Adding AR (Augmented Reality) To Your Interactive Notebook

Many teachers across our school district use Interactive Notebooks in their classroom. An interactive notebook is a collection of students' notes and graphics and often includes foldables glued into the notebook. Students "interact" with the notes to reinforce learning.

Why not boost interactive notebooks to include Augmented Reality? For example if your class is studying the solar system, you could give students a 2D picture of the solar system to glue into their solar system section of their interactive notebook. Visuals are great for students, especially struggling readers, however, what if you include a AR photo that can be glued into the notebook, scanned with an Smartphone or iPad and it creates a 3D model of the solar system or a video for students to interact with? How would this further enhance student learning?

What is Augmented Reality?



Curious? Now You Try!

Add the Aurasma App to your device and then open this document. Scan over the document and watch the video that populates on your screen.

AR outside of Education:

Google's Translation App goes AR

• Translate between 103 languages by typing
• Tap to Translate: Copy text in any app and your translation pops up
• Offline: Translate 52 languages when you have no Internet
• Instant camera translation: Use your camera to translate text instantly in 29 languages
• Camera Mode: Take pictures of text for higher-quality translations in 37 languages

Additional Resources:

Educate: Tons of step by step content rich AR lessons

ISTE article: Use these Resources to Bring Augmented Reality to your Classroom

Creating QR Codes Step By Step Instructions

Creating AR with Aurasma App

Give Me Some Smore!

Ms. Kristine Griffin's students at Joe P. Eblen Intermediate School recently learned about Greek gods and goddesses. Instead of asking students to present their new learning on a traditional poster board-they went digital! Check out their Smore digital posters.

Smore posters are dynamic and changeable. You can embed videos, photos, and link with social media. If you can drag and drop, you can create a Smore!

Here's a quick tutorial on how to use Smore in your classroom.

Student: Zachary




Student: Avery

WBES ESL News Report

ESL teachers Karie Gregory and Tsianina Tovar at West Buncombe Elementary created a news broadcast to showcase their students research on poverty around the world. The project included many standards including speaking, listening, reading, and writing. All students at WBES will view the newscast after morning announcements.

Click here to see their video.
WBES ESL News Report

New Tech Tools to Try as the School Year Comes to a Close

As the school year comes to a close, teachers are scrambling to review this concept and that concept. Test review can get a little tedious at times for both students and teachers. Here are some tech tools to spice it up!

Timer Tab- We all use timers to keep ourselves and our students on task. When I was in the classroom and reviewing for the end of grade test, I promised my students that if they worked really hard for me for 20 minutes we would take a brain break. Sometimes my brain break was playing a quick game of Simon Says or an impromptu dance party. To change it up I would sometimes show a short America's Funniest Home Video from YouTube. You know what they say about how laughter helps reduce stress! This Timer Tab allows you to set your time and when it goes off your YouTube Video will play right in your timer window.


Quizizz-This tool turns learning into a fun, competitive, interactive game. It is much like Kahoot, except Quizizz is different because the questions and possible answers are displayed individually on student devices. Quizizz works on all devices with a browser, including computers, tablets & smartphones.




Quizlet Live-Many of us love Quizlet for vocabulary review and have been using it for years. Have you tried Quizlet Live? It's Quizlet's way of gaming up the classroom. It's an online, question-and-answer matching game for small teams to play face-to-face in the same room. You can read more information here.


Spiral-This tool works on mobile devices and laptops. It's a unique way to engage your students with content and has three different applications to use. Quickfire enhances question and answer activities, enabling you to get the responses of the entire class in real-time. Discuss is powerful tool for creativity, exploration and deeper learning and encourages students to share ideas with each other. Team Up allows you to facilitate group work - with students sharing ideas and building team presentations.

 

BMP students do BEE-Bots

Lila Downs, media coordinator at BMP, started introductory lessons to Bee-Bots with Kindergarten this week.  Students get practice with coding and sequencing. 

Spring into Kindergarten!

Sally Jordan, kindergarten teacher at Woodfin Elementary, has each student share their work using Padlet. You can scan the QR "flower" of a student to see their work from the year. The interactive bulletin board is in the hall for parents and teachers to see. 

Fairview students composing their own music!

