Category Archives: iPads

November 8, 2015 · 9:47 pm

Fun with Pumpkins!

We have been having some fun with a cool augmented reality app called Quiver (used to be known as CoLAR). I downloaded the trigger image page which is a colouring page found on their website. I had the children colour the page and then used our smart board to share what happens when you hold an iPad with the app open over the trigger image of the pumpkins. The pumpkins get up and dance around! Too much fun!

You can find additional pictures on their website. You can download the trigger images and experiment! There are a variety of trigger images to choose from with ranging in subject area. Some of the images are free. Some of the images require you to download the images within the app for a small fee.

We hope you enjoyed the little booklet we made to help us practise our Halloween or Fall vocabulary using the words we are trying to practice! The children had fun making the funky covers!

We have also been practising our new sight vocabulary words using our word bank bags. The children cut out the words and then try to make up sentences using the words. You should have received a small ziplock bag with a Halloween or Fall sticker on it with a lot of small pieces of paper with words on them last week. I hope the children taught you how to play with them! I took a few pictures of some of the sentences the children have created using these words. The object of the exercise is to create as many sentences as you can! We have the children create sentences and then we go around the classroom and try to read each other’s sentences! Hopefully you have had some fun creating sentences at home. It is a great way to practise the Dolch words in context! Please take pictures of the sentences you create at home and with your permission I will post them on our blog! Just email the pictures to me!

Here are the first sentences emailed to me! Yeah!

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Filed under coLAR, Halloween, iPads

Tagged as Augmented Reality, CoLAR, Halloween, ipads, word banks

October 18, 2015 · 6:42 pm

Fun At My School!

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO2L1jhQ6r8?rel=0&showinfo=0]

Welcome to a new school year! I thought we would start off the year with an iPad project we have just completed!

This is a book we created on the iPad about our school. Just click on the play button to see and hear our book! We went around the school and took pictures with our iPad of the important places in our school.

We imported the pictures from the camera roll into a great story telling app called Explain Everything. We added text to the pictures and then the children volunteered to record some of the pages of the book. Some of the pages we did together.

We based our book on a story in one of the books we are learning to read in our classroom. I thought it might be more fun to make a book about our own school. It was fun to see which places the children thought were important to have in the book!

After we completed the recordings for each page we saved our book to the camera roll and uploaded it to Youtube! We hope you like it!

Please check back often or choose to follow our blog and receive reminders whenever we post! This blog will be like a sort of digital newsletter! We hope to share our projects and learning with you each week! Enjoy!

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Filed under Explain Everything, iPads, Youtube

June 18, 2015 · 9:46 pm

Open House Fun with Augmented Reality!

We had a great time getting ready to share our projects for our Open House evening. The children practiced using Aurasma to share their projects. We love using augmented reality apps to share our projects.

It was fun to see how excited they were opening their projects and taking a look at their friend’s projects too.

I loaded all the projects on our class channel so the students could view any of the auras we had created.

Each snowman triggers the corresponding video that we created using Chatterpix. You should be able to use the pictures on our Snowman project page to view all of the auras if you follow our channel.

Our channel is called mrsantonsclass. If you open the Aurasma app and search for our channel using the search option our channel should come up. If you follow our channel all of our cool auras should be accessible. You could also use the trigger images we created to view our iMovie trailers about Dinosaurs and Space that we created using the pictures we created using the Walking with Dinosaurs app, NASA Spacecraft 3D, and our new favorite go-to app – Green Screen by Do-ink. The trigger image is embedded on the creative writing pages. We linked the movie trailers to the projects using Aurasma! You should be able to view the movie trailers at home using the Aurasma app and the trigger image of the dinosaur or the spacecraft! Just remember to follow our channel!

We have talking dinosaur pictures and talking snowmen!

The children also got a chance to share their books that they have created.

Here are a few samples!

We used a lot of different apps to create our projects. Our favorite apps to create these books are My Story and Explain Everything.

We had a great turnout for our Open House evening! Thank you to everyone who made the special effort to come back to school in the evening to view our projects! It was greatly appreciated! Thanks to Isaak’s, Abrielle’s and Rayva’s Moms for helping me get the refreshments ready!

Rayva’s Mom made some awesome cupcakes for the event. Very yummy!

