Buncee: Our 2019-2020 DigCitAPPROVED Partners

We are proud to announce   Buncee  as part of our   2019-2020 DigCitAPPROVED partners.

“The Buncee experience offers a lot of opportunities for students to become real-world-ready and thrive as lifelong learners.” - Marie Arturi

Buncee is a digital tool that speaks to kids because it understands kids. Its self-directed creation platform allows students to research, create and share all without ever having to leave the Buncee platform. With the ability to choose from thousands of digital assets (stickers, animations and messages), add video, audio, draw, upload pictures and documents, Buncee offers multiple ways for students to demonstrate their knowledge.

But Buncee’s reach is wider than just students-it also empowers educators and administrators to connect, create, and learn together. In all 50 states, in more than 127 countries, and with 1.5 million users and app downloads around the world, Buncee truly allows educators and professionals alike to share and grow together. Joy Sun Bear, a children’s book author, shares the power of Buncee to connect and engage: “My first experience was when some of the coolest students ever, in Mrs. Monty’s class in Florida, used it to share their thoughts and feelings about our book. It is such a great way for kids to express themselves and learn about graphical user interfaces at the same time.”  

​To us, at the Digital Citizenship Institute, we proudly give the stamp of digital citizenship approval (DigCitAPPROVED) to Buncee as both a tool and platform, as well as a company and organization.

DigCitAPPROVED Tool and Platform

As a tool and platform, Buncee provides opportunities for classrooms to build a foundation focused on creativity, self-expression, and honoring the human. These life skills are at the heart of our work and aligns with our DigCitCommunity Mindset.

Buncee celebrates the human at every step of the way, from sharing to creating to learning to celebrating the individual on the other side of the screen. This spring, a fifth grader, Molly, shared her art with others, and Buncee saw her potential and honored her personal talents. Shannon McClintock Miller writes, “There is now a Molly Dolls category of Stickers within Buncee. In this category are original Molly Dolls that Molly herself drew, colored and scanned to Joel, Buncee's lead designer, to create into stickers for everyone to use.”

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Buncee models digital citizenship by providing an avenue for young students who do not have the opportunity to experience new places, meet different types of people, or learn about other cultures. Buncee Buddies, which has  grown into a partnership with Skype, is a digital pen pal project bringing together students and teachers from across the globe. Throughout the program, the goal is to encourage cross-cultural exchanges, critical thinking based on a prompt, creativity, and the growth of new friendships. Each project has a theme and a prompt with questions that encourage the classrooms to exchange ideas and experiences with each other. This exchange is where the magic happens.

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Beyond creating authentic work in Buncee, students are able to develop their digital citizenship by sharing their creations with others. The tool helps classrooms to publish their work, as well as foster community and dialogue around it, both within and beyond the school walls, but permissions can be turned on/off for each sharing capability. In the spring of 2019, Michael Drezek, an educator in New York, started a  Global Buncee Book that was then written by different classrooms, and it traveled 23, 208 miles (38, 315 km) around the world through its creation and sharing.

“Buncee is a wonderful tool for digital citizenship as students can use it to create things like ‘I Will’ statements and raise awareness on what digital citizenship means to them. Since Buncees are ‘commentable’ students can practice digital citizenship in an authentic way. We use Buncee Boards for this when connecting with classrooms globally,” Drezek says.

With the functions and uses that it offers, Buncee allows students to engage in their world, positively, and honor the human on the other side of the screen, which is exactly what we at Digital Citizenship Institute believe.

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DigCitAPPROVED Company and Organization

Buncee’s CEO and Founder, Marie Arturi, founded Buncee as an opportunity for her to digitally share a personal story about her daughter that involved both loss and hope. She wanted a digital tool that allowed for a personal touch, a very real human touch, and thus, Buncee was born.

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“We are committed to enabling students to acquire these skills in a unique and fun way, so we’ve purposefully designed Buncee to be easy enough for learners of all ages to use it. With Buncee, students are beginning to acquire 21st-century and digital citizenship skills, even at a very young age. The technology helps educators achieve Media Arts Standards, as well as other national and statewide education standards.” - Marie Arturi

Arturi, Buncee’s CEO, and Claire Cucchi, Buncee’s COO, are both mothers, so as a company, they look at student privacy from the viewpoint of a parent. Whether they are designing and building out new features or sharing stories from their community, they always ask themselves, “How would I feel if that were my child?”, and then decide accordingly.

To everyone at Buncee, Digital Citizenship means teaching students to be safe, responsible citizens online.  This also includes promoting kindness and good, empathizing with others in a global society, and understanding the power of one. Digital Citizenship is a top priority at Buncee, both internally as an organization, as well as externally, on their platform used by students of all ages and abilities.  Buncee provides features which allow educators to teach students to be safe and responsible online within the privacy of their own classroom, while giving them the opportunity to interact with other classrooms across the globe.

Buncee participates in theiKeepSafe COPPA Safe Harbor Certification program, and they’re a signatory of the Student Privacy Pledge. They have implemented their own safe search parameters within Buncee creation in order to address CIPA and protect children from harmful online content. Buncee adheres to the data protection rights outlined under GDPR, and is compliant with FERPA and maintaining the confidentiality of student education records.  Buncee’s commitment to providing students with a safe, secure environment to explore, create, and communicate is evident throughout their platform. Protecting students online is their top priority.
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Buncee stands out to us as a company and organization committed to building a generation of young learners who truly experience the human being sitting next to them, around the world and across the screen. Since DCI’s core values have students at the center of our work, we believe students need to be part of the solution.

Be the Digital Change

This APPROVED partnership supports local, global, and digital communities working together to think critically and act creatively as we solve problems and create solutions together, both on and offline. Buncee’s why resonates with us as a wonderful tool, platform, company, and organization who provides students opportunities to learn about different perspectives and practice interpersonal skills that are crucial for building cross-cultural relationships later in life, through technology and virtual exchange. Our missions are well-aligned to transform participants into designers, creative thinkers, global collaborators, problem solvers, and justice-oriented citizens. Through our shared vision to prepare students for a more collaborative and global world, and through leveraging technology for social good, our work together has the potential to drastically impact and change the lives of students across the globe for the better.

Other Buncee Resources and Capabilities

Periscope interview of Marie Arturi, hosted by Curran Dee
DigCitKids Back-to-School Tips
Buncee...The Perfect Tool For Supporting, Modeling and Teaching Digital Citizenship
When Gratitude Meets Creativity: How A Thank-You Note Inspired Marie Arturi, CEO of Buncee, to Build A Platform For Digital Storytellers
The Daniella Maria Arturi Foundation, dedicated to raise awareness and to find a cure for Diamond Blackfan Anemia (DBF)

​Some of   our   favorite Buncee features include:
Badges: Students and teachers have the ability to receive recognition and encourage engagement via Buncee Badges.
Boards: These boards provide peer review, commenting, and reaction functionalities to enable and encourage user discussion and collaboration within and beyond the classroom.
Commenting: Commenting can be turned on any Buncee creation to open up a classroom discussion.  Only the classroom can view and participate in the commenting, allowing for an open discussion along with a lesson on the appropriate ways to interact online.  Teachers can critique and make suggestions, all within the private bubble of the classroom.
Sharing Capabilities: Share to Facebook; Share to Google Classroom; Share to Google Plus (+); Share to LinkedIn; Share to Pinterest; Share to Twitter; Share through email; Create, View, and Share RSVPs; Generate QR Codes; Download PDF or JPEG; Embed Buncees; Share Buncee URL.