Mouse Create has hundreds of projects across many competency areas. To help you find the right projects for your group, we recommend these steps:
Educators: Take the Mouse Educator Course: Select the "Projects" button in the top menu. Within the Project Finder, select the “Educator Course". Then complete each project within the course.
Use the Project Finder (in the "Projects" area) to navigate to course pages about each Mouse Create course, or to filter the projects by skill or setting tags.
Mouse Create courses are groups of projects that are meant to be done in sequence. You can access each course by clicking on the name of the course in the project finder.
On a course page, you can explore the outcomes, materials and instruction time requirements for each course, as well as the digital badges earned within, the projects for the course in order and a list of optional, related projects.
To add an entire course to your group’s playlist, click the "Add Course to Playlist" button at the top of the page.
Note: You can only add projects and courses to groups where you are the “Group Manager”. If you created the group yourself, you are automatically the Group Manager. If you joined a group created by another educator, the Group Manager can give you “Group Manager” status from the “Members” area under “Actions”.
Projects that require facilitation are often tagged "Group Only", meaning this project can not be done by a student on their own.
To facilitate a project on Mouse Create, first open it by clicking on the project from the Project Finder or within your Group’s Playlist.
Before leading it, read through the Plan tab to find a list of outcomes, materials, and instructions on how to prep the activity. In this tab you will also find a link to the project’s standards alignment, debrief/reflection questions, and any suggested prerequisite or follow-up projects.
We recommend going through each of the project’s steps on your own before leading with youth.
There are 3 tabs on each Mouse Create project: Plan, Steps, and Submit Work.
Each project on Mouse Create has a step-by-step interface in the Steps tab, and an educator facing lesson plan in the Plan tab.
The Submit Work tab shows any evidence uploaded by a student while working on a project, as well as any other creators the student has marked as collaborating with on the project.
Students, or small groups of students, can either follow along step-by-step on their own devices or you can display the steps on a projector or smartboard for the whole group.
There are two ways to navigate between steps: clicking on the name of the step on the right column (or in a dropdown on mobile), or clicking on the arrow buttons at the top or bottom of each step.
Required Tasks: Each project has one or more steps with required tasks. This is usually the last step in a project, although some projects may have other steps with these evidence prompts. On these steps there is a "Requirements" area at the bottom of the step. This area often has required reflection questions, or a request to document their work with text, an image, or or a file.
After uploading text, images or .zip files learners will still need to submit their work from the Submit Work tab.
At the bottom of the last step there is a Review My Work button, which navigates to the Submit Work tab. This tab can also be accessed at any time by clicking on the tab.
Creators: If students are working in teams, or as a whole group, they can tag other users in your group as "collaborators" before submitting the project. This will give those users credit for having completed the project as well.
Submitted projects need to be reviewed by a Group Manager. You can find these projects on your group page in the "Group Work" tab.
For more information see the Reviewing Student Work page.
Note: students in multiple groups need to make sure the correct group is active at the top of the page before starting a project. If a student wants to submit a project do a different group they will need to switch groups by going to the "My Groups" page from the “More" menu.
To find other work submitted to your group, go to your Group home Group Work tab.
Click on the Project’s name to open the Project Work popup.
There are 2 tabs in this window: Project Work & Discussion.
The Project Work tab has all of the text, images or attachments submitted. The Discussion tab is where you can leave comments or start a discussion.
When leaving a comment, you can choose to attach a star icon (to share something you like about the work), a question mark icon (to ask a question), a lightbulb icon (to share an idea or suggestion about the work) or just leave a comment without an icon.
You will receive a notification if another user replies to your comment, or if another user leaves a comment on your own Project Work.
To edit your own comment or reply, click the edit button at the end of your message text.
Click "Submit" or press the enter/return key to save your edited message.
To delete your own comment or reply, click the delete button at the end of your message text.
If you notice an inappropriate comment from another user:
Leave a reply with feedback about why you think it is inappropriate, asking them to edit
Speak to the user in person (if they are in your group) and ask them to remove or edit their comment
Educators: if it is not possible to resolve through feedback directly with the student who submitted the comment, if the student is in your group, you can edit their password from the Manage Members link on the Group Page and log in with their account to delete the comment.