How to: showcase community interviews with digital tools

digital anthropologists

Meet the digital anthropologists of Cabot, Vermont

In fulfillment of their project-based learning research this past spring, this pair of middle school students decided to learn more about different regions of the U.S. by interviewing members of their small, rural Vermont town who had lived in those communities. They took the resulting interviews and embedded them in this Thinglink:

We recently had a chance to sit down with these students and get them to share how they pulled this amazing project together.

Continue reading “How to: showcase community interviews with digital tools”

Wild City @ The Edge: 2 years strong and counting

We’ve been honored to partner with The Edge Academy at Essex Middle School, and a huge reason why is their compelling Wild City Project. In cooperation with the Vermont Audubon Society, the UVM Rubenstein School and other naturalists from around the state, student scientists at The Edge have been studying the fauna surrounding their school in suburban Vermont for two full years. They’ve used night cameras, GPS units and ArcGIS to film, track and study fisher cats, red foxes, wild-breasted nuthatches, coyotes, and many more.

This past March, they invited us out to Essex to present the results of the second year of the Wild City Project.

 

We are so grateful to everyone at The Edge for inviting us to be a part of their journey. Great work, guys!

Students and facilitators from The Edge team will be presenting at this year’s Dynamic Landscapes conference in Burlington, on Engagement to Empowerment: Students at the Center of Change.

Get out! 4 ideas for using iPads outside (and away from Wifi)

Get out there!

It’s spring (unless you’re in the Antipodes) and IT HAS FINALLY STOPPED SNOWING. Yes, all those capital letters are really necessary to announce that fact. The sun is out and if you’re planning on doing some outside work with your students, here are four activity ideas for using iPads outside when there’s no access to Wifi.

1. The Basics: QR code scavenger hunt

Make and print some QR codes, tape them up outside, and have each code lead to an image with directions for an activity. Working on foreign language acquisition? Post the directions in the target language! Are fractions on the agenda? Have the QR codes lead to an equation whose solution equals a number found in the next location of the hunt! Vocab time? How about anagrams that unscramble to reveal the next location or a key part of the instructions! QR codes are simple, powerful and lend themselves to a ton of different activities. What would make it really powerful would be for the students themselves to create the questions…

This online QR Code Treasure Hunt Generator lets you create your hunt quickly and easily beforehand.
This online QR Code Treasure Hunt Generator lets you create your hunt quickly and easily beforehand.

 

2. App-smash with Dino Defend!

Students break into groups, pick a plastic dinosaur out of a bucket (blind pick) and then have to keep their dinosaur alive to the end of the trail. As they move through the landscape, they’ll need to complete and document 4 challenges related to their dinosaur. Challenges could have math, science and reading comprehension worked in, as well as compelling students to really think about the Gorge and evolutionary geology. So many apps could help answer the following challenges:
  1. Geography: What features of the landscape would prove beneficial/problematic for your dinosaur? Suggested apps: 30Hands, Notability 
  2. Famine/Overpopulation: What does your dinosaur eat? What could they eat in this area? Suggested apps: HaikuDeck, Notability
  3. Predator attack: What are some of your dinosaur’s predators? Are they or were they found in this area? Bonus points for teaming up with another group and enacting a pitched battle scene. Suggested apps: iMovie.
  4. Defamation! An upstart archeologist has written a tract all about how your dinosaur should go extinct already. Each dinosaur has been offered a 30-second video promo spot to respond to the allegations. How does your dinosaur explain its value to the environment? Suggested apps: Touchcast, iMovie

Please note: badgers, bears, frogs or any other type of animal can be substituted for the dinosaurs, as appropriate for your curriculum.

But it just won’t be the same without all those RAR noises.

"Predator Challenge! This diplodocus is about to be eaten by a giant Boston terrier. In 200 words, explain why this situation is implausible."
“Predator Challenge! This diplodocus is about to be eaten by a giant Boston terrier. In 200 words, explain why this situation is implausible.”

