The Dream of the 1890's is Alive @ iTech... Continued

     During the weeks before and right after winter break, my students were studying the concept of westward expansion in the United States.  One of the parts to the Westward Bound! project was to have the students learn and explore what it was like back in the 1890's.  We did this by using a copy of the Sears Catalog from 1897.  Using this primary source, along with their research, they wrote about traveling back in time and buying gifts for each of their family members.  For more info on this essay assignment, see my earlier post; The Dream of the 1890's is Alive @ iTech.  

     Overall, I was pleased with the results.  I believe that there was some very authentic learning that took place.  I enjoy this style of student inquiry, here are some of the student examples from the project.  Enjoy!

-   Student 1   -   Student 2   -   Student 3   -   Student 4   -

The Dream of the 1890's is Alive @ iTech

     I am not sure who is having more fun during our current class project, my students or me.  Right now my U.S. History students are in a project called Westward Bound!  In this project, the students are studying the era of westward expansion and life on the frontier.  The students are creating fact sheets as they research and become experts in two of the areas of study from our G.R.A.P.E.S. categories (Geography, Religion, Achievements, Politics, Economics, and Social Structure) on either the Oregon, California, or Santa Fe trails.  After they research, and become experts in their areas of study, they will begin working on some others parts to the project.  

     The other pieces to the project include creating a board or video game about life on the trails / frontier, a final large group presentation with visual aids, and writing an essay called The Dream of the 1890's is Alive @ iTech (I'm a Portlandia nut).  I got the idea for the essay from Twitter when a link to Mr. Fladd's blog TeacherToys and his post More Christmas Shopping, Still Without a Flux Capacitor crossed my feed.  As I read through his post, I kept thinking about how cool it would be to do something similar in my own classroom.  

     As I began developing my Westward Bound! unit I thought that an adaptation of this assignment would fit in perfectly.  The students get to analyze primary source documents, create a story about life on the frontier, and justify their analysis.  Here are the requirements of the essay: 

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The Dream of the 1890's is Alive @ iTech

     In this assignment you will be traveling back in time to the year 1897.  Imagine that your entire current family has traveled with you on your trail (Santa Fe, Oregon, or California) and you have established a new life and become rooted in your new home out west.  You are now living in your new frontier city of Santa Fe, Oregon City, or Sacramento.  It is getting close to the holiday season, and you are in charge of buying gifts for your entire family.  You will have $20.00 total to spend, and be buying your gifts from the Sears catalog from 1897.  As you write your essay, you will have to answer the following questions/facts:

•    Describe your family.  

                        How many people are in your family?

                        How old are they?

                        What do they do for a living?

•    What do you buy as gifts for your family?  

                        How much do they cost?  

                        Why are you picking that gift for that person?

•    What would the cost of the items be adjusted to current day prices?

•    If you had the same amount of money from 1897, adjust to today's prices, what could/would you buy your family from the Sears website?

You can use this website to help you do the cost conversions. http://www.westegg.com/inflation/

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     I am excited and anxious to see the results of this as we progress though Westward Bound!  It is a great feeling to see the students so engaged and excited everyday.  And, the conversations that are being had between students are informative, educational, and fun!  

Augmented Reality in the Classroom

     Over the course of the last 4 weeks my students have been working on a unit called Trip Planning.  In this unit the students are learning many different skills and concepts.  To begin the unit each student was assigned a country in the eastern hemisphere.  They then go through many different steps and assignments that will them to create their own one month long trip to that country.  When the students are finished with all of the main assignments;  a fact outline about their country, a digital story that takes us through 24 hours in their capital, their travel map with placemarks, and a complete daily trip itinerary they hyperlink all of the assignments to their home placemark on their travel map.  Then they download the finished map as a viewable KML file and share it as their final project.

     Each student begins with creating and sharing a Google map and calendar for their trip, which is then shared with my cooperating teacher and myself.  Both of which, will be used to create a complete trip map with placemarks and a daily itinerary that explains what and where they are for each day of the trip.  The next step is creating a fact outline for the country they are traveling to.  This piece helps students conduct research about their country, so they can learn different types of information about it.  To quote one student, "The fact outline is kinda fun.  You just find new facts and get smarter."