We shared a Photo Story about all of our projects too! We hope you enjoyed viewing the projects!

Sorry I didn’t get any pictures during the Open House! But we were very busy!

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Filed under Augmented Reality, Aurasma, Green Screen, iPads, My Story, Spacecraft 3D, Walking with Dinosaurs

Tagged as Augmented Reality, Green Screen by Do Ink, iMovie trailer, ipads, Snowmen Project, Walking with Dinosaurs

May 31, 2015 · 6:55 pm

3 D Space Fun! Augmented Reality Style!

We have been having a lot of fun with our Space theme! We created this movie trailer in iMovie using the pictures we created using a green screen app called Green Screen by Do Ink and the NASA 3D Spacecraft app. We took all the pictures we created and popped them into the storyboard in the iMovie app and then worked together to add the captions! We LOVE our movie trailer. We have watched it numerous times! We hope you will watch it too!

We used the movie trailer to get our imaginations going. We brainstormed together and talked about the things we had learned about space. Then I encouraged the children to write a story about their adventure in outer space. I printed off a colour print of the picture we created for each child and added it to a writing frame. The children seemed to find it very easy to imagine themselves in the story when they saw themselves in outer space. They wrote and wrote and wrote!

The stories are amazing. I have put them up in the hallway. Please come and have a look!

I attached the movie trailer to the creative writing using the Aurasma app. The rocket ship picture is the trigger picture for our movie trailer.

If you have the Aurasma app loaded on your idevice and you follow our channel you will be able to activate the movie trailer! Our channel is called mrsantonsclass.

The stories are amazing and a lot of fun to read!

Come and take a trip with our Mountain View Astronauts!

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Filed under Augmented Reality, Aurasma, Green Screen, iPads, Space, Spacecraft 3D, Youtube

Tagged as Augmented Reality, aurasma, Creative Writing, Green Screen by Do Ink, iMovie trailer, ipads, space, Spacecraft 3D, Youtube

May 31, 2015 · 6:53 pm

Frog Fun!

We have been having a lot of fun with our frog unit! The children have been working on creating a page using the iPads and an app called Strip Designer to create a page about the life cycle of a frog.

I pre-loaded some pictures of the various stages of the life cycle on the iPads and saved them to an album for the children.

They had to open up the camera roll and place the pictures in the frame we had chosen. After they had chosen their pictures and placed them in the corresponding spots they had to add the text.

As usual, they were fearless.

I had the children take turns one at a time on one iPad.

When one person finished they passed the iPad on the next person!

We also completed a research project about frogs!

We read the facts together and sorted them into the appropriate categories!

Then we put these covers on them! And we put them in a little pond! Ribbit!

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Filed under Frogs, iPads, Pow Strip designer

Tagged as comic strip designer, frogs, ipads

May 19, 2015 · 9:14 pm

Fun in Space! Using Green Screen and Augmented Reality!

We have been having a lot of fun with our new green screen app called Green Screen by Do Ink and an app I found last year called NASA Spacecraft 3D.

The NASA Spacecraft 3D app is an amazing augmented reality app! You can download a trigger image from their website, and use it to view an amazing variety of spacecraft that NASA has deployed in space over the last few decades. My favorite is the Curiosity spacecraft that went to Mars. I showed the children a few examples of the various spacecraft and then they chose one to pose with. Last year we took the pictures with the classroom for a background but this year we have green screen technology! We used our improvised green screen made of construction paper on the back of our classroom door to take the pictures this time. Now we can add an background from outer space!

We quickly were reminded that you cannot be wearing green!

When we put the picture taken with the green shirt as one of the images in the green screen app we found out that part of Celia had disappeared! She quickly put on her sweatshirt and we retook her picture!

I have downloaded a variety of images from the internet to use as our background images. The children picked the image they wanted to have in the background too! Now I have to figure out how to add videos to our green screen images!

The NASA Spacecraft 3D app is fun because not only does the trigger image allow access to a variety of spacecraft it also show them moving! It also gives a lot of information about the various spacecraft!

We will be using these images as a starting point to generate some creative writing!

It is a bit easier to imagine yourself in space when you have a picture that shows you there!

Watch for the voyages of the Starship Mountain View!

To boldly go where no child has gone before!

(Courtesy of Green Screen and augmented reality technology!)

