Category Archives: QR codes

June 12, 2016 · 3:41 pm

Fun Making Digital Books!

Check out our digital books!

We have been having a lot of fun creating our own digital books! The children have been using a combination of different apps to create their own version of Read to Me stories! The children pick their favourite books and then use the camera on the iPads to take pictures of each page.

Then they import each picture of each page into the Explain Everything app.

When they have imported all the pages they go to a quiet place and record themselves reading the story! We wanted to make it like a “read to me” book where each word is highlighted as it is read so we used the pointer option in Explain Everything. There are a lot of different pointer options in this app. You can use an arrow, a hand, and the very special light sabre! You can guess which pointer is the most popular!

I love that you can listen to each child reading and how it encourages their reading growth! They can hear themselves and they want to make their reading come alive for the listener. They often will redo pages if they don’t like how they sound! How cool is that!

When the book is complete we save the book to the camera roll. When the project is saved to the camera roll in Explain Everything it becomes a video. Then you can open it and listen to the student reading the story as they point to each phrase or word in the story! It is amazing! The best part is that they can share their reading with everyone! During Eat and Read time I open up the SeeSaw app and we watch and listen to the children in the class read us stories on our big Promethean board! The children love listening to their classmates read their stories. It doesn’t get any better than that!

We have been using the SeeSaw app to share our work on the iPads this year!

This is an amazing product that lets us share the work that each child does in a digital format. Each child saves their work to their own folder which can be accessed at school using a class QR code.

The children can access their own work at home using their own personalized QR code.

The children are able to create projects and then share them using the QR codes to access the site and then upload their projects from the camera roll! Way to much fun!

We also read our books to our favourite stuffies without any technology! Both ways are awesome! Had to take this picture as it was way too cute!

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Filed under Digital books, Explain Everything, iPads, Promethean Board, QR codes, Read to Me Books, SeeSaw, Youtube

Tagged as Digital books, explain everything, ipads, Read to Me Books, SeeSaw

March 2, 2016 · 9:32 pm

Fun with Penguins!

We have been having a great time learning about penguins! The children have been learning how to sort different facts about penguins into categories. They divided the facts into four different categories: What They Look Like, What They Eat, About the Babies, and Cool Facts.

We observed the penguins in real time on webcams located at the Vancouver Aquarium and SeaWorld, Orlando. It was fun to watch their antics. Some of them were very loud! One penguin likes to play peek-a-boo with the camera.

We added a QR code to our penguin reports that links to the Vancouver Aquarium penguin cam! We use our Scan app to scan the code and it takes us directly to the Penguin webcam!

It almost seems like magic!

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Filed under Augmented Reality, Penguins, QR codes

Tagged as Augmented Reality, ipads, Penguin Webcams, penguins

November 1, 2015 · 9:48 pm

Fun with Bat Facts!

We have had a great time during the last few weeks working on a variety of projects. One of them has been a mini-unit about bats. We watched a movie about the flying fox bat that I found on the National Geographic kids channel. We also read a few books about bats to find out about all the different kinds of bats. We made a little poem by filling in the blanks with our favourite bats. Then we made our bat covers!

I created a QR code to attach to the project! When the students scan the code using the iPads the video we watched about the flying foxes comes up. The urrl for the video is attached to the QR code. I use a QR code generator that I found online to attach the urrl to a code which is generated and I then print off!

The children have been asking me to add QR codes to everything now!

I couldn’t get a good picture of the QR code in action because it linked to the video too fast! Good WIFI!

We use an app called Scan to view the QR codes! If you have Scan or a QR code reader on your idevice you can view the video we watched too! Have fun!

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Filed under Augmented Reality, Bats, QR codes

Tagged as Augmented Reality, bats, QR Codes

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

March 19, 2015 · 8:42 pm

Fun with the Snowman Project!

We have been working hard creating our Snowman books on the iPad! We have the first few finished projects to share with you! We hope you enjoy reading and viewing them as much as we have enjoyed creating them!

The initial sparks for the projects are the amazing snowmen that were created at home by the students with their families!

They are fabulous! To set the stage, we read the story The Snowman by Lois Elbert. It is a great story about how a family saves up a variety of materials to decorate their snowmen.

I sent home the template with the children and several weeks later these wonderful snowmen returned to our classroom!

Then we started to compile a book on the iPads about the snowmen. The first page of the book contains a photograph taken on the iPad of their snowmen.

The children opened a project on the app Explain Everything and imported the picture of their snowman from the camera roll. Then they added the title and their name using the text feature.

The children created an additional four pages to their books.

On one page. they had to draw a snowman and then label the snowman using the text feature.

We made one page about what they thought their snowman might like to eat. They had to draw the plate with the items on the plate and label it once again.

The new feature to our snowmen books this year is on the fourth page! It is a new favorite of mine! The Explain Everything app allows you to record every stroke you make as you draw it and narrate your drawing as you build your picture. I thought it would be interesting to have the children describe or teach how to build a snowman. I think you will really enjoy them. I know I can’t watch them without smiling!

The last page is, of course, about the author! The children had to draw a picture of themselves and then add a few sentences about themselves.

The final step was to create a script for the first page describing the snowman. The children had to complete a few sentences describing their snowman and their favorite parts of the project!

Then we had to have the children record their script on the first page of their book as well as adding a comment or reading their work on each of the pages of their book. Then we saved the book to the camera roll as a video within the Explain Everything app. Love, love, love this app!

Then I was able to upload the video on the camera roll to Youtube and import it into the blog so that you can see it. I think I will also create a QR code for the video when we have completed them. You know you have a group of students who love technology when they ask you to turn everything into a QR code!

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Filed under Explain Everything, iPads, QR codes, Snowman iPad Project Movies!, Snowman Project, Winter, Youtube

Tagged as explain everything, ipads, Snowman Project movies, Snowmen Project, Youtube

January 28, 2015 · 9:33 pm

Fun with Penguins!

We have started our unit on Penguins!

We have penguins everywhere!

Over the last few weeks we have watched the penguins on the live webcam at the Vancouver Aquarium. Very cool! The penguins here are watching their keeper clean up their enclosure. He even reached down to pet one of the little penguins. Very cute! You can find the link to the webcam here.

We also watched bit of the webcam from Seaworld in Orlando. You can find the link for this webcam here. These guys are really noisy!

We read some non-fiction books about penguins! We learned a lot of interesting facts. Did you know that penguins like to surf?

Then we did a penguin research report. First, we read the facts and decided which category would be the best for each fact. Our four categories were: What They Look Like, What They Eat, About the Babies, and Cool Facts! Then we coded the facts with the beginning letter for each category and the children glued the facts to the corresponding page.