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It’s time for an Action Plan update! It’s far past time, really, but second term went by in a flash and it’s hard to believe we’re in the “home stretch” of both the school year and of Cohort 21. Not that our journey as Cohort members will end as the school year does; this powerful, innovative and resourceful professional learning network is with us for life #blessed
Our second F2F gave me some great tools to conceptualize my project and the third F2F at MaRS really helped me refine my idea. It has been fabulous to twitter chat, Google Hangout, and irl collaborate with those of you also working on literacy and cultivating a love of reading in our students. Just to name a few: shout outs to Amanda Lupo, Brent Hurley, Melissa Ramon and Ashley Bailey.
As a librarian, it would be an understatement to say I enjoy cataloguing, classification, and the organization of information. As such, our second F2F about frameworks for tech integration really helped me conceptualize my project in terms of the SAMR model. SAMR helps us assess how deeply integrated and embedded our use of tech is. At the transformational level, technology is used to modify and redefine tasks. My Action Plan uses the augmented reality app, Aurasma, to change the way students share book reviews and recommendations.
My Action Plan arose from the insight that “readers’ advisory” [the technical term librarians use for the task of recommending books] is often more powerful when done peer-to-peer. How, then, to leverage students’ voices in readers’ advisory to foster a lifelong love of reading?
One of the limits of librarian-led readers’ advisory is that there’s only one of me and I’ve only read so many books. Augmented reality (AR) can change all that. With the use of Aurasma, we’re able to overlay the physical environment with digital tracings to create a landscape of crowd-sourced readers’ advisory. Using iPads, our Grade 4 students will film themselves giving book reviews and this digital layer of information will be added to the physical books. The book cover will become an embedded marker for the iPad camera so that when the camera “sees” the book cover, it will play the book review.
We’re currently finishing up the content of our book reviews and about to start filming. I’m hopeful that I’ll have an almost-finished project to share at our final (tear!) F2F. In the mean time, I’d love to hear if anyone has used AR in their classroom and how y’all are planning to share your Action Plans at the end of April.
Love Love Love this idea! Talk about bringing books to life, and a meaningful project that will engage and foster collaboration in students! I look forward to hearing and seeing more on this!
I haven’t use AI before, but I know that a few major libraries and community centers have:
http://www.libconf.com/2013/04/09/augmented-reality-and-next-generation-libraries/
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/augmented-reality-livens-up-museums-22323417/?no-ist=
Thanks for a great post!
garth.
This sounds phenomenal! I am so excited by this idea and I can’t wait to see what you have to share at our last F2F. (also tear!)
Keep us all updated, Laura. All the book lovers out there are excitedly awaiting your final learnings and take-aways so we can learn from your project and bring it home for our own school’s reading work. I’m so looking forward to reading more about this!
Thank you all for your kind and supportive words! Filming of book reviews is underway, with great (if a little noisy) results so far. We’ll be “AR-ing” them soon and I’m looking forward to reflecting on that process. I’ve learned so much already!
Hi Laura!
Thank you for introducing me to Augmented Reality…looking for ways to incorporate this into Gr. 12 English!
I read your post when it came out, but I’m just exploring Aurasma now (I just opened the tab) and I wanted to wait to respond ’till I had some time to do that! – I’m so thankful that they have BOTH a guide AND tutorials.
I’m so excited about your project. I’m hoping to share your presentation with the librarian at my school after the 24th – hope that’s ok!
I’m planning to do my presentation as a Google hangout on air, with some students – I’m not sure how this will work yet, but I want us to have a conversation about our process as the bones of discussing the product. They’ve signed their permission forms… we’ll see what happens!
Wow, Ashley, thanks for sharing, I can’t wait to see what happens. And thank you so much for your interest, I’m more than happy for you to share my presentation.