QR Greetings and Advanced Image Searching

Happy Holidays, QR-style!

Week 14

Classes in grades PreK 3 through grade 2 made digital greetings for new friends in the UK, Australia, Ireland, Hong Kong, Canada, and the US. We sent a card to each school (over 30!) with a quick-response code pasted inside that will lead to one of our projects.

These codes make it possible to connect to a link from a piece of paper. It's like being able to "click" a magazine!

Posting a QR code on the computer is kind of silly - it's more logical to just give the link - but I'll include one here to show what it looks like. With a smartphone, download an app called "QR Reader", open the application, snap the code, and *poof* a link will open!

I found out about this activity thanks to an invitation from Melissa Techman (@mtechman) and the hastag #ccGlobal. The group's wiki (which includes our school) is here. Each school has its own page and there's also an advent calendar featuring a new school each day.

Here are some samples: (see each class's work on our QR page on the library site)

PreK 3, PreK 4, Kinder, and Grade 1 used Smilebox. This is a fast, fun, and free way to add photos and video clips into a holiday template (with sound!) 

Each class has a different template, except for grade 1 (shown here) 

They videoed a message to Santa. The green screen lets us add the snowy effect behind them. 

This free digital ecard created with Smilebox

Grade 2 used Animoto. 

Students chose favorite holiday books, I snapped their pictures, uploaded them onto one of the Pro templates (which come with matching music), and they were published onto our site and digital signs before the end of the day.

One grade 5 class also go into the act with Voki. I set up the classroom version ($30) that lets me give each student an account (up to 200 students), create an assignment, and then approve each child's finished product for publishing. 

The task: create an avatar to wish another student a happy holiday and tell a little about  your holiday traditions.

Each of these types of greetings were completed in 20 minutes!  (leaving time to check-out books!)

Middle Ages Research: Adding Images

This week, grade 4 continued its Middle Ages research project work by learning about creative commons images. 

Yoshi2000. Knight. 2009. Photograph. FlickrWeb. 12 Dec 2011.

They learned that...

- images belong to the people who created them

- not all images can be used

- all images need to be cited

- advanced search options find images we're allowed to use

- not all images fit our purpose equally well! 

 Nicholas Poussin. The Companions of Rinaldo. 1630. Painting. TheMetMuseum.org, New York.

The resources we used are on the grade 4 tab: Google Advanced Image Search, Flickr Advanced, and two art museum links. 

Students learned how to post images onto their digital sticky board (lino.it) and add a frame to the picture to allow space to post the citation as well (created with Ohio State's MLA Citation Maker).

Great tools like these make research even more fun! (at least, that's what they tell me...)