 

3. Collect & Reflect with Picture This

Colorado educator Anne Beninghof came up with the great idea of using the Corkulous app to let students assemble boards that feature audio, video, image and written reflections of their trek. Get creative, assign each group a different theme, area of the landscape or time period to work with. This could also work with LinoIt.

 

4. For the Math folks: AngleJam!

The FieldProjector app allows you to calculate the angles of objects captured with the iPad camera, as well as determining their scale in relation to other objects. Combine this with the QR codes to create a series of challenges around capturing different types of angles:

“It’s time for the annual AngleJam but sadly, no angles have shown up yet to the party! They’re too busy running wiiiiiiiiiiild. It’s up to you to go out and grab them. Head outside / to the jungle gym / to the trailhead, where you’ll find a QR code specifying how to bring in the first of your math guests.”

Bonus points for having students create the angles out of twigs, rock bridges, their arms, etc exactly like this Australian class did.

"The 90 has been spotted! Repeat: we have a visual on the 90! Invitation delivered!"
“The 90 has been spotted! Repeat: we have a visual on the 90! Invitation delivered!”

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m heading out into this beautiful sunshine to help a stegosaurus work on using less tail-spike in its rebuttal. Have a great weekend, everyone!

 

*This post grew from a discussion over on the iPadEd Google+ community. Joyful thanks to Lara Jensen, Karen Redmond, Peggy Matthews, Karie Carpenter, Anne Beninghof, Robert Payne, Lee MacArthur, Laura Mahoney, Jose Luis Gutierrez and Christopher Averill for the brainstorming.

Think outside the app: 3 outstanding examples of app-smashing

What-smash?

Despite sounding like a weird potato-fruit dish, app-smashing gets your students thinking less about apps and more about tasks. Hopefully with a minimum of actual smashing.

App-smashing is when you give students a specific assignment that can best be solved using more than one app. iPads4Teachers has a fantastic overview of app-smashing here.

 

Sounds good, but I need examples

You got ’em!

1. Video cards

Sylvia Duckworth, an elementary grades French teacher in Canada, created Mother’s Day video cards by taking screenshots with HaikuDeck, then importing those into iMovie to add voice and music. The result, you’ll agree, is simply smashing*!

 

2. Cultural anthropology

A group of students at the Cabot School in Vermont tackled a cultural anthropology project by using iPhones to record audio interviews they did with community members, editing the audio in GarageBand, then embedding the results in a map with Thinglink. Smash!

 

3. Show your work: demonstrate your solution to the problem

Susan Hennessey put together the above video as part of an assignment for the MOOC Creativity: Music to My Ears. She writes:

We were tasked with picking a problem, brainstorming 100 possible solutions for how music could help solve it (on a shared Google doc) and then selecting 2 or 3 to create a novel solution.  We were given 1-minute to present the problem and solution.  Since we were working with middle level students, we wanted to defer to what they liked about the 100 possibilities.  The two profiled by the Tellagamis are the top two selected.

Google Docs + Tellagamis + iMovie. A novel approach to the assignment, which, after all, is what app-smashing is all about.

 

What are some ways you’ve used app-smashing in your classroom?

 

 

*I’m actually obligated by law to make that pun at least once during this blogpost. True story.

VT 8th grade class receives EduCast Pioneer award

"An alien named Athena lives on Mars, and goes to school. Athena's house is a spaceship. When she left to go to school, she realized she left something about half way...."
“An alien named Athena lives on Mars, and goes to school. Athena’s house is a spaceship. When she left to go to school, she realized she left something about half way….”

 

Rachel Goodale’s 8th grade science class at Peoples Academy Middle Level was honored yesterday for their series of speed graph Touchcasts by the makers of the app. The EduCast Pioneer award honors outstanding implementations of the Touchcast iOS app in the classroom.

 

How They Did It

Goodale’s students worked in partner-teams, and were given 10 different graphs depicting relative speeds, and 10 different stories explaining them. The students had to figure out which graph went with which story. They were then assigned a graph-and-story combo to act out and, using Touchcast on iPads, one half of the pair filmed while the other acted.

