The Night Zookeeper Skypes in!

GATE students enjoyed skyping to Great Britain with the Night Zookeeper today to learn about creative writing. The night zookeeper runs a website www.nightzookeeper.com where students use their imagination to create creatures to live in the zoo. Students write stories about their creatures and then publish them to the website. The website also offers interactive games that my students (and both my children) have really loved! The night zookeeper interacted and talked with them. He pushed them to be creative and think outside of the box. Loved it! We will definitely meet with the zookeeper again!

Green screen App Smashing

Today I was amazed with the students.

Middle schoolers not only app smashed, but added a green screen component.  Students created one "explain everything app" and another "telegami app video" and merged them together using "do ink". Students then imported that creation into iMovie to edit and enhance their creations!  Some even chose to export to another app such as youtube, vimeo or display their work using Aurasma. We are talking about a 5 layer app smash! That is super impressive for week 2 in this new curriculum!

Tomorrow GT students will be going on a virtual field trip with Mrs. Bankston's class to Great Britain.

The Night Zookeeper is a school project turned digital experience that inspires children around the world. We are excited about this project!!!

App Smash!!!

Students have been working hard learning about Augmented Reality in class. They know big words such as marker, QR code, overlay, aura, Aurasma, and trigger image.

This week we added a new fun word to our word wall.... "app smash". App smashing is when you layer apps together to produce a final product. Students are now learning about other apps they can use to create presentations or verbal essays about data. Once they are familiar with these fun presentation apps, they will then be able to use them as an overlay ontop of a marker!

What smart and technological kiddos we have! We grow more tech savy each week!

Here is a video my students created using an app called Telegami. These 6th graders thought they were pretty funny when they made an avatar to represent me and put me right next to an avatar that represented my husband:

...and we're off!

In the world of GATE, August is filled with paperwork and data entry that has to be collected and turned into the state. We also spend the month crunching test scores and looking for new GATE candidates that score in the top 97% on state standardized tests. Put that on top of our building's new (exciting and beautiful) construction, and we we're off to a little bit of a late start this school year, but it hasn't slowed us down at all.

AUGMENTED REALITY:
The month of September held exciting and eye-opening curriculum regarding augmented reality. AR (augmented reality) is one of the biggest, progressive trends in the education world right now, and we are at the forefront! Augmented Reality combines real and virtual data, it is interactive in real time, and is in a 3D format.  Students have viewed, played, and enhanced their learned using this type of AR in the GATE classroom.

PROJECT:
The month of October, students will be creating augmented reality of their own! This will include class posters and word walls to decorate our classroom. Download the free app aurasma and follow our 3 classroom channels (linked below). The next time you pop into our school, you will be able to see the augmented reality we have been creating in the classroom! Just use the app on the outside of my door as a good starting place!

Aurasma 3 classroom channels (click the links below and add the channels to your aurasma app):

http://auras.ma/s/gjVbc

http://auras.ma/s/CUS7W 

http://auras.ma/s/FeZ5l 

Other sites to know about click the Bolded Links below to be redirected to the sites :)

Class Website: www.henley.pbworks.com

Class Youtube channel where we will post some of our creations: 

Classroom Twitter: Follow us at  https://twitter.com/TeamHenleyYall