Hi my name is Mary, and I am in 6th grade.  The other day, Mrs. Malespina introduced the class to Aurasma through a video (watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frrZbq2LpwI) and in it there was a picture in the newspaper.  Inside the picture you could see a tennis player playing at Wimbledon.  The curator held up his phone and scanned the picture, and almost immediatley the woman started moving and you could hear her talking.  My first thought was that it was exactly the way J. K. Rowling described the wizard newspapers in Harry Potter.  I was so fascinated by this that I started experimenting with a smartphone.  It was so cool!  There were kinks, but most of them worked.  Mrs. Malespina even showed us how to make them!
    
    After class I came up to Mrs. Malespina and asked her about it.  I was upset because I did not own a smartphone or an ipad, which is required to use Aurasma.  Mrs. Malespina showed me the online version called Aurasma Studio, which allows you to do more detailed overlays and even adding more than one.  This morning I made my own Aura on the cover of a Harry Potter book.  For the overlay I added a video of J.K. Rowling talking about her new Harry Potter game called Pottermore. (See the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEu6fNbjbO4) It was supposed to take you to her webpage when the video is finished, but since I don't have a smartphone, I could not test it.
   
    I got to school and told Mrs. Malespina.  She was very excited that I was making videos.  Then my friend Hanna asked me to show her how to do it.  So we set the trigger image as the first Harry Potter book, and added the overlay as a video on J.K. Rowling that Hanna made for an author study project.  Mrs. Malespina walked by and was so...happy that one student was teaching another, that she started taking photos.
   
    I think that Aurasma is an amazing way to get information quickly.  It is fun to use as a tool of learning, and as an activity to pass the time.

Today was one of those days that I truly love my job! 
Today my students learned about the amazing augmented reality app called Aurasma.

Thanks to my friend Sandra Paul the Director of Technology for the Sayreville School District, I learned about this free app a few weeks ago. She told me about how one of her librarians, Danielle DeCarolis, was using it in her grad class at Seton Hall University and was starting to use it in her K-3 library. 

After going home and researching the app more I became addicted and saw so many amazing potential uses in schools. As one of my students said today, "Aurasma is like combining YouTube and Instragram and QR codes all together into one really cool thing." I will never do it justice by writing about it. Aurasma is truly one of those things you need to see to understand. 

Here is the link to the TED talk by Aurasma's founders which I showed to my students today. I wish you could have seen the look of amazement on their faces when they watched the video. It was one of those moments that all teachers love to see. 

After we watched the TED talk I explained to the students that we would be making our own Auras and the kids were so excited! I showed the students some of the Auras that I made using the students' Animoto videos that they made for their author study units and used books by each author as triggers. I also made a few videos about the library and used the different areas of the library as triggers. All of our Auras can be found by searching and following the South Orange Middle School Channel on the Aurasma app. The kids could hardly control their excitment when I showed them the Auras. They all wanted their Animoto video to be an Aura and were even more excited when I told them they would be learning how to do it themselves.

I then showed the students the app by hooking up my iPhone to the Smartboard. I allowed our students who had smart devices to take them out and download the Aurasma app. I love that our school has a BYOD policy in place. It really made the experience so much better for my students to be able to have enough devices to look at all the Auras. We made sure that students who did not have devices were paired with ones that did so no one was left out of the fun. 

I also showed the students ways to make Auras using their devices and the app. Within minutes students were making their own Auras and showing them to other students. 

Over the next few weeks I will be working with the team 6B students to make Auras for their ET project in Science Class. The students will be designing Aliens that can live on different planets that they have studied previously. In the past students would have given a PowerPoint presentation explaining their ET and why they designed it that way. Now we are going to have the students make a video to explain their ET and then use the ET they designed as the trigger. When a person scans the ET with the Aurasma app they will see the video of the student talking about his or her ET. 

We are also planning on using Aurasma for a historical fiction picture unit and a Scavenger Hunt for incoming 6th graders on the first day of school. Stay tuned for more information on those adventures. 

The students had so much fun today and can't wait to begin making their Auras. I heard many say, "I can't wait to go home and show my parents."  I know it was the talk of the dinner table tonight and will be for days to come. I love days like this when the excitement for learning is so palpable!

Watching the excitement of my students today is why I love my job! 