Goodale blogged about how she put the speed graph lesson together here, where you can download a .pdf of the speed graph lesson plan and also find links to the students’ finished works.

Touchcast has created the EduCast channel and award specifically for educators to post Touchcasts they and their students create as part of a classroom curriculum. They’ve also released an exhaustive guide to ways the app can be integrated in education, with lesson plans arranged by content area, tips for getting started, and using iPads in groups.

touchcast_preproduction

 

A huge congratulations to Rachel Goodale and her 8th graders at PAML for being so willing to share their work!

Who cares about copyright?

VT students talk about copyright Hunt Middle School

These VT students do.

As you can see from the video below, users care, creators care, this class of 6th graders from Hunt Middle School cares, and they’ll tell you why you should care too. A big thank you to Kathy Hevey and her students for being willing to share their work.

We promise to cite you appropriately, every single time.

who cares about copyright

A great reminder about respecting copyright while remixing source materials in the classroom. This video was originally created in partnership with local public access station RETN.

Using Google Forms for a reading log for middle school

Using a Google Form for a reading log
Speedgeeking at Edmunds Middle School: The Reading Log

As part of their celebration of Digital Learning Day, students at Edmunds Middle School hosted a “speed-geeking” session: they each had six minutes to explain a tech tool and how they’re using it in school. Here, one student explains how she’s using a Google form with lexile reading scores to keep a multi-level reading log for middle school.

 

Frog dissection: there’s an app for that

 

Guest post by Lindsey Halman, facilitator at The Edge at Essex Middle School:

What is a system? How are living things organized? How do the structures of organisms contribute to life’s functions? Learners on the Edge team addressed these questions through a unit on Structure, Function and Information Processing in Living Organisms using the Next Generation Science Standards to guide their work.

To gain a clear understanding of the body systems and how these interacting subsystems work together, learners were engaged in a variety of activities. One such activity was using the team’s iPad Minis to participate in a virtual frog dissection using the app Frog Dissection. There are a growing number of interactive apps and programs that allow learners to better understand anatomy in a manner that is ethically and environmentally responsible. Using the app felt like a strong fit for our team’s philosophy on learning.

In the app, a virtual scalpel allows students to practice the same cuts they would in a live dissection with tools like pins, markers, scissors and forceps to guide their work.

 

What was unique about this experience was the ability to “undo” and “redo” any aspect of the dissection. This is something that can only be experienced virtually and it provided learners with a clearer and deeper understanding of the frog’s anatomy. The level of engagement was incredibly high during this activity and no one was excluded because of their moral or ethical beliefs. Therefore, using the app became an inclusive and strong learning experience for our community.

Lindsey Halman is a facilitator on The Edge team at Essex Middle School. She has previously written about her students’ investigation of the natural world outside their school for our Leading by Example: Wild City Project showcase. Images credit: Emantras Inc.

Edmunds Middle School is on the airwaves with ARIS

val

Edmunds Middle School teachers, students and district technologists were on Commissioner’s Corner last night , talking about their experiences designing mobile iOS games with ARIS and the Echo Museum. We’re proud to say we knew them way back when.

If you’re interested in hearing from Laura Botte and Katie Wyndorf about this project, they’ll be at the 7th annual Middle Grades Conference, January 11th at UVM.

ARIS @ Echo

When last we left our trusty Edmunds Explorers, they had just defeated a horde of geometry-loving aliens who’d invaded the school, demanding triangles, circles and trapezoids. After that adventure, the two classes of 6th graders took to the streets of Burlington. Lake Street, to be precise, which led them down to the Echo Lake Aquarium and Science Center and the scene of their next big ARIS adventure.

 

A group of Edmunds 6th graders check out Echo's tidepool exhibit while collecting resources to build their own ARIS video games.
A group of Edmunds 6th graders check out Echo’s tidepool exhibit while collecting resources to build their own ARIS video games.

