Scavenging with Remind 101

Every year I am very lucky to be able to take my 8th grade students to Boston.  Not only do they see and learn at the sites we have already covered in American history, they also get a preview of what is coming ahead throughout the year.

I gotta say that Remind 101 played a very important role in the success of this years trip.  Remind 101 is a free text messaging service made for teachers, admin and anyone else who would like a safe form of texting reminders out to students and families.

One of our annual stops is the JFK Library in which the students do a scavenger hunt through the exhibit area.  After teaching kids for almost 17 years, I know that once you set them loose in a museum most of them will simply zoom through.  The scavenger hunt gives them a fun purpose and slows them down to actually check out the exhibits.

Once we were driving to the library this year, I realized that I totally and completely screwed up and forgot the scavenger hunt.  At first I thought, I would just let it go but then the lightbulb went off and had the idea of texting them all the clues and having them jot the answers or pics down in their Notability app on their Ipads.

Journaling in the Atrium

Luckily my wonderful chaperones took the students to the opening film and I set off to reconstruct the scavenger using Remind 101 as a tool.  Once they got out of the film, it was as easy as pressing send and off they went in search of the items.  I continued to send out texts as they searched thorough the exhibit and then in the final text they were given a quote by JFK to reflect upon.  With the quote in hand, we had a reflective journal moment in the beautiful glass atrium.

After they were all finished, I was actually quite happy that I had made the mistake of forgetting the original hunt.  By using Remind 101, the students were even more engaged and excited about the hunt.  In fact, we ended up actually ushering them out the door because we were running late to our dinner appointment!

Not only did Remind 101 get me out of an embarrassing fix, it also made me stop and realize just how much teaching has changed since I began in the 1990's.  I remember jumping up and down for joy when my school bought me a new overhead projector.  I wish I could hop in a time machine and go share with that young teacher just how much it would all change.  Then again, I'm sure that app is coming soon.

The Reinvention of the Hand Turkey

Recently, my classes hit the road(or air) to turn the Boston area into our classroom.  Throughout the trip they filled out our traditional packet of materials now upgraded and revised to suit our 1:1 ipad needs.

Throughout the 4 days they gathered information for our upcoming memorial project by photographing and analyzing a variety of memorials including the Salem Witch Memorial and The New England Holocaust memorial.  In short, the trip is designed to let them actually see and experience what we have already learned about and prepare them for future lessons.

On our last day, we visited Plimoth Plantation and my students took on the role of a roving news reporter out to capture the life of a pilgrim and Wamponaug in 1627.  They interviewed and helped out the living historians by doing chores among other activities.

Problem was that I just simply did not truly know how we were going to present their findings.  Late at night it finally came to me.  Don't you just love those sleepy moments of sudden inspiration?  I decided to have them tackle Aurasma once again with it.

I will admit that I have had a love/hate relationship with Aurasma.  On one hand it is just plain cool and when it works, it's pretty mindblowing. On the other, my classes have gotten frustrated with it because it is kind of tricky.  Following the proper channels, not capturing the target and the dreaded app crash have left my students and myself a little annoyed.

That being said, I figured we would give it one more go and have them create a small film using the footage they shot at Plimoth Plantation using Pinnacle Studio on their iPads.  Each group of 3 put together a 3 minute film and then saved it to their iPad camera roll.  We found through trial and error that they needed to save it as the smallest sized video as possible since Aurasma kept saying their video overlay was too large.  Sorry, no HD for this.

Each group also created a unique hand turkey for our bulletin board that then became a trigger image.  My 8th graders love to do these "throwback" art lessons from elementary school.  We found that using markers for the hand turkey worked best.  Those that used colored pencils were simply not picked up by the app. When the aura is created, the turkey comes to life and reveals what they learned during our visit.

There are still two classes that need to complete the project but it has been wildly successful so far and it is the perfect way for them to share their findings with the school.  Who knew that a hand turkey could be so knowledgeable?

UPDATED:  Since the original post a year ago, another set of 8th graders have done this assignment. Aurasma has improved vastly over last year and the trigger images are much easier to capture and present.