     After the fact outline is completed the students move onto the next assignment, which is creating a digital story, using an iPad and the Puppet Pals app, to take us through a day in their country's capital city.  Once the students have created their digital story they upload their video to the school YouTube channel, and the link the video to their home place mark on their travel map.  Since each student in the class is researching and learning about one individual country, I wanted to find a new and exciting way to share all of their videos with one another so that they can explore and learn about what other countries have to offer and what their classmates created.

      This is where augmented reality and the Aurasma app come into play.  Instead of just having the students watch each others' videos on YouTube they can now link there video to different images in the classroom.  Right now for the trip planning unit, our classroom is covered in postcards and other souvenirs from all around the world.  Using the Aurasma app the students are now able to link their own video to an image or object in the classroom.  Once all of the videos are linked up to different images, the students will then explore the room with the app and view each others' videos.

Here is a walk-through of how I used the Aurasma app in the classroom.

     This is a new and exciting way for the students to experience a history classroom, and embodies what I call iHistory.  Other possibilities include linking student explanations to primary source documents so they can show their understanding about the document, you can link videos to pictures or text from the textbook, or even attach the videos that you would show in class to different images so that the students can explore them at their own pace.  This tool is extremely adaptable and can be worked in any type of classroom.  I am currently helping set up student book reviews to a student recommended literature board in the library, explanations of student artwork which are tied directly to their piece for an art show, and videoing math problems being worked out so students can explore the process of different math problems.

Here is the tutorial I made to show students how to link their video to an image.

Digital Storytelling with Puppet Pals in the Classroom

This is a copy of the review that I did for The Teacher's Digital Toolkit.  A site run by Sol Joye where teachers share their digital experiences with programs and apps in the classroom.

9	Cost
8.5	Difficulty
9	Longevity
9	Versatility
10	Classroom Readiness

91.8%

Average Score (based on a weighted scale – SEE HERE)

Site Link:

iTUNES PREVIEW & BLOGSPOT SITE

	X
Website	iOS Apps	Android Apps	Standalone Software

Summary:	SUMMARY: Puppet Pals HD is an app for iOS devices such as the iPad, iPod Touch, and iPhone.  It is a digital storytelling tool that allows students to tell a story using pre-created characters, or their own with the Director’s Pass.  Students move their characters across different backgrounds and record their voices and movements.  Digital storytelling with Puppet Pals can be used in many different classrooms from History or Science, to Language Arts and Foreign Language.  It can incorporate many different topics and allows the students to create their own story and learning experience.  Here is a summary on how to use Puppet Pals. COST: There are two different apps that you can download from iTunes.  There is the Puppet Pals HD app, which is free, and the Puppet Pals HD Director’s Pass app that costs $2.99.  I recommend downloading the free app first, and then you can purchase the Director’s Pass inside it for $2.99 if you like it.  This is a one-time fee that allows you to download all of the character packs in the app, and also allows you to use any picture you want (from your camera roll or camera) in your story. DIFFICULTY: This app is designed to be used for many different ages from toddlers to adults.  The students (7th graders) found the app to be rather easy to use, which is what it is designed to be.  They were able to incorporate all of their images and record their stories with ease.  The first two lessons were spent with the students learning how to use the app.  Many thought that that was too much time, because they picked it up rather quickly. LONGEVITY: Students really enjoyed using Puppet Pals in class.  When they came to class students were always asking if it was going to be a Puppet Pals day.  Throughout the project they all seemed to be engaged.  After the project on world revolutions, the students used the app again during a trip planning unit as they took us through a day their capital city.  The students were engaged the second time through the process as well.  I wouldn’t do the project more than the two times that we did in our World Cultures class, but I could be incorporated into other curriculum and still retain its’ excitement. VERSATILITY: There were three issues that students found the most annoying were that once you started recording, you couldn’t go back and just re-do a section.  If you hit the back button, then you lose the entire recording that you were working on.  The second issue was when the students were cutting out their characters.  While the process was simple, some of the students wanted more accuracy in the tool.  The third was when they were recording.  The microphone can pick up background noise easily, so if they were trying to record in a room with other students there was sometimes “extra noise” included in their recording.  All of these items were easily worked around, as the students found solutions to the problems and shared their best practices with one another. CLASSROOM READINESS: Since the app is so straight forward, it is ready to go right out of the box for classroom use.  There is a short learning curve and the students gravitate towards using it.  During the unit I taught on world revolutions, I provided the necessary scaffolding for the students to understand the process of digital storytelling.  We went through the basic use of the app, picking and researching the topic, how and why to use historical images, how and why to storyboard, recording, editing, and how to upload / post their stories to their blogs.  The project was more about the process of creating a digital story, rather than just using the app.  For more information on digital storytelling and downloadable lesson plans please visit my site. by John Zingale @ihistorywmrjz ihistorywithmrjz.com
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Student Summary:	Letter Grade: Average student rating: 8.4/10: B
	Ease of use (1 easy – 10 difficult): 4.2 / 10
	Time needed / wanted to use: (1 less – 10 more): 5.8 / 10
	Level of “fun” involved (1 less – 10 more): 6.6 / 10
	Level of versatility (1 less – 10 more): 6.2 / 10
	STUDENT SPECIFIC THOUGHTS: “Puppet Pals is super easy and convenient to use! But like any other tool it takes an explanation and practice work.” “I think Puppet Pals is really fun! When I need to use it for a project it is fun and convenient. However I wouldn’t spend my free time on it when it is not for a project. But it is always exciting to hear I have a project on it!” “Puppet pals is very versatile. I could use it for a documentary with real pictures or I could make a cartoon about a bunny on it.” “I really like how you can make your own backgrounds and characters from photos with the directors pass. I really wish there were a part of it that let you put multiple clips together so you didn’t have to transfer it to iMovie or something like that.”