 

 

ARIS stands for Augmented Reality Interactive Storytelling, and it’s an open-source platform published by the University of Wisconsin to allow K-12 students to design and create their own place-based games for the iOS mobile platform. Museums across the country are starting to incorporate augmented reality to make visitors’ experiences more in-depth and authentic; where once students might’ve simply read a plaque about the lives of fur traders at the Minnesota Historical Society, now they have a chance to play the role of one, working through some of the challenges and hardships the life presented in order to advance through the tour.

And where Minnesota has fur traders, the Echo Center has frogs.

 

vinnie_val

 

Meet Vinnie.

Vinnie is a native Vermont bullfrog whose life and habits were drawn directly from Echo Center exhibits by Burlington School District technology information specialists and TIIE to form the short ARIS game “Frogworld”.

Students worked their way through the Frogworld game by gleaning information from plaques in Echo’s Frogworld exhibit. They also documented resources from the Echo Center exhibits for later use in their own games. Echo Center staff also got into the act. Executive director Phelan Fretz used ARIS’ Notebook feature to contribute his own frog to the Frogworld game, then spent lunch taking suggestions from students as to what kinds of behind-the-scenes information Echo could provide to support students’ own ARIS games.

 

Phelan Fretz, Echo Center director, used ARIS' Notebook feature to add this commentary about one of the frogs in the Frogworld exhibit. Players can leave text, audio, image or video notes for all other players to read.
Phelan Fretz, Echo Center director, used ARIS’ Notebook feature to add this commentary about one of the frogs in the Frogworld exhibit. Players can leave text, audio, image or video notes for all other players to read.

 

ARIS is one of a number of augmented reality platforms the Echo Center is piloting with local schools.

Edmunds is incorporating ARIS into a yearlong place-based unit examining the Lake Champlain basin through environmental, cultural, historic and opportunity lenses. The Echo Center hopes to make the local 6th graders’ ARIS games available to visitors as part of the museum tour when they’re completed.

 

frogworldtweet

 

(Special thanks to the UVM College of Education and Social Services for their support of this project. )

Geometry, aliens and ARIS at Edmunds Middle School

shapeaa1

Pop quiz, hotshot. What do geometry, aliens and the augmented reality gaming platform all have in common?

A: All were spotted last Friday at Edmunds Middle School in Burlington.

As part of a unit on exploring place, educators Laura Botte and Katie Wyndorf are having their students work with the free iOS app ARIS, an open-source game-creation platform. To kick things off, they collaborated with Angelique Fairbrother, technology coordinator for Franklin West SU, in bringing an introductory ARIS game into Edmunds’ classrooms. And out into the hallways. Also sometimes under the desks and on top of the lockers.

The two classes of 6th graders played “Shape Invaders”, a game where aliens ask for help with geometry. Students had to locate and scan QR codes scattered around the school, using them to collect various shapes. In order to keep the aliens happy, students then calculated the perimeter and area of each shape.

 

groupshot

 

Students worked in teams to solve the clues necessary to come up with the area and perimeter of each shape — skills not usually encountered in 6th grade math. With a little help and a whole lot of persistence, the aliens were appeased and the students got an introduction to the ARIS platform.

Next week, the Edmunds students will be heading to the Echo Lake Aquarium and Science Center to build their own ARIS games around the themes of culture, ecology, history and sustainability.

FWSU technology coordinator Angelique Fairbrothers introduces two Edmunds students how to make changes to the game in ARIS' web-based editor.
FWSU technology coordinator Angelique Fairbrothers introduces two Edmunds students how to make changes to the game in ARIS’ web-based editor.

ARIS stands for Augmented Reality Interactive Storytelling, and is designed to be an easy entrypoint for students to design games incorporating video, audio and character-driven activities that tell stories by moving players through a landscape or incorporating place-based activities. Last year, the Tarrant Institute created an ARIS game for Vermont students to collect book trailers for the DCF 2013 books.