I spent the day in training on the Charlotte Danielson model and tomorrow I will be participating in a learning walk to put some of what we learned into practice. A large portion of the day was spent talking about the benefit of teachers learning from other teachers. 

As part of this training we were asked to read Charlotte Danielson book Talk about Teaching! Leading Professional Conversations which does a really good job explain not only why teachers should learn from other teachers, but gives ideas on how to make that happen. 

I am excited to get the chance to go into another teachers classroom tomorrow and look at what they are doing. I am looking forward to learning from them and also getting a chance to come up with different ways to ask the questions to get them to learn from us and what we saw. 

Too often in education observations are a got you game where administrators come in observe you teaching and then write up what they liked or did not like, and that is it. There is no real way to really learn and change or grow as a teacher. 

As a teacher, I always welcome other teachers into my classroom. This year I have been lucky enough to have 3 sets of librarians, a director of technology from different school systems along and 2 students teachers come in to watch and learn from me. This is along with the administrators in my building, my administrator, the superintendent, both assistant superintendents, the head of PR and some members of the press, and also some parents. That would many different people in the classroom would scare most people. I welcome it. I enjoy getting to show some of the things that I am doing with my students, and I also always learn something from the person who is observing me. 

I wish though that I had a chance to go and see what others were doing. Some of the best learning experiences, I have come from when I can spend time talking and learning from my peers. All to often in schools we are not given the time to do that and it is sad.

I hope in the future we an educational community realize that we need to give teachers more time in their schedule to learn from other teachers and observe the things they are doing in their classrooms. It is so beneficial! 

I am taking a graduate class to get my supervisory certification and am in the process of writing a paper on what it takes to be a good teacher. I did the research and found some really great scholarly articles on the topic. Including the This We Believe Statement from AMLE. 

I also decided to ask my students on edmodo about what they thought makes a good teachers and school. Their answers blew me away. You can do all the studies in the world and comply tons of data. That is all great and important but a lot of the time we forget to ask our students. They are the ones who are the "consumers" why are we scared to ask them what they think? When you take the time to do this you will learn so much from them!

Here are some of the thoughtful, amazing answers that my middle school students gave to the question what makes a good teacher and school. 

• If they are actually really fun and creative and let you do so many cool assignments. If they treat class more like a fun,exciting, adventure and not just a boring class you have to sit down and listen to facts about.
  
• I think it's all based on how they teach. Like for example you can give an awesome fun activity like making posters for a specific topic that way- along the way the students will learn more and they will have fun. But the thing you should never do is teaching a class and just telling them facts. You should talk to the class as if your really interested in that topic and then the students will be more interested and will understand more. It's better when you talk to a class or student and have a good conversation with them and sometimes you can ask for there opinions or answers.
  
• What makes a good middle school, well I think that to make a good middle school you should have a quote ( just like our school) and something else like a drawing that will inspire students. Also another thing would be making the school a colorful and clean place! If students are walking around the school they should see colorful colors and quotes ( just like our school!) that way they will feel happy and be inspired even more. Another one is cleaning the school students should not be throwing trash on the floor they should keep it clean because school is your second home.
  
• A good middle school teacher is somebody who knows all their students on a personal level
  
• A good middle school teacher is someone who has a sense of humor, knows his/her kids like frineds and does not scream too much. Also, someone who does not give a huuuugggeee load of work, but still gives his/her students work.
  
• A good middle school teacher is someone who makes the subject interesting, but still teaches us. Also, they have to know the kids, and understand them. They can't give out too many projects, but if they do they should be easy enough. Because we have 4 projects due, but they're fairly simple. So thats a good teacher.
  
• A good teacher is someone who is creative and not afraid to try something new!
  
• A good teacher is someone who doesn't just sit in front of the class and teach or tell them to work out of a textbook. A good teacher does interactive and fun activities that would be in the students best interest. Also, they should be able to connect with the students and be able to talk to them, or be able to help them if they have a problem. I had an experience with a teacher that I felt was unapproachable, and that is not the mark of a good teacher.
  
• A good teacher is some one who can make teaching fun, while still making sure students absorb the information. A good teacher sets a great example as a role model and is there to help a child when they need it. A good student should also set a good example, for their friends and students in lower grade levels. I think a good student should work on being positive and confident. They should help others feel good about themselves, and they should make sure they do not insult other students.
  
