I had the opportunity to give two different presentation at the Virginia Children’s Engineering Conference. I was lucky enough to team with three other fabulous individuals, Alisa Downey, Julie Mulvaney, and Meg Swecker. You can check out our presentations below.
The design briefs and examples that go with this presentation are located here: VCEC Conference Presentation Links
Mrs. Mulvaney’s VA Studies class created virtual reality posters to convey key information about Famous Virgnians and Famous Documents. They used a lot of technology to create these posters. They used Pic Collage on the iPads to create the actual poster and green screen technology to place themselves in a historical setting. The entire project is pulled together using an app called Aurasma. If you download the app, follow the Oak Grove Channel, and scan the posters, they will come to life with the students’ videos. Here are directions on how to load the app.
Aurasma Directions for Oak Grove
And just in case you can’t make it to Oak Grove to scan the posters in person, here are their videos below:
Cross posted on the Oak Grove Digital Archive.
Students in Ms. Barger’s fourth grade class just finished a huge unit on Famous Americans. As part of a STEM activity, students were responsible for writing a speech about a Famous American. They also had to create a poster to use in their speech with a pop-up and movable part.
As students were given speeches, I filmed them (on their assigned iPad). Students took notes when other students gave speeches. Then students watched their own speech and used a self-evaluation sheet to foster self-reflection. They used their notes and each other’s posters to create a Pic Collage containing three facts they learned from listening to other classmates’ speeches.
Students enjoyed the project, and it really gave ownership to giving speeches and listening to others. Both these skills are important Fourth Grade English SOLs.
As students in Mrs. Grave’s Science class studied force and motion, they created Kicking Machines to move a ping pong ball into a cup 12 inches away. They started with the idea from the Design Squad but added a technology twist. Once students created their machines, they used an app called VideoPix to film their Kicking Machine in action. This app allowed students to slow down their videos. Then, they were able to capture images from the video showing the machine and ball in action. Using these pictures, they created a Pic Collage showing potential and kinetic energy.
Finally, using an Aurasma app, the slow motion videos were imposed on the Pic Collage. Now, when someone scans the Pic Collage with the Aurasma app, a video will pop up and play. It’s hard to explain without seeing the posters in action, but here are a few examples. If you follow the Clearbrook channel on the Aurasma app, you can scan and see their videos.
They students absolutely loved this project and were amazed at the final product. And by the time the project concluded, students were very clear on Potential and Kinetic energy. If you’d like to try to scan the posters and see the videos, the directions are below:
Students in Mrs. Clapper’s class used the Pic Collage app on the iPads to create an ABC book. They were each assigned a letter (a few did two), and then they took pictures of things in the classroom that started with that letter. They were so cute! Here’s a few examples.
I can’t post them all because most had students names and pictures on them. If you want to see all the letters, though, check with Mrs. Clapper or I. We’d love to show you!
Teaching with Technology 