We can’t wait to see what games the Edmunds students build with Echo’s resources! Stay tuned for further updates.

(ps. A huge thank you to UVM’s College of Education and Social Services for lending Edmunds additional iPads for game play.)

 

 

Evernote with HUMS at EdTech Teacher iPad Summit!

Show of hands, who’s planning on attending the EdTech Teacher iPad Summit in Boston this week? Hm?

While you’re there, make sure to catch TIIE’s Susan Hennessey, presenting with HUMS educators on their groundbreaking work with Evernote on the iPad for e-portfolios. Proficiency-based graduation requirements have never seemed so bewitching…

 

Evernote Evil Queen Intro.

 

Mirror, Mirror…Student Self-assessment and ePortfolios through the iPad Looking Glass

Friday, Nov 15, 2:30pm @ venue 300

3-D Printing and Making at Edmunds and Hunt

by Eric Schoembs, Edmunds Middle School educator

Last week Dan Treinis and I each received Maker Bot Replicator 2s, underwritten by the Tarrant Institute.  We are working in parallel to roll out the new technology with our middle school students at Edmunds and Hunt Middle Schools.

We began last week by introducing the technology to each of our classes with live demonstrations and a short how-it-works introduction.

3d1
Students at Edmunds Middle School examine their new 3D printer.

At the end of each class we raffled off the completed piece and the students loved it!

The Maker Bots came pre-loaded with an SD card that had several designs that we could print to test the machine.  The initial setup was relatively easy so our next challenge is installing the makerware on our computers. The makerware traces the 3D models students create, then writes the code that the Maker Bot uses to precisely deposit the extruded plastic filament.

Both Dan and I are very familiar with Google Sketch Up and so are our students so we hope to use Sketch Up to create the models that we will print with the Maker Bot. So far I have been very impressed with the quality of the print and reliability of the machine.

More to come as we begin printing our own work this week!

Hunt Middle School's new 3D printer.
The new 3D printer.

To put it mildly, our students are very excited about having access to
this new technology!

A close-up of some of the sample items that the 3D printer can produce.
A close-up of some of the items that have already been printed on the 3D printer: clockwise from top left are a chain, a threaded nut and bolt, a comb, and a bracelet.

 

 

 

8th grade VT science: interpreting distance over Touchcast

 

"An alien named Athena lives on Mars, and goes to school. Athena's house is a spaceship. When she left to go to school, she realized she left something about half way...."
“An alien named Athena lives on Mars, and goes to school. Athena’s house is a spaceship. When she left to go to school, she realized she left something about half way….”

 

by Rachel Goodale (Peoples Academy Middle Level)

We started out this year with a Physics Unit studying the relationships between time, distance, and speed. Students worked in partners and were given ten different speed graphs to analyze. They were also given ten different stories explaining the graphs.

Students were expected to focus in on features of the graphs such as the slope of the line indicating a faster or slower rate of speed (amount of distance in a given amount of time). They then had to match up the ten stories to the 10 graphs.

The idea was adapted from this Lesson Plan: Interpreting distance / time graphs (pdf)

Enter:  TouchCast!

After the students completed the matching part of the project, they were assigned a single graph to analyze further. Partners were expected to take a picture of their assigned graph: this image was then inserted as a “V-App” into the TouchCast screen, present in one corner of the screen shot at all times.  Now the student who was doing the filming/recording would be able to draw on the graph, explaining the different key features of the graph. The other partner would physically act out what is going on in the graph (running, walking, or stopping as indicated by the graph).

"Tom ran from his home to the bus stop and waited. He realized that he had missed the bus so he walked home."
“Tom ran from his home to the bus stop and waited. He realized that he had missed the bus so he walked home.”

 This technology allows students to capture motion in real time while simultaneously relating this real motion to the information encoded in the two-dimensional graph. If I could spend more time on this project, I would try to provide the students with more space to execute this task.  However, in one hour class, I was able to receive TouchCasts from each of the partner pairs.  I received a lot of positive feedback from students about this class, and am certain that some powerful learning connections were made!

