Augmented Reality is a Reality in Our Classroom

We have been experimenting with augmented reality for a few months now. Students think it is MAGIC! They are excited to do anything with augmented reality, and I am too! We started out with the colAR Mix App and then moved on to Aurasma. We have used colAR for International Dot Day, for Halloween, and for winter holidays. We will also be using it for Chinese New Year at the end of this month. We have used Aurasma to create book talks and to share our book trailers we created in iMovie. Students are motivated by the magic of augmented reality!

Here are some other augmented reality options that may be of use to you and your students!
-Anatomy 4D
-Atlas
-AR Flashcards Animal Alphabet
-CyberChase Space Quest
-Elements 4D
-NASA Spacecraft 3D
-SolAR System Discovery
-Tour of the Nile


Check out my Pinterest Board for Augmented Reality  http://www.pinterest.com/mrshamorg/augmented-reality/

Classroom Adventures with Apple TV

Last year I was given an Apple TV to use in my classroom. I fell in love with it when kids could sit at their desks and share their projects on their iPads with the class wirelessly! We shared all of our projects and taught each other how to use apps with the Apple TV and mirroring on the iPad. It was wonderful, but not until this year did I really start to harness the power of Apple TV in the classroom. I wanted to use it to allow me to not be tethered to the projector cart. Our projectors are not mounted in the ceiling and we each have a cart with a projector and a document camera on it. I am thankful for it, but miss the ability to move around and use proximity control when using the projector or doc camera. This year I was determined to be able to move.

To help me with this I found the apps Stage https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/stage-interactive-whiteboard/id584574701?mt=8 and iAnnotate https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/iannotate-pdf/id363998953?mt=8.

Stage with Apple TV allows me to write on the iPad like a whiteboard. It will record my writing and my voice as I use the app. This allows me to record my lessons and examples and publish them for students to use when they need to access it. I usually share with students on Edmodo. They appreciate this and thank me for it on a regular basis.

iAnnotate with Apple TV allows me to use my iPad like the cart on my projector and the document camera. If I have activities or worksheets that we are working on together or doing examples on I upload them to Google Drive or share them to my iPad through email. Then, I can write on them and then email them to myself and then post them to Edmodo for students who are absent or who need reminders of what we did in class.










When I use either of the apps I use a stylus to help me write neatly. My stylus of choice is the Jot Pro Fine Point Stylus. It may be a bit on the expensive side, but once you use it you will realize that it is worth the price.

One of the best kept secrets of Apple TV is all of the free content that comes on it. There are channels, like the Smithsonian Channel, PBS, and the Weather Channel that have plenty of quality free content in the form of videos and video clips that can be used in the classroom to support learning.  If you don't check these out and use them in the classroom you are missing a lot of great stuff!

Webpages Made Easily and for Free

I have published my webpages for about 10 years with iWeb. My pages were hosted using Apple's Mobile Me until that service ended a few years ago. After that, my school district hosted the pages and it was fine, but I had to be on the school network to publish. I was thankful that they hosted them, but it was a pain to have to be at school to publish. Finally, when I was frustrated enough with it and wanted a more up to date look, I went to http://www.weebly.com/ to publish my pages. It was simple and easy, best of all it was free! Yes, there is a paid version, but I an content with the free version. Weebly features beautiful templates, many options for page layouts, drag and drop, and text editing like a word processor. Weebly is simple, beautiful, and easy. Give it a try today.

Here is the link to my class webpage - http://mrsmorgan6.weebly.com/

Here is the link to my professional webpage - http://heidiamorgan.weebly.com/

Book Talk Podcasts with QR Codes

With CCSS lexile levels are important. I have my students read books within their lexile range independently. This is the sheet I make them fill out as they read https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxOiAHva3B1haGhSQnJPd09ZRDQ/edit?usp=sharing. It takes them 10 days to read their book (I tell them they can pick to read on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday). Then when they have completed the book and their sheet they complete a book talk podcast and create a QR code of their podcast. To do this I first created a blog in Blogger. I used the dynamic template and called it Mrs. Morgan's Book Talk Podcasts. I also created an Audioboo account at http://audioboo.fm/. Then in settings on Audioboo I selected Posting to Other Sites and selected Blogger. Then, I selected Mrs. Morgan's Book Talk Podcasts. So, now when my students record their podcasts in Audioboo they post directly to my class's book talk podcast blog! Sounds simple and it is! My students record their podcasts using the Audioboo iPhone app on our class iPads. On the iPads I just have to download the Audioboo iPhone app and log in with the same credentials I used when I created my account on the computer. After they have recorded they go to the blog and the students then create a QR code to take others to their book talk podcast using http://qrcode.kaywa.com/. Here is the direction sheet I give my students to create their book talk podcasts and QR code https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxOiAHva3B1hLXB5SnBfUkhyLTg/edit?usp=sharing. I walk my students through the process once, and then they have it! They enjoy listening to their own podcast and to other's! You can even put the QR codes of exemplary book talks inside the book in your school's library or your classroom library!

Here is a link to last year's book talk podcasts - http://mrsmorgansclassbooktalks2012.blogspot.com/.

Dot Day with Augmented Reality

Today my class celebrated Dot Day! http://www.thedotclub.org/dotday/ We enjoyed reading Peter Reynolds book The Dot http://www.amazon.com/The-Dot-Peter-H-Reynolds/dp/0763619612. Then we worked on making our own mark with dots we would later use with the colAR app. http://colarapp.com/ We used the colAR app to make our dots come to life. It was great fun to do this in our classroom. But, it got even better when we connected through Skype with Mrs. Harju's class of 2nd graders at St. Stephen's School in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Mrs. Harju's 2nd graders guessed where we were Skyping from based on clues my 6th graders gave them. Then we shared our dots through Skype! The students took turns holding up their dots to the camera and the school on the other side of the Skype used the colAR app to bring them to life! It was just like magic...

QR Codes for 4 Kinds of Sentences Fun

At the beginning of each year in 6th grade grammar we review the 4 kinds of sentences. This year after we reviewed them we had some fun using them. I had found 6 amazing and thought provoking pictures from very old National Geographic Magazines. Then I created a google form for each picture. The form was basic and just asked them to type in their sentences to go along with the picture.

Then I created a QR code, using http://qrcode.kaywa.com/, for each of the forms so kids could scan the QR code and go directly to the form for that picture. The printed QR codes were taped to the pictures and hung up for kids to access as one of their centers for the week. The kids enjoyed this project and I enjoyed having all of their responses in spreadsheet form for easy grading!

App Smashing

On August 28 we celebrated the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech. In honor of this historic day we shared our dreams visually as a class. To share our dreams we used the app WordFoto. Students took their own photo on iPads and then typed in their dreams. The app puts their words onto the photo as part of the photo. Then we used the app Telligami to introduce Dr. King and our project. The app telligami lets you create and share a quick animated message called a Gami. When we finished all of the WordFoto projects and the Gami we put it all into iMovie to create our finished project. Our final project is published on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qe08rKfXZTI - Please enjoy!