Homophones, QR Codes and Valentine's Day

Each year my class creates an interactive, 21st century Valentine card and this year was no exception!

Everyone worked with a partner using the free iPad app, Split Lens 2 to create a twin image of themselves. 

Students had a lot of fun getting creative with poses and props!

Students added a filter and text and emailed the image to themselves.

Then, they took their cloned image and uploaded it to Canva. They created a digital Valentine card using their cool double image. They saved and exported their Canva image and imported it into Google slides. Students made the slide public and created a QR Code leading to it. 

 Using Google docs, students inserted the QR Code and some text to print and physically glue to the front of their handmade Valentine card. 

We have been learning about homophones this week so I encouraged a pun using the word "two" since we had created a double image. 

Happy Valentine's Day!

App Smashing on the 100th Day of School

We celebrated the 100th day of school with App Smashing!

We started with the AgingBooth iPad app and took pictures of ourselves. 

We used the AgingBooth app to transform our current image into what we image we might look like at 100 years old. 

The results were pretty funny!

After saving our elderly images to the camera roll, students then moved on to the PicCollage app. They imported their AgingBooth image (this is where the SMASH comes in) to create a cool poster of themselves at age 100.

When the collage was completed, students then imported that image into their Google drive. They made the link to the image public, took that public link and went to goo.gl to shorten it and create a QR Code. They took the QR Code image and inserted it on a Google slide, with instructions to scan.

 Finally, we took turns scanning all the QR Codes to see what our friends 

will look like in 90+ years. 

App Smashing projects are a lot of fun because they really allow students to be creative and reduces the limitations of just a single app. The use of multiple apps is a higher order thinking skill because students must follow quite a few directions and complete many steps before they are able to finalize their project. 

Importing a piece of the project from the iPad to a computer, adds another challenging layer and it is amazing to watch how easily students are able to switch back and forth between devices and apply so many skills to one project. 

My class had a great time with this project and I heard more than one student say they were going to save the image and check back when they were 100 to see how accurate AgingBooth is. 

Mother's Day Cards With The Tellagami App

 An early Happy Mother's Day to all the fantastic moms! We created Mother's Day cards, but of course, added a 21st century twist.

First, students wrote a script in Google docs containing the message they wanted to send to their mom. After editing and practicing reading aloud, students were ready for the next step.

Using the Tellagami app, students created an avatar that looked like them. Then they set the avatar somewhere. 

What I love about this app is you can take a photo and set the avatar somewhere, real, like the classroom! This adds an element of Augmented Reality, one of my favorite new learning tools.

Next students read their script into the app, attaching their voice to their avatar.

Once they finished, a link to their video was generated. Students took the link and inserted it into a QR Code Generator. Then, they copied the URL of their QR Code and inserted the image of the QR Code into a Google doc, which I printed for them. In order to scan your special message, use any free QR Code reader. I like the i-nigma app, but there are literally hundreds to choose from.

The final step was pasting the QR Code onto their card, adding stickers, decorations and a personalized handwritten message to mom! Everyone enjoyed this project and the Tellegami app (free!) was a big hit! Happy Mother's Day!

Here is a link to an adorable sample gami and here is another! 

QR Code Scavenger Hunt

We learned about all of Arizona's "Five C's" as we prepared for the 102nd birthday of our great state!

To learn about cotton, students participated in a QR Code Scavenger Hunt. Working with a partner, they found clues all over the room and scanned them with an iPad.

The information they scanned came in a variety of formats including video messages, audio messages, slide shows, documents, websites and plain text. 

Students took notes during the scavenger hunt and decided which information was the most interesting and relevant. Then, they created a cotton collage, displaying some of the new facts they had learned.

Happy Valentine's Day!

We have been working the last week or so on a special Valentine's Day project. First, students had to write a Valentine message in Google docs. 

Next, I recorded each student wishing their Valentine recipient a happy Valentine's Day. Each movie was uploaded to YouTube and the privacy setting was changed to "anyone with link can view" (meaning it can't be searched or found, so the movies could remain a bit of a surprise!) I emailed each student their link and they went to goo.gl, shortened the URL and created a QR Code. Then, students copied the URL for the QR Code and pasted it into their document. We printed all docs and QR codes and glued them to our Valentine greeting. 

A QR Code is a type of matrix bar code. QR stands for “quick response” and the code is able to hold significantly more data than a traditional bar code. Additionally, the code can link directly to text, a website, a telephone number, a vCard, a video and more!

We have been using QR Codes in the classroom all year, as it is one of my favorite learning and teaching tools! I did a TED Talk about QR Codes last year and still find them to be extremely engaging. The QR scanner app we use in the classroom is called i-nigma, but there are many other free QR scanner apps available. QR codes can be scanned using any smartphone and most tablets. If you don't have access to any of those devices, they can also be scanned on a Mac or PC using QReader, QuickMark or QR Code Reader.

If you have any challenges scanning your child's special Valentine QR Code, please shoot me an email and I will gladly help!

QR Codes

 We recently started using one of my FAVORITE classroom tools: QR Codes!

I was honored to be invited to speak about using QR Codes in the classroom at the 2013 TED Conference and was also recently featured on Amplify.com talking about how QR Codes increase classroom engagement. 

Students in my class recently scanned a series of QR Codes, to learn about QR Codes! We used iPads and the i-nigma app to learn all about QR Codes including what they are, their history, different ways to use them, and how to create our own!

We will continue to use QR Codes in the classroom all year and now that students have learned to create them, you will start to see it as an option for homework.