Over the last few months Mr. Padilla, our Design/ICT Tech teacher has been busily working to prepare and engage students with the Oculus Quest headsets.
These headsets all students to explore through augmented, virtual, and mixed reality experiences. Applications for using these devices go far beyond simple gaming and leisure activities and can impact positively across most disciplines including but not inclusive of health, sports and medicine, education and training, design and engineering, history and geography.
During these last two weeks, our students in 9th and 11th computer science and 11th ITGS have had opportunities to explore the technologies used with these devices as well as practical applications through experiential learning in lessons.
Students from across the school also had the opportunity to explore this technology during STEAM Fest 2022 at the Oculus Playground.
Our next steps will be to research novel ways to further merge the digital and physical world through haptic technologies and explore spaces and design through the use of Mozilla Hubs.
With the arrival of our new Leap Motion devices, and our existing Google Cardboard we have had the opportunities to really explore with our students. These coupled with our existing iPads and QR code Apps, have lead to a series of exciting activities so far, this school year.
Leap Motion in 11th Grade ITGS
We have been looking at input devices in 11th grade ITGS. This was a prime opportunity to test out with the leaps and have the kids prepare their own activities. During the session, we worked with both the Leap Motions and MakeyMakey input devices, both of which are powerful learning tools, however, this post is about AR and VR, so we will leave the MakeyMakey discussion for another time.
In order to prepare for the lesson, I provided students with a link to the Leap Motion Gallery and asked them to choose and download a couple of modules they were interested in trying out. It is important to note that there are a great variety of activities to choose from, unfortunately, some are not available for Mac users. It was easy to share the information with students, as we are using Google Classroom to run our lessons and communicate with each other. The kids had a wonderful time exploring different modules. You can view some of the work they did in this mashup video from the input lesson.
*We did find, that we had to really work initially to get used to the range that the Leap Motion would detect. Students persisted and did get the hang of it rather quickly in the end.
Google Cardboard in 12th Grade ITGS
In 12th grade, we have been looking at wearable technology, what better time to bring out the Cell phones and Google Cardboard.
The kids downloaded the appropriate app to their cell phones for homework and after a brief introduction they partnered up and we took the tech outside. It is important to have kids working in pairs with VR as it is easy for them to trip and bump into things. Our students spotted each other in partners and took turns with the viewers.
The excitement quickly crescendoed, as students explored using these simple cardboard devices. They were immersed in what they were doing, actively exploring, evaluating the technology and having a great deal of fun doing so. All we needed to accomplish this was the cheapest of cardboard viewers, their own cell phones, and the free apps. You can even download templates to help you build your own cardboard viewers.
Please see the previous post for a short video and further details on this activity.
QR Code Scavenger Hunt-6th Grade LRC Orientation
Each year we host an orientation session in the Learning Resources Centre for the 6th grade students moving up to Secondary.
This year we decided to take advantage of the popularity that has grown around Pokemon Go and use it as our hook. We used our Pokemon theme, along with our existing iPads, a QR Code reader (We prefer i-nigma), paired with physical QR Codes to build a massive (I kid you not-over 100 students strong!) scavenger hunt.
The QR codes were used to place scannable text clues within Pokeballs which were distributed around the school, along with Pokemon characters. We used Google Maps to create a perimeter map for the work and determined different routes for each team.
Teams started off with a small Ziploc bag containing their first QR Pokeball clue and a copy of the map. Each team was given an iPad. It was delightful to watch the students tearing across the field, verifying their positions on the map, discovering their clues and rushing to see which would be the first group to finish. Some of them even ended up in the shrubs outside the headmaster's office. Upon arrival at the LRC(They all ended up here), they had a book related clue to resolve and activity to complete upon finding the right location and identifying the book. They were then given some time to browse the resources on offer.
Here are is a link to the photo gallery for the event.
We have plenty of other activities planned for the school year involving our modest collection of AR and VR devices and applications and are looking forward to discovering, even more applications to use in our regular lessons and special events. The next step is to have t-shirts made for our annual book week, covered in interesting codes and having students scan us as we move about the school.
*One last note, we used to create VR pop-up books using Zooburst, which was a great application, however, the site has since closed. They do offer an App however that seems to still be available. It is an app worth investigating.
I am in SketchUp mode right now, as we are working with the program in our 8th grade lessons. The students have been given a special task. They are to create a room based on a descriptive piece they wrote in English lessons, entitled a Character's Mind as a Room.
It's the second time we have done this project in two years the culminating activity for which, is to create a SketchUp video of the models. Yesterday the plans changed a bit something new and exciting appeared on the horizon. I came across a slide share presentation posted by Martin Burrett on augmented reality. The presentation lead me to AR-Media's cool plugin for Google SketchUp. I needed to check this out, one because I have never really investigated augmented reality (except for the time I tried to get it to work in Zooburst, failed and gave up...[Note to self: go back and try this again]), but more importantly because it would be an exciting activity to do with our kids when they complete the unit. They could even screencast themselves manipulating their models.
All anyone needs to do is to download the free plugin from AR-Media then build or open an existing model. A working webcam is a must, most computers come with built in cameras today, as is a print off the marker from the AR-media folder in your computer library.
To get a better idea, watch the very short inexpert video demonstration I put together. There are plenty more of these peruse, including one produced by In Globe Technologies, which demonstrates layers management, real time sections and more.