Baroque Music & GarageBand

     Over the last couple of months my students have been in a unit called Revolutions! There were many different topics that the students studied over the course of the unit. We began with the Scientific Revolution and progressed all the way to suffrage in the Progressive Era. One of the assignments that the students had to do was a teach-a-class. In this assignment the students needed to teach their classmates about a topic that they were interested in. The lesson had to be 20 minutes long and needed to have some sort of activity in it.

     Two students sent me a proposal stating that they wanted to do their teach-a-class on Baroque music. They said that they wanted to do a PowerPoint presentation, play a piece of music on their violins, and the have a quiz at the end. While this wasn't a terrible idea for such a short lesson, I asked them how they could make it more interactive for their classmates. While they were starting to think about my question, I asked them if they had thought about having their classmates play the piece of music with them. They looked back at me like I was crazy, and asked, "How can that happen? Not everyone knows how to play an instrument."

     I opened up my iPad and went to my GarageBand app. I showed them the smart strings part of the app, and how they could play an instrument just by tapping a chord on the screen. Their eyes lit up and I could see their minds racing about the possibilities. They loved the idea and grabbed a school iPad to play around and explore the possibilities for their lesson. After a day or so, they came back to me and said that they were going to try and use the app in their presentation.

     A couple of weeks later it was time for them to do their lesson. I was extremely excited to see what exactly they had come up with. They came in early to rearrange the tables in the room into two rows, set up their slides, got out their instruments, and then passed out iPads to the class. As they went through their slide show, they gave lots of great information and played different parts from some Baroque composers. When it came time for the class to use the iPads, there was a lot of excitement in the room. The girls had written out the notes that each row needed to play. The first row of seats were the 1st violins, and the second row were 2nd violins. The students placed the transcribed notes for the class on the screen, and went over the instructions. What happened next was a little bit of chaos and a tremendous amount of magic.

     The class began playing their iPads on their desks, laps, and some were even pretending that they are actual violins. The level of student engagement in this activity was sky high. Several of the students wanted to keep playing the piece after the presentation was finished. The students were talking about it for the rest of the day, and other students from other classes were jealous that they didn't get that same teach-a-class. As a teacher we all want to encourage students to think outside the box, engage the multiple intelligences, and remember what they learned. I can honestly say that all students involved in this lesson accomplished those goals. I am amazed everyday at the power of student centered learning, and what a little encouragement and scaffolding can do.

Historypin: Connecting the Past with the Present

    I just read a great article about a new web based app called historypin that was posted by Peter Pappas.  This app seems almost to cool to be true.  I can't wait to start using this in the classroom.  It enables you do connect the past with the present and bring history to life!  My favorite feature is viewing the old photos in Google Street view.  Just too cool!  Check out the video below.  

How to Create Social Media Guidelines for Your School | Edutopia

Check out this interesting article that helps layout rules for implementing social media in your school and classroom.  There are some good ideas, references, and take-aways in there.

How to Create Social Media Guidelines for Your School | Edutopia