These past two weeks in my Instructional Applications of the Internet course have involved me and my classmates developing an idea for a mobile application, which I mentioned briefly in my previous post. I spent many hours putting together a website on Weebly that provides a full description of my idea as well as reasons for why it is needed and the theoretical ideologies behind its creation. Since I devoted so much time and attention to it this week, I will keep this particular blog entry pretty short.
Since I had already organized my thoughts over the past several weeks, I wanted to use the opportunity to put them all together into a final product pitch as a way to also find new resources. Not only did these allow me to bring my idea to life in a creative way, but they helped me to discover and play around with some new technology related tools. One website that I found is called Aurasma. This free resource allows users to very easily create their own augmented reality. All you have to do is upload a base "trigger" photo and then upload a second image that will appear when you use the accompanying app for augmented reality. I actually created my own images first on Adobe Photoshop (which I learned how to use this semester in my Designing Visuals for Instruction course) that would function as posters advertising my Growing Dendrites application. When you open the Aurasma app and hold a mobile device over the images, the augmented reality appears in the form of animated images. It is such a neat Web 2.0 tool that I never knew anything about. I read that users can also use videos as overlays. Just think of the educational possibilities! How about an interactive word wall? Or a classroom newspaper that comes to life in certain places? The Aurasma images can be printed and used just like QR codes.
Another amazing website I found is called Voki. It is completely free to use, although you can upgrade in order to access additional features. Frankly, however, I think what they offer for no cost is more than sufficient for classroom use. If you are not familiar with it, Voki allows users to select a character. There are many to choose from and include humans, animals, monsters, and more. Once users have selected a character, they can make them speak by typing in what they would like them to say or by recording their own voices. I chose five different characters and had them provide testimonials for my product that would help give people an idea for how different individuals might use it (i.e. principals, teachers, students, etc.).
If you would like to check out the website, please visit: http://itecgradschool.weebly.com/. And if you are looking for more ideas on how to use either Voki or Aurasma in the classroom, it is all but a Google search away and only limited by your own imagination!
Until next time...
