Cardboard + Google = Virtual Reality Immersion

Imagine planning a field trip to Paris with your French class. You'd need passports, permission slips, plane tickets, chaperones and about a week's worth of time. Now, imagine you could walk down the ChampsÉlysées without leaving your classroom for less than $10.

This is the vision of Google Expeditions. At the moment, the official Expeditions program is in limited areas and consists of a guided exploration of a location through a class set of cardboard virtual reality headsets. However, even if you're not lucky enough to get in on the ground floor of this program, you can bring a similar experience to your students for a nominal cost.

Google Cardboard is a free app that runs on most smart phones and iPods running iOS 8.0 or later. There is a long list of compatible apps from race-car games to Google Street View and this is where the magic happens. In order to use the app, you'll need a viewer. These range from the simple, folded cardboard devices the program is named for, to higher-end, durable viewers made from molded plastic or metal. The idea is simple and emerged in the 1800's with the invention of the stereoscope.

I bought a simple cardboard model online and was using it within minutes of opening the package. It takes a minute to get used to virtual reality, it can make you a bit dizzy or nauseous and some may notice that it bothers their eyes after a few minutes, but the effect of standing in the middle of Venice, Rome, Paris, or even under the sea at the Great Barrier Reef is worth the odd sensations that come with VR.

The cardboard model I bought only cost $9.99 and does a perfectly acceptable job, but it is cardboard. By the time I'd passed it around the 8th grade French class, the edges were looking a little grubby, so I ended up duct-taping it to reinforce the joints and protect the surfaces. But, once you've bought the components (lenses, magnet, NFC tag) you could easily replicate the structure and reuse those parts to save money. Alternately, I'd suggest buying a few of the more durable (and disinfect-able) models and using it as a small-group station. Maybe buy a few and check them out from the school's library. The potential experience is worth the small investment and as time goes on, the apps available with certainly increase in number.

Alien Assignment

Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning & Children's Media has created several apps for young children. My favorite is Alien Assignment. It's a free app available in the Apple app store (it's an iPhone app bus can be used on the iPad or iPod as well- iOS 4.3 or later). Children are introduced to the Gloop family of aliens whose ship has crashed landed and who need the child's help to fix it.


Through the camera feature on the device, children are asked to find objects and photograph them as examples of items the aliens could use to replace the broken parts of their ship. Directions are spoken and children must pay close attention so that they know what their photo assignment is. The open-ended assignments can lead to some
creative and out-of-the-box thinking when children are looking around the room. For example, the assignment to find something with buttons led to kindergartners locating buttons on classroom snowmen, a teacher's sweater, and the keyboard of the computer. Children can then be asked to justify their choices when reviewing their photos with an adult.

This one, simple, free app encourages active listening, following directions, creativity, critical thinking,
reasoning, problem solving, and camera use. It is recommended for ages 4 and up and would be an excellent choice for grades K-2. Extension activities could include partners assigning each other items to find and photograph or having children write their explanations for their photo choices.

SumoPaint

Looking for a way to edit pictures or create illustrations in the cloud? For Chrome users, there is free and easy way with the SumoPaint app from the Chrome Web Store. There are hundreds of tools available without the need to download anything.

This free app allows users to create, manipulate and export images with ease.  The learning curve may seem steep because there are just so many options available, but there's a SumoPaint YouTube channel with tutorials on everything you may want to do from basic to advanced creation and editing. If you've had any experience with PhotoShop, you should be able to jump right into creating with this robust tool.

Getting Started with iPads in Kindergarten

For the first time bringing out iPads in kindergarten, we decided to make it a "Teacher Table" center that groups of four would rotate through. This worked well since work centers are already a part of the classroom routine. With only 10-15 minutes per group, we were able to cover some basics and allow the students to focus on working with one app.

Students first washed and dried their hands (it was kindergarten after snack time). When they first sat down, I had the stack of iPads in front of me and introduced the home button. Although many students had already used iPads, this common language of calling it the "home button" is important to clarify. Then I gave each student an iPad and once they'd swiped it on, had them practice with the volume button. We set all of the iPads to mute and talked about why this was important if we didn't have headphones and were all using our own iPads.

For the first app, we used the free Geoboard. Since actual geoboards were one of the other stations, it was the perfect time to talk about how they were similar and also discuss the differences. This free app never runs out of rubber bands, they never break, they can stretch an infinite amount and the shapes can be colored in.

That's it. We didn't use any bells or whistles, there were few directions and no one was named the winner, but it didn't matter. The students were creating patterns, shapes and designs of their own and challenging their friends to do the same.

ShowMe

This iPad app acts like an interactive whiteboard on your iPad. You can import or capture pictures and then write on them, record themselves describing them, or have students talk through and show through drawing and photos how they solve a math or science problem.
If you have an Apple TV, ask students to share their ShowMe with the whole class.

Great app for: showing math work, drawing, explaining reasoning.

Top Notes app

TopNotes is an iPad app that allows you to take notes, insert images, highlight and more all within the app. Pair with an Apple TV and allow your students to show their work with the class. Does not have the recording capability of ShowMe, but it's very easy to use.

The demo video shows the process of opening the app, creating a note, & inserting a photo. If you still have questions, let me know and I'll come by your classroom for a live demo!

Great app for: showing math work, storytelling, annotating images.