• A good teacher would be one that cares, listens, respects, teaches, and enjoys teaching! What makes up a great middle school would be a clean, healthy environment where everybody cares about the next person, and contributes to respecting everyone, and everything!
• They must enjoy there job 1st off. They have to teach more of critical thinking and not making it all about facts. They should care for their students and respect them, NOT just saying do not disrespect me (and making it all about them). They should give children a small amount of homework, and try to teach as much as you can at school. Home is where kids get to do the stupid things they like to do, so don't make them do to much smart things like homework. When you are a teacher you should make sure the students have a good time in class, by making the lessons and work as much fun as possible. It's not just that kids want to have fun, it is also that when students are engaged and WANT to learn, they will learn it, while if it is boring and they don't want to learn it, they won't learn it! Make sense? Also, assign more projects than tests, kids like projects WAY more. I need juice now, and then I will throw half of it on my deck, and see if squirrels will then lick the deck and surround me for more. Those are the stupid things kids do that they couldn't do if they had homework
•  a good teacher can entertain A CLASS, but keep it under control, while all together teaching something very important!! :)
• Middle school teachers should be less lenient than elementary school teachers, and hense prepare you for high school. They should give zeros for cheating and work that hasn't been turned in on time. They should give extra credit, and not homework every night. A middle school teacher needs to be virtuous so his/ her students follow the example (I did not correct any spelling etc. left it just as they wrote it)

Don't you just love what they had to say! It follows all the research and at the same time is so honest and open! 

Listen to your students! Ask them their thoughts! They will tell you and I promise you will learn a lot!

Our students are working on an author study unit in school and I recently taught them how to make QR codes using Delivr. The students are adding the QR codes to their 3D timelines and having the QR codes link to different websites and videos about their author’s life.

The students love it and are shocked at how easy it is to make QR codes. They asked me if there was a way to make QR codes from a recording of their voice. I had showed them QRvoice which is great but only limits them to 100 characters. The teacher I was working with Ms. Alloway was talking with her friend a World Languages Teacher and she told her about Vocaroo. It is game changing! Not only can you record yourself or upload any audio clip but there is no time limit! After you save the code you then have tons of options on how to save it, from putting it on facebook to making a link to the recording. The coolest is that you can save it as a QR code and it automatically makes you a code which you can then save and print out! There are so many cool ways that you can use this in your classroom:

• Book Review- Have students record a review of the book and then put the QR code
  
  
• World Language Classrooms: Give your students instructions in another language that they have to follow.
  
  
• Interactive Timeline: Our students are going to use them to talk more about the author so when you scan the QR code timeline you will hear them talking about the area.
  
  
• History Class: Interactive QR code museum where student can scan to learn more about a artifact.
  
  

The possibilities are endless!


 -originally published on teachercast.net

Melissa Butler and the 6th grade ELA teacher at my school was looking for a way to teach argument writing to her students while incorporating technology. When Melissa and I started working on this unit we were looking for a way to make the debate process a little more exciting to the students. Melissa came up with the idea of debating another school and tweeted our friend Dana Sirotiak, a 7th-grade Social Studies Teacher at Frank R. Conwell Middle School #4 in Jersey City, NJ. She said she was willing to do it and then we decided to open the event up to PA. We had recently met Thomas Murray, the director of technology for the Quakerstown School District at the NJASA conference and we asked him if he had a good teacher to connect with. He connected us with Shawn Storm who teaches 6th grade ELA. We then decided it would not be fair to have one PA school vs 2 NJ schools, so Melissa tweeted Joe Mazza the principal at Knapp Elementary School in Landsdale. Both Melissa and I recently spoke to his teachers via Google Hangout during an inservice day on the benefits of being a connected educator. Joe asked Gabby Morrison a 6th-grade ELA teacher if she would also participate. Now that we had the four schools set, we needed to have them all meet and flip a coin to see which side would be arguing each side of homework. We decided to all Google Hangout together. 
You can watch the recording of this here: http://youtu.be/l8sDshpR6m4

We also set up a shared Google doc between the four schools where we could plan the event. Here is the link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w0fyB_J2zZL-SRtgLpADnxu6hG6i7QbJZ-wUqqC7ruw/edit

After we flipped a coin and realized that we would take the side of being in favor of homework, we set up an Edmodo group, so the two NJ schools could communicate and collaborate together. This is the code svkk2z for the group. This was the main way that the students and teachers communicated. We also set up a Google doc that the students could post the research they were finding, and also a place where, we as teachers, could communicate some ideas we had with the students. Here is the link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ADctcwrJItlNvm_gasOLuMVzwpQ_LjfDQsKOoQ90fKc/edit?usp=sharing

After the students compiled some of the research onto the Google doc, I thought it would be easier for the students if we had a Livebinder http://www.livebinders.com/play/play?id=818758 filled with websites and articles the students found. As you can see  I made the tabs into groups so that all the articles that were pro homework were in one tab etc. It helped to organize the websites and made it easier for our students when they were looking for information. We password protected it so that PA could not get into the binder :-).

