Skip to main content

Tuesday Teacher Tips January 7, 2014 - Intro to Augmented Reality, Genius Files, & Screencasts for Office 365


These were the tips I sent out to my faculty today. The Augmented Reality discussion is fairly specific to a display in our building, but may be useful in generating ideas for using Aurasma.  For the Office 365 screencasts, they will be part of a series of screencasts I do to help both teachers and students in my building learn how to work with features of our new Office 365 accounts.


Digital Citizenship  Gallery & Aurasma


During the first semester in the library, students in grades 3-5 worked very hard at exercising a number of skills through Project Based Learning.  They practiced research skills, persistence in the use of technology, and learned about many concepts that will hopefully help make them better digital citizens.  Students made videos using iPads & iMove or Puppet Pals and Flip cameras and Microsoft Movie Maker, they created posters and made presentations to the class that we recorded live. 

You can view the videos students made on the library website under each grade level and teacher’s name.  To view the poster presentations, you can catch the recordings by using the Aurasma app on your classroom iPad or on your personal device.  Download the app from your device’s app store. 

Once you have the app on your device, in order to view the presentations, do the following: 

  • Scan the Aurasma QR codes posted  on the instruction sheet near the different galleries of posters.  The QR code will automatically allow you to follow the private “channel” I created  for the presentations. 
  • Once you are following the channel, a series of “trigger images” - images of the posters, will appear in the channel.
  • Now, hold your device, with the app open in front of the poster, you may have to tilt it and vary the angle, until you see a purple swirl, hold the device steady and a video will begin playing.  Make sure your volume is on!

You only have to scan the QR code once to view all of the presentations.  

Aurasma in the Classroom

For teachers with iPads, you can use the Aurasma app to create auras—interactive content - for your students, or better yet, to have your students generate their own interactive content. 


Aurasma uses Augmented Reality—which makes use of technology to “augment” real world images and things. You can create augmented reality handouts that give students tips or directions for completing their work, or create augmented reality displays of student work with recordings of them giving an explanation of their own work.

To learn more about how it works, check out my longer blog entry on it [here]
In addition to the digital citizenship projects, In the library, we have successfully used Aurasma to generate book talks.  Students in 3-5 grades have picked up very quickly on the process to create an aura using the app. 

While the app is incredibly easy to use to generate content, you may want some help setting up your account and creating and sharing channels, as I have done.  Send me an email and we can set up a time to meet to go over ideas.

Genius Files: Mission Unstoppable

In Mission Unstoppable, the first book of the Genius Files series, Dan Gutman, intro­duces readers to soon to be 13 year old, twins Coke and Pepsi McDonald.
The twins’ father, a history professor, and mother, web­site author of “Amazing but True” or getting ready to take their children on a cross country tour of the United States.

But, before they can set foot in the RV, the twins find themselves facing assassi­nation by poisoned darts and cliff jumping to survive.

The book is not only filled with adventure and sus­pense, but also excellent historical references and allusions to famous Ameri­can locations, and some of the more idiosyncratic loca­tions you can visit around the US, including features like the giant ball of twine.

Check out the book trailer [here].  

And, follow Dan Gut­man on Twitter [here].

You can also find teacher resources at  the blog: Con­versation Pieces: Building Bright Ideas [here]. 

You also may want to check out Harper Collins excerpt with discussion questions [here].

Office 365—Screencast Tutorials—Logging on, Overview and Creating a Word Document

Our new Office 365 accounts give us access to many important web-based features like webmail, SkyDrive and web apps such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.  Create, edit and share documents from your computer, tablet or smart phone.  

To learn how to log on to your Office 365 account and about the basic features click [here] for a screencast tutorial.


To learn about Office 365 and your digital footprint click [here].  This one is especially important to view and to eventually share with students, as it addresses some of the public features of Office 365.

 







To learn how to create and edit a Word document using the Microsoft Word Web App click [here].



The screencast tutorials are each around 4 minutes long.  
Currently, the tutorials are on YouTube, if you would like a school & student friendly video source, please let me know, and I will send you a different link.   

As always, if you have questions, let me know.  I’m happy to help!




Comments

  1. Augmented reality is very interesting for marketer because it is very promising to increase the sales It can create the customer to be involved in marketing campaign. The experience of marketing campaign will create potential customer to increase conversion rate.

    Interactive Virtual Reality

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Library Centers for Kindergarten & First Grade

Center Inspiration After much debate at the end of last school year, I was able to get 10 extra minutes added on to each of my classes for this year boosting class library time from 35 minutes a week to 45 minutes a week for my fixed schedule.  For me, 35 minutes a week, just wasn't enough to pack in all the awesomeness I wanted to achieve.  It seemed like we would just be getting started into something great when it was time to go. I was thrilled to know that this year I was going to have the extra time to work with my classes on research skills and technology projects while working in more time to allow them to browse the shelves and look at books.  That being said, truth be told, I was completely freaked out about what to do with my kindergartners for 45 minutes. Did I mention in my former life, I was a high school English teacher?  Four years ago, my first two weeks in an elementary library were a complete culture shock to me. I was used to walking into a room and just say

Project Genre-fy the Fiction Section!

After a lot of thinking, I finally decided to take the leap this summer and move the fiction section of my elementary library from the traditional first-three-letters-of-the-last- name organization to a genre based organization. Now that the project is almost complete, I cannot wait to get the kids back in the library so I can show them! Deciding Factors There are many reasons individual teacher librarians might choose to genrefy their library.  For me, I was driven to start with the fiction section because I've noticed an alarming drop off in students checking out books by the time they get to fifth grade.  This drop off could be for any number of reasons: increased activities after school, loss of interest in the materials they see on the shelf, lack of time, or they could be overwhelmed by book after book organized by letter. I realized, too, that although my 3-5 graders don't ask for "funny" books or "animal" stories, they seem to get stuck on c

Digital Interactive Notebooks: Getting Started

Post appeared also on FtEdTech It's no real secret that I love Digital Interactive Notebooks.  I create them every chance I get and encourage teachers to use them for everything from long term Project Based Learning (PBL) projects to weekly unit work with vocabulary .   The Interactive Notebook (INB) has long been a staple of the classroom to engage students more directly with their notes.  The traditional interactive notebook often includes traditional student notes, questions, and interactives that students cut, fold, color and paste into their notebooks. You might find graphic organizers, pockets with measuring tools, data charts, and foldables that act as study aides.  In the NSTA article " Science Interactive Notebooks in the Classroom " Jocelyn Young explains the benefits of INB when she shares that " By using notebooks, students model one of the most vital and enduring functions of scientists in all disciplines—recording information, figures, and data.