Rachel Goodale teaches 8th grade science at Peoples Academy Middle Level in Morrisville, VT.  Visit her class website here. You can also browse the rest of her class’ distance/time Touchcasts by opening the app and searching on “Here’s How to Read a Speed Graph”.

Teachers teaching Touchcast

We’re sharing the screencasting love over here at the Institute, thanks in no small part to #btv librarian-rockstar Shannon Walters (@shannonwa), who introduced us to Touchcast. This free iOS app enables users to create videos for tablet and web that let you embed linked webpage images, polls, other videos (oh the meta!) and use a whiteboard, teleprompter, commenting and titles. It’s an interesting new entry into the iPad-based video-editing market.

And how are teachers using it? Here’s a Touchcast made by the principal of Roosevelt Elementary School, in California, welcoming students for the year:

 

A woman's head and shoulders are visible in front of a photo of a garden corridor. She appears to be paused mid-sentence. Next to her head is a box with the text, "Do you think Roosevelt should invest in more iPads?" Underneath are the words Yes and No.
Your viewers can vote in polls on-screen without interrupting the video.

And here’s Winooski art teacher and Tarrant partner educator Jessica Bruce, with What I Plan To Do With the Rest of My Summer (bonus points for recording while being distracted by cat):

A video closeup of a woman's face. She's wearing glasses, and next to her on-screen is a preview of the Vermont State Parks website.
Touchcast lets you embed short previews of webpages in your video, and viewers can click or tap through to visit them.

If you’re reading this entry on an iOS device, you can access both Touchcasts through the app and save them to your Bookmarks, or Recast them (like retweeting) to your channel. Any other teachers want to share how they’re using Touchcast?

Maybe by making a Touchcast of their plans?

Say it with me again: Oh, the meta.

In the spotlight: Harwood Union Middle School

Henessey_interview
Susan Hennessey, with the help of videographers from Hen House Media, sat down to talk with one of Harwood’s middle grades students about improved technology integration at the school.

Traveled down to Harwood Union Middle School in Moretown VT on Friday to interview some of the students and teachers about the work they’ve been doing this year. So inspiring to hear how excited they are, and how generously they shared their stories. Thank you, Harwood!

 

Just say no to dinosaurs

Out at Cabot last Friday to interview some students and teachers about their amazing Seedfolks project, I was reassured to see this sign indicating the school’s commitment to safety:

We should all be so fortunate to say the same.

We should all be so fortunate as to say the same.

Edge Innovation Tour

“It’s not that I feel smarter in learning, I feel smarter in everything.”

Tarrant professional development coordinator Meredith Swallow learning about batch processing files from a 6th grader at Essex Middle School.
Tarrant professional development coordinator Meredith Swallow learning about batch processing files from a 6th grader at Essex Middle School.

Essex Middle School’s Edge team opened their doors to the community May 16th as one of three Innovation schools in Vermont. Students and facilitators discussed some of the projects they’ve accomplished and some of the things they’ve learned as part of this unique environment.

“I’ve learned things high schools seniors don’t know,” commented 7th grader Isaac.

Continue reading “Edge Innovation Tour”

Brian Wagner on Aurasma, continued

Page 1 | 2

brianwagner

The annual Rube Goldberg Challenge is an opportunity for students to engage in their inner creative, design-build personalities. They are tasked with completing a simple task through a complex, convoluted, over the top device that incorporates simple machine physics and creative problem solving. There are limits to their space, time, and materials (nothing banned form school for instance). The machines that are created range from functionally simplistic to extremely clever but all offer students a chance to personalize the experience. The one part of the project that has not been emphasized over the past several years is charging students with explaining their thought process as they develop, test, and redesign their design. The use of several different iPad apps were explored during this project to see how students could benefit from documenting their thinking as they went through a problem solving process.

