Photos from @sarahrothberg’s interactive presentation at the 5th Avenue Apple store last night… #ArtEdTech #MakerEd #STEAM

Ian Klapper (@ian32one) invited me to join him for an evening at the Apple Store on 5th Avenue to hear from artist Sarah Rothberg (@sarahrothberg on Twitter and @rothbergrothberg on Instagram). Explore some of Sarah’s work on her website: https://sarahrothberg.com/

Ian has explored AR (augmented reality) on his own and with students. While I embraced Aurasma years ago, Google Cardboard left me underwhelmed. Why hold an irradiated device in a cardboard box up to your eyeballs when you can more safely hold an iPad at arm’s length? I tried to appreciate CoSpaces, and maybe I didn’t give it enough of a chance. I’ve heard awesome things about Unity, and I’ve seen really lovely and impressive student projects — I just imagine it would require a time commitment for the learning curve and a set of really good goggles (Oculus) and haptic gloves. I believe AR and VR (virtual reality) can increase empathy or change perceptions by offering the user an enhanced or immersive experience. I just worry a lot of classroom AR/VR use is gimmicky. Ian’s words and Sarah’s presentation reminded me AR can also simply be fun and that there is value to bringing surprise, joy, and beauty with a user.

More info about the event, [AR]T Lab: AR Experiences Co-created with Sarah Rothberg here:

What happens when a lemon and a traffic cone collide? Using artist Sarah Rothberg’s creative approach and art, you’ll learn to code an augmented reality experience. Whether it’s happy, wacky, or weird, you’ll combine AR elements in Swift Playgrounds on iPad. Our Apple Creatives will take you through creative and coding exercises. Recommended for beginners ages 12 and up. Devices will be provided.

More info about other AR integrative art via collaborations with other artists and Apple: https://www.apple.com/today/collection/ar-experiences

Using @pinterest & #QRcodes to digitize @iampemberton’s class library & share reading prompts. #kinderchat #ptchat

I just had such a great and productive conversation with Kindergarten teacher, Lauren Pemberton (@iampemberton)! Lauren came into the tech office asking about whether she should affix QR codes to class library books or use some other technology like augmented reality. I asked what she’d like to have happen, and she said she wants parents to be able to scan a code and see questions pop-up during read-alouds with their children that would be good prompts and conversation starters about the story.

I agreed that QR codes would work really well, since the QR code acts as a link to additional information by using any device. Each QR code is paired to a unique webpage that can be bookmarked or emailed or just left in the form of an open page on the device’s web browser. In contrast, augmented reality apps like Layar and Aurasma allow the book cover (or any image) to be used as a dynamic trigger that launches an overlay of information on the device’s screen. This is awesome, but that overlay would disappear as soon as the device is no longer hovering over the trigger (in this case, scanning the book via the app could launch an image containing a list of questions but only when the device is “seeing” the book cover).

I backtracked and suggested that Lauren and her co-teacher, @Jenn_Dare,  first build a Pinterest board full of books available in their classroom’s library. I totally got this idea from my friend, @KimBeeman, who is the amazing Head of the Library at The Shrewsbury International School in Bangkok, Thailand. Kim curates a wonderfully useful Shrewbury Library Blog and many Pinterest boards of the library’s collection organized by genre, grade, project, date aquired, and more.

So, Lauren and Jenn are going to curate a Pinterest board that is a digital representation of their Kindergarten library. Each book pinned to the board will have a unique URL (web address) and space in the description for Lauren and Jenn to post questions and conversation starters about that book. These pins also allow for comments from other users, so parents and teachers can add their own questions and prompts and share/network with each other. Yay for social networking about literacy!

Many sites allow you to make a QR code (like QR Stuff or QR Code Generator), so each book pinned on Lauren and Jenn’s Pinterest board will have a distinct QR code that gets printed and taped to the physical book in their class’s library. This enables students/parents/teachers to borrow a book, scan the QR code taped to it by using a QR reader (like QR Reader for iPhone or QR Code Reader) and launch a webpage for that book’s pin on the Pinterest board to access questions specific to the story.

Finally, I suggested that Lauren keep a GoogleDoc that consists of an ever-expanding table that includes the following information:

1. Book title
2. URL to that book’s pin on the class library Pinterest board
3. QR code that links to that pin’s URL

This will be tedious but worthwhile. After all of their classroom’s current  books are inventoried, pinned to the Pinterest board, and linked to a QR code, it’s just a matter of adding new rows to the table as any additional books are brought in to supplement their growing and evolving library.

 

Love how @KarlynAdler & @KPabarue use @Aurasma augmented reality app. #kinderchat #1stchat

Kindergarten teacher, Karlyn Adler (@karlynadler), has been toying with the Aurasma augmented reality app since December. For KA’s parent share last week, she captured video of the kids explaining their recent work and uploaded these clips to their class’s Auasma channel. Parents used iPads with headphones to access these videos when the iPad faced key places on the wall to trigger the video overlay. (Katie Pabarue (@kpabarue) has been using Aurasma with her 1st graders to capture delightful book reviews – I hope you have time to ask her about that too!)

Karlyn wrote about the experience on her professional portfolio here: http://karlynadler.wordpress.com/2014/06/03/using-aurasma-for-curriculum-shares-plus-a-how-to-kinderchat-edchat/

Speaking of Karlyn’s awesome new online space, below is a description for my Teach21 workshop on Wednesday, June 18. I hope you’ll join me for it or for the other two I proposed…

Our Portfolios, Ourselves: Crafting a Digital Portfolio of Your Work as an Educator
Curation is a 21st Century skill, so let’s show how to gather archival evidence of your professional endeavors and classroom projects in a digital portfolio. You’ll learn tips to get started: What to gather? Where to put it? How much will this cost? How to organize it? What settings to use? How to link or embed artifacts? How to connect with others?
This is a half-day workshop offered from 9:00 – 11:30. Please stay and join us for lunch.

Great to see @KarlynAdler use @Aurasma to enhance her classroom’s bulletin board with student voices.

In December, I shared the Aurasma augmented reality app with many of the K-2 teachers. I had ideas for book reviews and narrated Admissions tours and curated parent shares. Aurasma lets the camera on your iPhone or iPad zero in on an image (the trigger) in order to call up a corresponding overlay (the aura).

Two weeks ago, I spent time with Karlyn Adler (@karlynadler) and Katie Pabarue (@kpabarue) playing with the app, and I was pleased to see that it was crashing less than it did when I first downloaded it in the fall. We brainstormed ways to use it and practiced creating auras and exploring channels. We decided it may make sense to create a channel for their classroom and just have that app/channel loaded on designated iPads in their class.

Katie has been using it to link book covers with audio and/or video of her students reviewing the book. I can’t wait to see this in action. Karlyn told me that they had a great parent share last week (while I was at NAIS), where her students walked around with their parent and used Aurasma to view short videos triggered by the bulletin boards. I went up to see for myself and captured this video:

I approached Belinda Nicholson, Principal of the Middle Division at The School at Columbia University, and we had a great conversation yesterday about possibly using it for Admissions tours — one possibility is that we could have designated iPads for tours and let room signs trigger information about the classroom or the teacher or the type of work that goes on in the space. Today, Belinda told me already had a bunch of ideas including  using an image of the student schedule to trigger audio of what a typical week looks/feels like.

At NAIS last week, I attended Lori Carroll (@lcarroll94)and Justine Fell (@justfell)’s Aurasma showcase at the speed innovating session, and it was great to swap ideas with them. They shared a great one-sheeter that I’ve since further shared with teachers here at The School. Contact them to see if they’ll share it with you!