Cheryl Lewis, music teacher at Fairview Elementary, is assisting the students with composing their own music on their 1:1 devices! Stay tuned for some amazing compositions :)

"MAKING" centers with Scratch and Snap Circuits

Media coordinator, Legare Hartbarger, at WD Williams Elementary School is hosting multiple MAKING centers in her media center for students to explore coding, circuits, robotics and more. Click on these links to learn more about SCRATCH and SNAP CIRCUITS.

Fairview students create Movie Trailers for books

Karen Yutzy, Fairview Media Coordinator, is working with students during their media time to create book trailers using iMovie on their iPads for books they have read . Videos will be linked to QR codes and put on books to generate interest in the book with other students. Below is a link to the  instructions if you are interested in using this activity! 

https://docs.google.com/a/bcsemail.org/document/d/1Vaikiu3hiny5rTvDyfZue6S4EKQmbYsHcrwEOd63Qeg/edit?usp=sharing

Jennifer Anderson from WDWilliams represents Buncombe County Schools as a Tech Committee member for the NCMEA.

Thanks Jennifer!

Need a Makeover on the Cheap..See how NBHS Media Center Coordinator , Katie Darty and her team, did it!

One built a whiteboard tabletop out of shower board. Another painted a wall to create an easy green screen. Librarians dream up ingenious ways to save money and get creative in their libraries, and they're more than willing to share ideas. You, too, can take part in this thrifty crowd sourced design movement. Read more of Katie's article published in this month's School Library Journal here. 

 


NBHS Library Makeover On the Cheap

Digital Learning Day at NBMS

A big shout out to North Buncombe Middle for promoting Digital Learning Day! Check out the Padlet created by Shelly Cloninger and learn how NBMS teachers are using technology.

Created with Padlet

Teacher Feature and Technology Across the District

Technology is being used in exciting and interesting ways across our district. From 3D printing, to district benchmarks given in SchoolNet , to connecting classrooms using Skype, teachers are inspiring students to create and collaborate. 

Teacher Feature: Holly Hobbs, Enka Middle School-Student Blogging and Symbaloo

What student blogging platform did you use and why?

I used www.KidBlog.org for my platform. I researched two other blogging sites, WikiSpaces and Blogger, but KidBlog provided the best security and identity protection for the students, as well as teacher controls so that I could monitor students' posts and comments.

Can you share your student blogging expectations for students?

    My expectations were very simple: 

             1. You must post at least 1 word every week

             2. No grammar/syntax rules apply

             3. Students have 15 minutes at the beginning of each Computer Lab day to write                      their blog and check others' blogs, before completing the daily tasks.

How do you showcase student blogs?

I created a Symbaloo page to display the blogs, and I asked students to e-mail me their favorite selfie or avatar to put as the icon for their blog. To ensure student safety, no student used their full name, just a nickname that they went by on their blog. Students were also asked not to use other students' full names, when writing about others.

What kind of impact has student blogging blogging had in your classroom?

Students appreciate writing to a "true audience," each other, and they look forward to writing to their peers. I choose one person from each class to be my "comment moderator," and after they finish their assigned tasks, they sit at my teacher computer and approve comments. They are taught how to look for potentially disrespectful comments, and how to go back to the original blog post to read the context of the comment. They love the job of Comment Moderator, and they handle it with respect and responsibility.

Anything else you think teachers should know?

At first, letting go of teacher-directed prompts and specific length/grammar rules was scary. It felt like a loss of control, and I wasn't sure that I trusted my students with that much freedom. But I soon learned that the kids really enjoyed the absence of rules. They were writing to a "true audience," each other, and soon they started becoming self-aware of their grammar/punctuation, spelling, and the content of their blogs. They knew that their peers were reading their posts and commenting on them, so they put more effort into the blogs. Yes, there were a few that wrote one word each week to meet the minimum requirements. But the majority of my students looked forward to blogging each week, and even blogged at home/on weekends.

If anyone has questions or would like help setting up classroom blogs, my e-mail address is holly.hobbs@bcsemail.org

1:1 Thinkpads arrive to 4th, 5th and 6th grades!

Mrs.Linda  Mazzei's class at WD Williams enjoy their first day of personalized learning with their new Yoga Thinkpad  :)

Mrs. Tammy Meagher's class at Charles C. Bell Elementary log into their IAM dashboard to research with DISCOVERY EDUCATION.