Half of the student groups used the Explain Everything app to document via video, text, photos their thought process, while the other half used the Aurasma app to do the same. There were some challenges with the Aurasma app because our internet connectivity was poor in the Middle Gym so reaching Aurasma was difficult and the video cannot be edited prior to attaching to an Aura (trigger). The Explain Everything app appears to be better suited for this type of activity; where students could collect their thoughts on different slides or even have multiple videos on one slide.

Students were asked to reflect on the use of their app when the project was complete. Their feedback brings me back to the SAMR model and how it relates to my research question of using technology to enhance meta-cognition In this project, the Aurasma app did not fit the bill very well for allowing students to document their thinking over time. The app and the activity were not well suited; the video cannot be paused and continued, so students were unable to document their thinking over time. The Explain Everything app had both positive and negative reviews from students but with some additional practice with the app, students will be more comfortable with the potential to revisit their prior thoughts and construct new thinking. Ideally, students would have an opportunity to document their process and then be given another similar activity to complete using what they have collected on the Explain Everything app as a guide.

 

Brian Wagner teaches 8th grade science at Harwood Union Middle School in Moretown VT. You can reach him on twitter: @swagsci

Brian Wagner on: Aurasma and the Periodic Table

An augmented reality periodic table

One of our partner educators, Brian Wagner, teaches eighth grade science at Harwood Union Middle School, in Moretown VT. This past spring, he used Aurasma with his students to bring elements of the periodic table to life in a gallery walk.

The Rube Goldberg Challenge was not a good fit for the Aurasma app as a means of documenting thinking over time, but it proved to be a good tool for students to teach each other about the periodic table.

In essence, students jig-sawed their knowledge about specific sections of the Periodic Table to create a larger perspective about the trends, patterns, and curiosities of table.

Memorizing the elements of the periodic table is a complete waste of time (a personal opinion but one generally recognized as valid).

Understanding the information stored in the table because of the way it is constructed unlocks chemistry at a deeper level. The author Sam Keane in his book The Disappearing Spoon writes that “…at its simplest level, the periodic table catalogs all the different kinds of matter in our universe, the hundred-odd characters whose headstrong personalities give rise to everything we see and touch. The shape of the table also gives scientific clues as to how those personalities mingle with one another in crowds….”

My objective for this activity is for students to begin to recognize the trends and personalities and teach each other about different sections using Augmented Reality. The assignment is presented in the attached file- The Periodic Table Assignment 2013

The students researched as per the assignment criteria and prepared a video presentation of their element group. They were allowed to create the video in periodicpullwhatever manner they wanted- many did not want to be onscreen but talked through their information while writing it out on paper. Some used a chalk board for added effect. Others set it up as a news cast. Each group created a simple Aura (trigger) to activate the video.

The Auras were placed around the middle school Gallery in their respective groups and an iPad was stationed at each of these areas to use for the video presentation. Students rotated throughout the gallery, watching each other’s videos and taking notes about each section. Initially I wanted each student group to prepare an annotated photo of a periodic table with the information they collected. This would act as a summarizing aspect to their learning. Unfortunately there was not enough time to go through the gallery walk and do the Skitch challenge. The following day we lost our Wi-Fi , the iPads were needed for other classes when it returned, and the opportunity was lost.
During the class time with no internet, students took a quick quiz about the periodic table. The quiz was used as a means to discuss their findings further and clear up misconceptions that arose during their research. There will be a follow-up summative quiz (using Socrative) to determine how much information has been internalized. That will be a separate post.

The use of the Aurasma app was received well by students for this activity. They saw the value in researching, outlining, and preparing a presentation that others would learn from.

Because their audience was a little bigger (the entire 8th grade) they took more time to prepare and shoot the video (manyappsglance with multiple takes to get it right). Their personal creativity was valued and the questions that arose from their research made good conversations that would have been missing from a straight up lecture about the topic.

One of the drawbacks to the app was having to hold the iPad over the Aura while watching the video. However, one student figured out that by double tapping on the video while it was playing would take the video to full screen and allow it continue playing in any position. iMovie would also be a preferred video tool for making the videos more polished.

