Welcome to Augmented Reality……

Hello everyone.

This blog post concerns the fairly new phenomenon of augmented reality.  This is a technology that I am completely fascinated with and would like to share with everyone because it has so many applications for many different age groups and content area.

Augmented Reality (AR) is a technology developed that casts a pseudo three-dimensional image on an iPad or mobile device.  The way it works is the app on your device recognizes a picture or shape and the camera on the iPad “sees” the marker and then links to a video or an animation.

You should see what this does for learning letters in K-2 elementary.  I am currently using this in my lower elementary classes.  The students have a ball with this.  The app is free and all you need to do is print the “marker” cards.  A teacher could perhaps set up a scavenger hunt for the letters?

Another application would be looking at historical monuments such as the Roman coliseum.   A history class could see how it was originally designed using proper era construction materials.

I have seen this used in zoos and museums as a way to “Take the zoo home with you” and the museum or zoo sells cards with small images that recreate the exhibits at the museum when seen through an iPad or mobile device.  An example is Walking with Dinosaurs app.

Another example of how AR media is changing life for engineer and maintenance staff is the use of AR media in detecting problems with electrical, plumbing, and fire sprinkler lines that lie within walls and other difficult places to see with the unaided eye.

This is a technology that I find very interesting, innovative, and has the potential to change education and change many facets of our society.

Dan

My Perspective on Blogging…

My Perspective on Blogging…

Blogging has been a positive experience for the following reasons: blogging allows for concise reflection, great avenues for sharing, and opportunities for constructive criticism and improvement from comments by other professionals in my field.

Blogging has allowed me to really look at lessons I did with my classroom and examine the lesson, the learning that occurred, and the overall purpose of what I attempted to do.  Better yet, blogging this experience allowed experienced educations to comment and offer ways to make a good lesson great.

Blogging has allowed me to share lessons and tools that I use on a day to day basis to others.  Part of the technology and teaching culture as a whole is to steal, steal, steal and eventually give back to the field that has contributed to your success.  Blogging has given me some great feedback on tools and lessons and I hope some readers have found some tools and techniques that they can really use.  I only share tools that I have tried, use, and are “student approved.”

I am still fairly new to blogging.  After I read the book excerpt by Richards (2010), I looked the options of blogging websites such as Blogger, 21Classes, and Edublogs.  I finally decided to go with WordPress because it appeared a little more friendly to being embedded in other websites and it had a very simple, clean look.  I have been happy with it and it does what I need it to do functionally and aesthetically.

Some of the blogs I follow:

Free Tech for Teachers Blog

A blog by Richard Byne featuring useful and purposeful technology for educators

Larry Cuban’s Blog on School Reform and Classroom Practice

As an expert on change in education, I enjoy his perspective on education and the classroom

Rethink.redesign. (go!)

A blog by some awesome tech integrationists in the region.  An important link to Language Arts and literacy for me – one of my weakpoints as a tech integrationist

Dangerously!Irrelevant

A blog by Dr. Scott McLeod about leadership, technology, and the future of schools

 

Organization

I also use a tool called Feedly to keep track of the blogs I follow.   If you sign into the feedly website and put in the links for the blogs, feedly will retrieve new blog posts for you and keep them organized until you can read them at your leisure.

I have enjoyed blogging and plan to keep up with this blog.  I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

-Dan

References:

Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Calculus and Physics – Speaking the same language?

For this week’s blog post, I have chosen to share an experiment I have been doing with another teacher.  The theme for the module was language and sense-making so this fit right in.

It is common for me to work with the Calculus teacher because he is not especially tech-savvy, but he is very open-minded and what I would consider a thinker.  We exchange many ideas about philosophy, school reform, and changing classroom culture over lunch.  This week was Iowa State Assessments and the 12th grade students were not required to come into class until 10:00, so he had the idea of asking his Calculus students come early (of their own free will) to get some extra class time.  Most of the Calculus students are Physics students and I had the idea of co-teaching an integrated Physics/Calculus lesson or two as an experiment to see what would happen.

The picture below shows a problem about vertical acceleration of an object worked using Calculus on the left side and Physics on the right side.  The Calculus teacher and I really wanted the students to see the relationships between the Calculus process and how it is the Calculus process (language) that the Physics equations came from.

This experiment could not have been timed any better because this was an exercise in language and sense-making between two slightly different math/science languages.  The Calculus teacher and I wanted the students to see that the language of science and the language of mathematics are not terribly different.  The symbols (as shown in the picture) are related.

The experiment went pretty well and students really understood that Physics was the physical, visual description of Calculus.  It is interesting that Isaac Newton was responsible for the foundations of both.  The students picked up on these similarities as we had hoped.

