Augmented Book 'Reviews'

Aurasma

Augmented reality keeps blowing people's mind. Every time I show the things we do with Aurasma and QR Codes, people can not believe what they see. The concept of augmented reality is really quite simple (in idea anyway). It simply layers images/videos over a 2D image. In Aurasma, the trigger image essentially acts like a barcode.

iMovie

This project was mostly conducted on Macbook Pros and iMacs as the students created videos using iMovie Trailers. We decided we wanted to look at book reviews/reading response in another way. I saw a tweet on Twitter where someone was showing their book trailers in iMovie. I wanted to step it up and make book trailers and then attach them to a book cover so other's could see what that student thought of that particular book.

Planning the Trailer

First, students had to plan their trailer. This proved very difficult as these grade 4s had not used iMovie before and did not have a clue how it worked or what was involved. In the end, we scrapped the on-paper plan and just started building the iMovie project. This gave the students an idea what was required in iMovie.

Assessment

We didn't actually make any crieteria until our first couple of groups were "finished" their first edit. The reson for this was that the students didn't know what a good trailer would consist of. We looked at a couple professionally made animated movie trailers and discussed what made them awesome. From there we made a checklist then went on to building a rubric.

Target Rubric - Succes Criteria for our Book Trailers

Co-created checklist of how professional movie trailer are made

Students then went through and peer assessed each other's work. The feedback each student was important as they would base their editing on the feedback they were given. We developed a timeline of events so students knew the process that was required to finish their final trailer.

The Self Assessment, Peer Assessment and Feedback loops timeline

The Finished Product

Here is an example of the finished trailers using the Aurasma App. 

#CBE Web2.0 Symposium

On April 24, I had the opportunity to share two (three actually but the first two stole the show) web2.0 tools we are using at Marlborough School. Below is a link to the website I made to share these three great web2.0 tools, Aurasma, Qr Codes and Google Docs.

http://goo.gl/QD9Dk

Aurasma - Making Images Move

When I first saw Aurasma, I couldn't believe what I saw. Still pictures coming to life and turning into video right on the wall? Impossible!

After watching and reading the Calgary Science School post by Dan McWilliam, I was in awe! I wanted to do it with some students. To tell the truth, I've been struggling find the right place to try it. What I did think about was how we could showcase this app to our students and parents as well as introduce it to our teachers. 

Our students were about to go swimming and at our school, a lot of our students do not have many opportunities to swim. What better way to show this app than to show parents their child[ren] swimming at the pool.

It turned out to be a simple exercise. Using their classroom iPad, teachers got video of each of their students swimming at the pool. Then we took still pictures of each student to use as a trigger image. Once all video and photos were taken and using the app Aurasma, we linked each video to the corresponding photo of the same student. 

The videos were then showcased at parent/teacher interviews. The students took the class iPad and showed their parents their picture on be wall. Once the image on the wall was recognized but the Aurasma app, it magically turned into a video on the student swimming at the pool - awesome! 

Here's what our kindergarten teacher came up with:

Students were so proud when showing their swimming video to the parents. What a great way to show parents something their child does in school, and in this case out of the school building.

What's next with Aurasma? After seeing it's capability, one of our grade 5/6 teachers thought a AR scavenger hunt would be an engaging way to using Aurasma with students. They are in the process of  making it now. Look out for a blog post soon...