Unfortunately iMovie is not on our iPads yet, although one student convinced me to download it for him, where he proceeded to take three individual videos his group made into one smooth presentation.

Continue reading “Brian Wagner on: Aurasma and the Periodic Table”

Technology enhancing education at MEMS

Thank you to partner educator Amanda Bickford for sharing this video about how technology’s being integrated into the Manchester Elementary Middle School classroom, in Manchester VT.

It’s gratifying to hear directly from educators the difference our support is making in their classroom.

Thank you, everyone, for a truly innovative year.

“The students showed me how it was done”: Students and colleagues as educator resources

A guest post by one of our partner educators, Jacki McCarty.

McCarty is an educator at Harwood Union Middle School, in Moretown VT.

YouTube player

“The resource I wish to share is THE STUDENTS and MY COLLEAGUES. Through encouragement by my colleagues I have taken risks with technology and found that the students can run with technology and use each other as resources. I, the teacher, can use them as resources. Here is what happened.

Jodie Curran and Jon Potts had told me about QR codes last year, but I never fully understood what they were until I did a treasure hunt with QR codes at a class last summer. I thought they were interesting, but never found a natural fit for integration into my curriculum.

While we were brainstorming about the Poetry Recitation project and iTraining, Sarah Ibson and I came up with the idea of having students record themselves reading poems (with images to compliment the poems also embedded in the iMovie) and make QR codes to put on their Recitation Poem Posters.

The poem posters consist of a handwritten version of the poem, and typed analysis of the poem, as well as an image that represents the poem. These posters will line the hallways at the final poetry recitation performance — the HUMS Celebration of Learning on May 2.

Here is a link to a student performance (they gave permission to share it and I used it as an example in my classes) which was made in Sarah Ibson’s iTraining class prior to my class project. The iTraining students acted as mentors during the recording and uploading experience — which was essential since I myself did not yet know exactly how to perform these actions.

The students showed me how it was done.”

Book trailers from the Edge

YouTube player

Students at Essex Middle School recently hosted a morning at the movies, and as part of the April 9th Celebration of Learning, shared their iMovie book trailers for The Hobbit, The Giver, Hostage to War, The Hobbit, The Amulet of Samarkand, Holes, Schooled, The Hobbit (v. popular book), and Cracker.

As facilitator Lindsey Slan Halman explained, the students had been forbidden to use any images off the internet, and thus got extra creative with their staging, imagery, props and acting. We think the students did an amazing job, and would like to thank them for being so willing to share their work.

1:1 rollout with Hunt Middle School

Hunt 6th Grade 1:1 Rollout 2012

Susan Hennessey was on hand with her iPad camera to record the Oasis team at Hunt Middle School, in Burlington, going 1:1. A huge thank you to the Oasis team teachers and students for letting us be part of their journey. Hunt Middle School is a partner of the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education.

Rob Gervais on going 1:1 with iPads

1:1 with iPads

Going 1:1 with iPads: lessons learned

In this 40 minute webinar, Rob Gervais, director of technology for Enosburg Town Schools, goes over the nuts and bolts of deploying a 1:1 iPad environment. Enosburg Town Schools were among the first schools in Vermont to go 1:1 with iPads, and Gervais faced a number of challenges in the implementation of them, including the need for upgraded school-wide wifi and a charging system. At the same time, he and the rest of the school were able to innovate some amazing tools for iPad management, including communications with families about the program.

Continue reading “Rob Gervais on going 1:1 with iPads”

Six questions with Keith Nemlich

Keith Nemlich

Keith Nemlich, educator at Manchester Elementary/Middle School, sat down with us and answered six questions about the state of edtech.

“I’d like to be obsolete. Seriously. When my school no longer needs me and our students are independently accessing technology in appropriate and meaningful ways, then I’ll know that I have been successful. What would accelerate this process?” Continue reading “Six questions with Keith Nemlich”