Field Trips Around the World with VR

We all know that students remember the things they experience–that’s why we like to take students on field trips when it’s possible.  As teachers we know it is often hard to really communicate ideas about different places that students have never been — they can look at pictures, but it’s just not the same.  Wouldn’t it be great if we could take students to all the places they study?  Talk about an expensive field trip! Or…maybe not!

Over the past few weeks, fourth graders at Oak Grove have been helping me experiment with using Virtual Reality as a way of going on virtual field trips.  As they were studying habitats, they had the chance to actually “visit” habitats around the world using the app Google Expeditions.  I brought in a virtual reality headset that works with a phone and played around with allowing students to go scuba diving in a coral reef, polar bear site seeing in the arctic, safaris in the savanna, and much more.  Since I only have one phone, we also tried out using the app on the iPads without a VR headset, allowing for up to four groups to be participating at a time.

Finally, students then took turns taking each other to different habitats using the teacher console of Google Expeditions and one VR headset.  It was fun to watch them teach each other about what they were seeing in the various places.  I’m excited about the potential of this technology and can’t wait to see how it will transform classrooms in the future.

Virtual Reality from elemitrt on Vimeo.

 

Conversations with Characters

Mrs. Barger’s class has been reading Howliday Inn and Blood on the Water.  They designed a 3D model of a character from one of the books, then used the app Chatterpix to animate their characters.  Take a listen below!

 

Chester from elemitrt on Vimeo.

Harold from elemitrt on Vimeo.

Jill from elemitrt on Vimeo.

Harold from elemitrt on Vimeo.

Harrison from elemitrt on Vimeo.

Chester from elemitrt on Vimeo.

3D Printed Ornament Challenge

Fourth Graders at Oak Grove Elementary participated in the White House’s 3D Printed Ornament Challenge.  Check out the description of the contest:

When you’ve got a big house to decorate for the holidays, advanced planning is wise. So naturally, the White House is already thinking about this year’s holiday decor, and we’re going to help them deck their halls. Instructables is excited to partner with the Smithsonian and the White House in this 3D Printed Ornament Challenge. Some of the winners of this challenge will have their work printed and hung in the East Wing of the White House during the holiday season. Additionally, those selected to be displayed at the White House will be featured on the Smithsonian’s state of the art 3D data platform, 3d.si.edu and will join a small collection of White House ornaments in the political history division of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

Check out our students’ Instructables and pictures which document the process from start to finish!

Click here to see the USA Holiday Ornament Instructable

Click here to see the O’ America the Beatiful Flag Instructable

 

 

More Real Student iBook Authors!

More books by Fourth Graders have been published in the iBooks store!  These were written by Mrs. Thompson and Mrs. Downey’s classes. Check them out!

Buttercup goes to school

Buttercup Goes to School by IceLordvader 693

 

Turtles Ice Cream

The Turtle’s Ice Cream by Katelyn

 

Panda Playing Softball

Panda Playing Softball by Faith

 

Fluffy the Fearless Dog

Fluffy the Fearless Dog by Watermelon

 

The Coolest Friend Ever

The Coolest Friend Ever by Aaron

 

The Purple Guinea Pig

The Purple Guinea Pig by Cheesecake123

Authors at Oak Grove

Over the past few weeks, students in 4th grade have been writing iBooks using the app Book Creator.  This app has so many features, including the ability to open finished books in the iBooks app.  However, this time we took it one step farther.  Students (with parent permission, of course) had the option to try and publish their finished creations to the actual iBook store.   The story, Wolves Win the Game, was the first to be accepted.  Check it out!  Wolves Win the Game

wolves

Anti-Bullying with Sock Puppets

Mrs. Pollock’s Guidance classes in third and fourth grade at Glenvar have been role playing bullying situations by using the app Sock Puppets.  In Third Grade, they practiced different strategies to get out of a bullying situation.  In Fourth Grade, they practiced the importance of bystanders.  Here are a few of their videos below:

Following the Iditarod

Dallas Seavey

Students in Mrs. Schirmer’s Fourth Grade reading class have been learning about the Iditarod.  While the event started on Saturday, they’ve spent the past few weeks reading books and researching information about it.  As part of their research, they created Musher Trading Cards using the Trading Cards iPad app by Read, Write, Think (you could use the website too). They gave each of their classmates a copy of the trading cards they made, and will watch these musher’s closely as the race progresses.  Check out their cards below!

Students will be following the Iditarod at the official site: http://iditarod.com/ and plotting progress on the classroom map.  Finally, they will skype with resident of Alaska to get first hand information about what it’s like to live there.  More on that in another post!

 

Pic Collage and Videos with Famous American Speeches

Students in Ms. Barger’s fourth grade class just finished a huge unit on Famous Americans.  As part of a STEM activity, students were responsible for writing a speech about a Famous American.  They also had to create a poster to use in their speech with a pop-up and movable part.

As students were given speeches, I filmed them (on their assigned iPad).  Students took notes when other students gave speeches.  Then students watched their own speech and used a self-evaluation sheet to foster self-reflection.  They used their notes and each other’s posters to create a Pic Collage containing three facts they learned from listening to other classmates’ speeches.

Students enjoyed the project, and it really gave ownership to giving speeches and listening to others.  Both these skills are important Fourth Grade English SOLs.

Jamestown QR Codes at Clearbrook

Students in Mrs. Schlosser’s class used QR codes, iPads, and videos to explore Jamestown!  It was an adaptation of the geocaching activity I did with students last year.  This time, instead of finding boxes in the school yard with questions in them (it was way too cold), students scanned QR codes placed in the halls of the school.  The QR codes asked questions, and students used videos loaded on the iPads from HistoryIsFun.org to answer them.  We did learn it was important to spread the QR codes far enough a part so that student groups didn’t feel crowded by other groups.  They all had fun and learned about Jamestown too!

Trustworthy Fourth Graders

TrustworthyStudents in Mrs. Thompson and Mrs. Downey’s class have been studying what it means to be trustworthy.  They’ve blogged about it, and created videos (using Videolicious) to describe their understanding of trustworthiness.

Here is one of my favorites!

The Meanings of Trusthworthy

Check out all the videos and blog posts by visiting their class blog, and leave a comment or two!