To conclude, the Calculus teacher and I share the belief that academics are too compartmentalized in our school.  Calculus is not done only in room 214.  Likewise, English is not just a part of the Language Arts classroom.  A goal of this experiment was to show that Calculus is Physics and Physics is derived from Calculus.  The language is the same if you put them side by side with each other.  We are thinking about teaching these two courses integrated for the 2014-2015 school year.  I recently found a textbook that integrated Calculus into Physics.  The text is Knight’s: Physics for Scientists and Engineers and might be a promising path to carry on this experiment.

Dan

Module 3 Blog Post – Have you ever wanted to hear students think?

Hello Innovation Crew!

I would like to share with you in this module’s blog a very versatile application called ShowMe.  ShowMe does not perform a specific task like most apps such as math facts or vocabulary.  What ShowMe does do is exactly what the name implies, the app lets students show you something. 

The app is essentially a recordable digital whiteboard.  You can change the background with a saved picture or use a photo that is taken at that time.  Whenever you are ready to draw, work, or explain, simply push the record button and demonstrate away!  The recording is uploaded to ShowMe and you are provided with a link that you can post to Twitter or send to anyone through email.

I have taught a number of teachers how to use this tool in the classroom.  The students do not need instruction, they just take to the app naturally.

Students can show you just about anything.  Students can show how to work a math problem, demonstrate understanding of the water cycle, how to properly shade a three-dimensional object, or diagram the movement of westward expansion.  All of this can be done while the student is explaining the concept.

An example of a Physics ShowMe

An example of a Calculus ShowMe  (be sure to watch the very end, she switches pages to a graph)

What makes this app incredible is opportunity to hear student thinking.  An instructor can diagnose exactly where a student made a mistake in a problem in Calculus or identify a misconception in scientific thought immediately.  Better yet, I have students post these their ShowMe links into a discussion and have over students peer review each other’s work.

This app is versatile, valuable, and students enjoy using it.  Tell me what you think!

Dan

“Don’t be afraid to let your students be awesome”

Module 2 Blog – Meograph

An innovation I would like to share this week is a digital storytelling tool called Meograph.  Meograph is a web-based application that allows the author to add text, pictures, and video to tell a story.  Students can either tell the story or even narrate the story!

Meograph needs very little instruction.  As a user opens it up, the user simply starts creating.  I thought it was powerful to select a series of pictures and say what you really want to say about it.  I could see applications to English, Social Studies, and Spanish immediately.

My Spanish teach loved this because she could have students narrate the story in Spanish.  There are only a handful of websites that do this.   The other webtools I can think of that allow narration or voice-over are GoAnimate and Animoto.

I showed this to my Social Studies department as a tool to use for timelines.  I showed the teachers examples of Meographs for the events leading up to World War II.  For English, I showed the teachers an example of the important events of Tom and Jim’s journey in Huckleberry Finn.  In addition to this, a student could document Lewis and Clark’s journey or Charles Darwin’s journey to the Galapagos Islands.  The possibilities are endless!

An example of a Meograph is here.  It is not mine personally, but shows Meograph’s functionality.

The bottom line is that students have a blank slate that allows creation.  The tool is useful with almost all disciplines.  The tool allows you to post the link when you are done and it is fun to boot!   This fits all of my parameters for a useful technology tool that make students think and create.

Have fun – Dan

Module 1 Blog

Welcome to my world of reflection and random thoughts.  As the introductory blog post states, I am a Chemistry teacher transplanted into technology integration.  It is refreshing to see technology through an educator’s eyes versus education through a technology coordinator’s eyes.  A few of my learning interests are authentic assessment, flip-teaching (synonyms: flipped classroom, inverted teaching), and motivation of high school students.

I am relatively new to blogging having only blogged once or twice before as a guest blogger for a technology showcase.  I am an avid podcaster and see this is more of a chance to reflect on my own thought and invite constructive criticism.  Blogging strikes me as a 21st century “soapbox” where a person can discuss what is on his or her mind and get feedback from a reader.  While I have slinked away from this media in the past, I see a potential value in reflecting on what is successful in your professional practice and seeking constructive criticism on what is not.

I have always been more of a reader than an author, but I look forward to the opportunity to explore this new path and the opportunities of growth it might provide.  I look forward to reading all of your blogs!

Welcome to the Innovation Blog!

Hi everyone,

My name is Dan Strohmyer and I have been an educator for 12 years.  I migrated to Technology Integration after many years teaching Chemistry.  I have been involved with 1:1 technology school districts for the last six years as a teacher or administrator.  The purpose of this Blog is to post ideas, reflections, and other random thoughts about innovations in education.  I am fascinated with student learning and always looking for new ways to help students learn and learn better with technology.  I welcome the constructive criticism and feedback.

Please feel free to contact me at the email address: dstrohmyer@mac.com