We also put a link to the binder on the Edmodo group so that the students could access it this way. 

Our next goal was to try to find experts to talk to our students about homework. After doing research one night on the topic Melissa saw that our Twitter friend Jerry Blumengarten (@cybraryman1) had an entire page on his website devoted to homework. She tweeted him to see if he would Google Hangout with our students the next morning. He agreed. Here is the link to the video of the hangout: http://youtu.be/i8ka4rnulaU

The students learned a lot from Jerry and we posted the video on our edmodo group so that the Jersey City students could see it. 

I also reached out to Dr. Harris Cooper who has done extensive research on homework. He could not join us via Google Hangout because he was traveling but he did email us back with an article that I added to the Livebinder. 

Our students spent the next few days working on researching their parts of the debates. Melissa divided the students up into groups. Some worked on the introduction statement, some researched the affirmative side of homework and others worked on the counterclaim/rebuttals.  See the attached pictures for the debate format. 

Melissa and I realized that we needed judges for this and we decided that we needed impartial ones too. So I tweeted a number of my friends and asked them if they would come on the Hangout and act as judges. We received more than the six virtual judges that we needed, and one who watched a tape of the debate because he got pulled to cover a class at the last minute.  We had previously sent them all a email with a debate rubric (see attached) that we asked them to fill out while watching the debate.

• Shannon Miller - A librarian, author, speaker and consultant from Iowa
• Will Richardson -- Author, speaker and consultant from NJ
• Jeff Bradbury - Music teacher, speaker and the man behind the Teachercast website and podcasts from NJ
• Sandra Paul - Technology Director, speaker from NJ
• Kyle Calderwood - Adjunct Professor and IT director from Stockton College NJ
• Jay Eitner - K-12 Social Studies Supervisor NJ
• Bill Krakower - Technology Teacher, speaker from NJ (he watched video of the debate

We also realized we needed a moderator, so we asked the Village President (aka Mayor) of South Orange, Alex Torpey to moderate the debate.

Melissa and I also decided it would be great to backchannel the event so we started a hashtag #hwdebate on Twitter.

The students were so into the project that almost all of them stayed till 4:00 on both Thursday and Friday, school gets out at 2:45! Melissa and I also worked with a number of the students via Google docs over the weekend helping them to publish their speeches. Melissa also made up charts with all of the speeches on them so that the students did not have to memorize what they wrote. We have a number of classified students in the class. See the attached pictures for examples of the charts. The students were also waiting for us at 7:30 AM, the day of the debate, ready for last-minute preparations.

At 10:45 AM on Monday, I invited all 10 people into the Hangout and at 11:00 we started the recording of the debate.

Here is the video of the debate: http://youtu.be/i0vk7aorhGc

We also had a number of her students tweeting the debate live to the  #hwdebate via the class twitter account that I set up for the students @msbutlerclass . We got permission from administration to unblock Twitter for the day so that the students could live tweet. 

We did have one issue with Dana's class dropping off the hangout because she had to use her own personal hotspot because her district blocks Google Hangout. We were able to get them back on the debate. Even though her students missed part of the debate they did not miss a beat and came out strong with their argument. 

After the debate was over we opened up a Edmodo group to all of the students from all four of the schools to join and meet each other. We also put a link to the debate video on it so that the students could re-watch the debate. 

On Monday night, I received all of the judges' rubrics and tallied the votes and NJ won 8-3. The judges thought that all of the teams did really well and were very prepared. The scores were very close but NJ won!! 

We announced the winners on Tuesday morning and our students were very excited. 

Both Melissa and I felt that this was one of the best days we ever had as educators. It was amazing to watch four classes of students so engaged in a project. We also know we could not have done this without having access to technology like Google Hangouts, Edmodo, Google Drive, Livebinders and Evernote.