded the right thing here. And so they've got four points. If I had... if we had made this a real assignment with 18 points, for real. And I can say, "Great job!"

00:40:39:21 - 00:40:43:21

Alex Hirbe: I spelled that right!

00:40:43:23 - 00:41:10:10

Alex Hirbe: And I can submit my grades. Okay. So it has been submitted. Now I can reset my grade. And this would highlight if students are starting to do retakes. Okay. If they're asking for submissions. All right. So that's kind of the gradebook. Within the gradebook, you can affect a couple of other settings, like, you know, if we have a... I guess I should go back in and show you. You can affect a couple of other different settings.

00:41:10:12 - 00:41:27:02

Alex Hirbe: You know, you can sort and do lots of different things like that. But if you say you've got this assignment right here, you can click on the assignment, and you can edit the settings for it. So you know, like I said, you can affect all the points. So, you're saying section one is worth six, while you want it to be worth ten.

00:41:27:02 - 00:41:42:14

Alex Hirbe: You want this one to be worth 15. Maybe you don't want it to be graded, but you do want it to be... "auto-pass." Maybe you want this to be auto-passed and then hide the grade. So maybe this is an exam that people are taking as they come in. You don't want people to see their grades or see the correct answers until a certain date.

00:41:42:18 - 00:42:02:14

Alex Hirbe: That's in here, too. That's in the assignment details when you click on any of your gradebook assignments. For, for what you've done, you can also just view the activity if you want to go right to it. I'm going to take you right here. EA Sports... up to two opportunities for this assignment. Okay. So that's a gradebook. And that's, I mean, that's really it.

00:42:02:16 - 00:42:23:16

Alex Hirbe: Aside from really getting into the nuts and bolts of, you know, content creation, and that would be a whole other course, really, on understanding online learning and all that stuff. So, you know, I hope that this has provided you with a detailed overview of, of the Blueprint LXP and how you could use it in your classroom.

00:42:23:18 - 00:42:44:10

Alex Hirbe: Or you could use it, you know, for the purposes of online learning, whether that's with students... with any type of student, adult or, you know, traditional students. So again, any questions here at the end? Happy to ask or happy to answer any questions that anyone has over the platform, Gaming Concepts, Generation Esports, edtech in general.

00:42:44:10 - 00:42:56:03

Alex Hirbe: We can chat about that. Anything that you want to talk about? I'm happy to answer.

00:42:56:05 - 00:43:18:13

Alex Hirbe: Good question. How much is it? We get this all the time. How much is it? Blueprint is completely free. 100% free. There's no restrictions on it. There's no limits. So you, you feel free to sign up, even if you're not with us. Sign up and use it because we have people doing it all over the country and are creating some cool courses on there for their students to engage in.

00:43:18:13 - 00:43:28:17

Alex Hirbe: So, 100% free. No strings attached. Nothing. Nothing to it. Good question.

00:43:28:19 - 00:43:57:21

Alex Hirbe: Anyone else? Okay. Well, again, thank you so much. This video will be posted on our YouTube page later this week. Again, those of you that are in attendance are going to get that one hour of credit or continuing education credit. That will be emailed to you for signing up and attending. And if you like this content and, you know, you want to see more of this, there will be more throughout our first... our season seven, which will go through May of this year.

00:43:57:23 - 00:44:15:09

Alex Hirbe: You know, make sure that you like and subscribe to these videos so you're notified when we get the new ones out. Or head over to gamingconcepts.gg so that you can register for all of the upcoming webinars and check out what's going on with Gaming Concepts in real-time. Again, my name is Alex Hirbe. Thank you so much for attending, and we will see you later.

00:44:15:11 - 00:44:16:15

Alex Hirbe: Thank you so much. Bye!


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