Tag Archives: literacy

BYOD4L Connecting

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Bring Your Own Devices 4 Learning #BYOD4L

This week I’m taking part in this online course. Here are some useful links:
byod4l wordpress
@byod4l
Google+ community BYOD4L Learning COmmunity

Monday – Connecting
In the student scenario the student wanted to use social media to search for up to date material in her area of interest – well being. This is an interesting question – the wide range of a connections that can be made on Twitter can be useful here. It’s possible to find people who are working in your field, or interesting in it and learning about it. Ideas and links to resources, activities and publications are often shared. You can take part in organised chats or unexpected exchanges with people you might never be able to meet and work with face to face.
There are associated challenges – how do we track of all the links and ideas we come across? How do we help students learn to evaluate what they come across online in social media so they can use of in an academic context and understand its reliability and validity?
Keeping track – in the past I have used bit.ly, now I’m using Pocket to save links and resources that I coma across. I also use Twitter itself by ‘liking’ interesting things so I can come back to them later. I sometimes post links to a relevant Google community eg our Mobile Learning community at work.
Evaluation – I’ve seen Padlet used as a way of sharing useful academic resources with students and teaching them to evaluate sources.

Task 1 – who is who? completed on Google+ (using my digital self ThingLink) and In the Twitter chat
Task 2 – making – I used ThingLink to collect all the various spaces where BYOD4L is happening and collect them together on one image. You can see it here: ThingLink BYOD4L2016
Task 3 – reflection – in the Twitter chat we talked about using Twitter or another channel communication with students. Getting everyone to use the same channel is a challenge as we all have our personal preferences. Suggesting about showing how useful a channels is made me think I could try again maybe by having a Twitter recommendation or tweeter of the week on our course blog.

 

Aurasma

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aurasmaAurasma is an augmented reality app that allows you too a picture, sound or video to a picture or object.

It is available as an app for IOS and Android mobile devices and tablets. The website is here.

In order to use it you need to create an account or use other existing accounts to log in (google+ etc).

The app works in a similar way to a QR code reader. When you hold your device over an ‘aura’ this triggers an image or video on your device. The app can be used to create your own auras for fun or learning. Unlike a QR code the symbol, object or picture itself triggers the aura, which can be an interesting and useful feature of using it. In order to access it the aura must be public and the user must sign into aurasma and follow the maker of the auras or the channel they are on.

This video clip is a clear guide to how to create an aura:

2015-04-17 12.32.50I’ve just made these paw prints and added an aura of the creature that makes each one. I’d be asking children to look at talk about the prints, using their existing knowledge to sort them, possibly identify them and make guesses. they can then use a phone or tablet with the aurasma app to check which animal made the track. On the back I have added a QR code that takes the user to further information about each creature so they can research them further. Discussing this with students it was suggested that pictures of the animals or the names could be available for matching before checking using the app.

Other uses in education might be:

  • adding to photos of children’s activities and linking to videos of them performing these activities eg photo of the school choir, video of the choir singing;
  • adding to pictures to provide extra written or spoken information;
  • adding a speech to a picture of a story character eg picture of the big bad wolf, video of his saying ‘I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down!’
  • adding a description or explanation of a piece of art or technology made by a child.

If you are using aurasma or a similar app add your ideas and links below.

 

Visual Poet

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Visual Poet

Cost – free

Visual Poet is an app that allows you to take or choose a series of three photos and label each of them with some text as a caption.

Opening screen

2014-05-26 15.56.31Create – touch ‘create’ to get to the screen where you can add or take three photos.

Do this by touching the photo where it says ‘tap to edit’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This opens a page where you can choose a photo from your photo library, from Tumblr, from Flickr or from Google. 2014-05-25 23.40.38

When you have chosen a photo you use the red box to place the image and choose the photo by double tapping. On this screen you can also add a title, credits for the images and comments or notes. To add text tap in the top box and this opens a text box for you to type into.

2014-05-25 23.40.38-12014-05-25 23.40.40To go back to the main page scroll across like turning the page of a book.

Polish – touch ‘polish’ to to edit the title, credits and comments.

Publish – touch ‘publish’ to email the poem to yourself or someone else.

Scrap – touch scrap to start again.

Browse – allows you see all your Visual Poems.

Settings – allows you to log into Tumblr.

Daisy-1 This app can be used in variety of learning activities allowing learners to use both images and text to record their thoughts, responses, descriptions or questions.

English:

Give learners three words and ask them to find three images to match, and put each word into a sentence relating to the image.

Use three images and three sentences to tell a short story.

Use three images and three descriptive sentences to describe a story character.

Ask learners to use narrative, poetic, reporting, instructive, explanatory or conversational language in their text. (lots of other language possibilities)

Ask learners to choose three photos they have taken on a visit or at an event and annotate them with what they have learned.

Give learners lines of poetry, similes or metaphors and ask them to find images to illustrate them.

Ask learners to choose a key part of a story from the beginning, the middle and the end for their sequence.

Ask learners to suggest three different endings for a story in their sequence.