(I love Star Trek!, Can you tell?)

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Filed under Augmented Reality, Green Screen, iPads, Space, Spacecraft 3D

Tagged as Augmented Reality, green screen, Green Screen by Do Ink, ipads, NASA stpacecraft 3D

May 19, 2015 · 4:57 pm

Fun with Hungry Fish and QR Codes!

We have been having fun with a new to us app called Hungry Fish by Motion Math! It is a great little app that lets the students practice their addition facts.

We have the free version loaded on our iPads at school which only has the addition operations displayed.

If you want you can download the paid version to practice addition, subtraction, multiplication and division operations.

The object of the app is to join bubbles with addends that make the total!.

You can add more than two or more bubbles together to make the sum!

We have also been having fun using the shortcut QR code that I created for our class website. The children can use the Scan app and hold the iPad over the code and it takes them right to our class website. I have them scattered all around the classroom so the children can access them easily!

That is a lot easier than trying to type in the urrl! QR codes are fun!

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Filed under Augmented Reality, Hungry Fish, iPads, Math Apps, QR codes

Tagged as Augmented Reality, hungry fish, math, QR Codes

May 10, 2015 · 3:49 pm

Fun with Shapes!

We have been using the Explain Everything app to create our Shape books. The children used the camera option within the app to take pictures of objects in the classroom.

We made a list of the different shapes and they scoured the room taking pictures of the shapes they wanted to put into their books. Then they added a sentence describing their shape using the text option. After they had completed a cover page and their pages they went back to each page and recorded their voices reading each page. Some students even added arrows pointing to the words or objects on the page. Once that was complete I saved their project to the camera roll and uploaded it to Youtube.

The children were amazing. They found the objects that they needed and even learned how to crop their pictures so that only the part of the picture that had the shape they needed would be in the picture! They also recorded all of the pages all by themselves!

It was really fun to watch them create this book! They are becoming so independent and proficient on the iPads. Nothing scares them!

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Filed under Explain Everything, iPads, Youtube

Tagged as explain everything, ipads, Shape Book

May 10, 2015 · 3:48 pm

Green Screen Fun!

We have been having a lot of fun experimenting with a new app called Green Screen by Do Ink. I decided to give it a go on Earth Day. The children who wanted to be Earth Day reporters volunteered to be videoed sharing their thoughts about Earth Day. We downloaded some images from the internet about Earth Day and saved these images to the camera roll. Green Screen by Do Ink is a neat little app that lets the students be reporters just like on TV! You can add any image to the background using green screen technology! I placed several green construction papers on the back of our classroom door and presto! We had a green screen! Just like the weatherman! I am looking to improve our screen but it worked for our initial attempts!

First we created our video using the video option on the iPad. Then we opened the Green Screen app and begin layering our images! The first image to import is the background we used for our project. We had a few images that we had chosen to download to the iPad. The announcers chose the background they wanted for their project from that selection. Then we imported the video that we created and added that to the project.

We view our project and made some minor changes to the sensitivity of the filter.

When I downloaded the app I unfortunately did not download the animation component! I should have! Can you imagine if we had the opportunity to add an animation to our project! Will definitely have to download the upgrade!

You can save the project to the camera roll and there are a variety of options for sharing from there.

I think we have some aspiring news reporters in our classroom! Coming soon to a television station near you?

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Filed under Green Screen, iPads, Youtube

Tagged as earth day, green screen, Green Screen by Do Ink, ipads

April 12, 2015 · 9:58 pm

Even More Fun with the Snowman Project!

We have been working hard to finish up our snowman projects on the iPads. We have added a new component to our project. We have created a talking snowman! We are using the app Chatterpix to animate our snowmen! This is a really cool app that allows the children to make any picture talk! Lots of fun.

We took a picture of the snowmen and then the children animate the picture by marking the spot on the picture where the mouth is and then they record their voice saying whatever they want their snowman to say! They have thirty seconds to record their thoughts! They are lots of fun! Enjoy! I hope to link them to the pictures using the Aurasma app. Watch for it!

I have uploaded a few more of the snowman projects that have been completed! Enjoy!

I continue to be super impressed with how comfortable the children have become using the Explain Everything app. They have figured out new things that I haven’t even found or tried yet! Did you see the hand that is pointing to the words! Very cool!