Spotlight: Aurasma and Augmented Reality

(c) Aurasma logo

I have been introduced to some excellent online tools this week and I will eventually write about each one. But for today, the winner is Aurasma, hands down. I attended a wonderful online webinar yesterday through INFOhio and I am ready and willing to promote, design, and share. (FYI: I have linked the webinar site but it isn't live yet...keep checking back for it.)

Aurasma is the cutting edge (not just a cliche this time) for using augmented reality to teach (after this known as AR). If you remember the QR codes we got excited about a few years ago, then AR is QR codes times a hundred. The website tells us that every image, object, or even place can have its own "aura," this company's term for an AR experience.

A wonderful universal example is what Guinness World Records has done for their 2014 published record book. Look for the AR symbol on the cover to make sure you have purchased the right version. Find the trigger image on a page, open the iOS or Android app on phone or tablet, aim the camera at the symbol on the cover or pages, and see the information come to life. One example used in yesterday's webinar was the world's shortest woman. Because you can rotate and move with your camera and see the AR picture in all 360 degrees, students who viewed this were able to take a photo that made it seem like they were posing with the shortest woman. Priceless learning and great fun!

Aurasma is your ticket to create these for yourself and your students. Advertisements (marketing classes), architectural drawings (design classes), art history (3D of statues in museums around the world), music performances (focus on your choir's trigger photo and listen to them perform!). Are the ideas beginning to form? Keep a list.

I believe one of the most compelling uses for this AR model is creating a bulletin board that has designated triggers around your topic.

• Math: make the trigger a picture of the problem and the AR can be the video you created showing how to solve it.
• Art: post student artwork and the trigger shows a short clip of the student explaining the design.
• Social Studies: Martin Luther King Day and the MLK photo triggers his speech or trailer for the movie, "Selma."

Many applications support this AR movement. I hope to cover some in the future. What child wouldn't like to color a trigger picture from the ColAR app, then see the picture come to life and move across the page. If you want to play, download the application on your phone or tablet (check your App Store on your phone), print one of the sample trigger pictures and have your grandchild or student color it, then turn on the app. Magic!

Most of the apps are free - what a plus! And Aurasma lets you create your aura via your own "channel," and as long as the person trying to view the trigger is connected to your channel, your content is easily shared.

Don't be afraid of this one. Three steps gets you from start to finish in Aurasma, so it is easy to see how it works. Once I have a few of my own created, I promise to come back and share my channel so you can explore. This is exciting!

Follow Aurasma on Facebook too. And many thanks to INFOhio and Morgan Nickolai, Sidney High School, Sidney, Ohio.

The Power of Feedback: Turnitin

(c) Turnitin Logo

Ever since I worked for the charter formation of a statewide online high school and served as its principal, feedback and integrity has been a foundational issue. How can we insure student work is their own and best support students with meaningful and strong responsive feedback?

One of the first tools on the market was Turnitin and although in those early years it appeared challenging to integrate to the proprietary learning management system (LMS), problems were solved quickly and Turnitin has become an industry standard. I am now doing course design contract work with Clemson University Online and have been excited to once again see Turnitin and am pleased it is their go-to tech tool for insuring quality work. The best has survived!

They just launched an infographic describing what their research and surveys show is the substance of what students really want in feedback. I downloaded the pdf as soon as I saw it. I believe some educators and educational institutions will be surprised at what their students had to say. Oh, I am sure students jump to that all-important grade - it's human instinct. But I am pleased to see students aren't interested in only negatives or meaningless fluff. After all, what does "Your writing is strong" really mean? We can do better and Turnitin is here to help.

I have been a lifelong writer and English teacher. Despite every iteration of my syllabus attempting to teach research writing to students, many continued to struggle with what citations and bibliographies were. I had students in my online and on-the-ground office asking me why certain references or paragraphs weren't their own, clearly confused by the expectations and process. The explosion of the Internet only made things more difficult. Turnitin, however, clearly shows students that even a phrase from a website or author takes away their personal authenticity. The Internet may be huge, but information and sites don't escape Turnitin's reach. What a boon for teacher efficiency.

Turnitin provides blog posts, webinars, and cutting edge tools to make an educators' job easier and more meaningful. Just look at their recent acquisition of LightSide Labs to support formative feedback and the integration to your tablets for convenience. It is just getting better and better!

Take the survey results to heart and if your school doesn't have Turnitin, consider it worth investigating and run, don't walk, to their website for more information. Just as Turnitin has, you will raise the bar on student submissions and integrity, and who wouldn't see that as a plus?

Well, maybe the student who told me just a few years ago: "But they [the researchers] said what I wanted to say. How could my words be any better?" Ah, youth!

What Online Teaching Is and Is Not

Online educators are pioneers. It doesn't matter that people have been learning online for over a
decade now, this teaching modality is still new. All of the successes and failures we have talked about prior to this were spread across decades, centuries. Education kept shifting focus every few years in an attempt to meet needs and have the better idea.

We have moved from all ages in one room with slates and charcoal to bigger classes or smaller ones; notebooks newly-defined; same gender classes; academic versus business "majors;" special education in separate rooms versus integrated one and all. I think I need to produce an infographic on this because our "this or that" solution approach endures. Sure, researchers backed most of these, but truth? We continued to reinvent the models.

However, while the primary responsibility of teachers to educate has never changed, online teaching has brought the single biggest change to how we do this thing called teaching. Totally online K-12 education means it is very possible that a teacher won't actually "see" a student during their entire program. Other teachers might meet them, but if a Math teacher is 500 miles from the student and only online and the webcam never gets turned towards the student's computer, that teacher might not meet the student before or at graduation.

This reality has many implications for teachers and I am here to first point out what online teaching is NOT.

• It is NOT just wearing sweats and teaching from your sofa.
• It is NOT simply moving content from textbooks to a computer screen.
• It is NOT just grading content and answering emails.
• It is NOT adding up online quizzes and tests passed and declaring a student has passed.
• It is NOT gimmick-teaching, adopting the idea the more clever the tools, the better the learning.

And now, what online teaching IS:

• It IS an opportunity to meet and work with students over a wide geographic area.
• It IS a teaching method which uses the most cutting edge online tools available in education today for the best reasons.
• It IS the finest full emphasis on learners making learning we have ever employed.
• It IS the positive conversion from "sage on the stage" to "guide on the side."
• It IS collaboration, not a solitary experience. Students make meaning,

While not a comprehensive list for certain, I wanted to start the conversation. I was at the gate when teachers first came to K-12 online work and we were all naive to a degree. I not only worked

Tops on Facebook and Twitter

Docebo is both a blog and a Cloud learning management system. Through several feeds this morning like elearning feeds, today's post on the Docebo blog gives us a wealth of information on where to find the current top elearning connections.

I know, I didn't jump into Twitter for a long time but truly, it is a versatile social media tool. I will soon highlight some of the live ed conversations that take place on Twitter feeds with the top people in the online education industry. But that's another post. I digress.

Today's Docebo blog post spotlights Facebook and Twitter feeds. On Facebook, such powerhouses as Instructional Design and E-Learning Professionals' Group (number 1 right now), Elearning! Magazine, and eLearning Guild.

Twitter (remember that hashtag!) lists @elearnindustry, @elearning which is the Twitter account for Dave Anderson and the Articulate authoring tool, and @eLearningGuild a trusted industry leader for marking trends and technology.

There are others listed so I haven't spoiled all the fun. Check out these leaders and get connected in your field. Now more than ever, in education and especially online education, the landscape keeps changing and all those involved (teachers, administrators, designers, parents) must stay informed. Never has it been this easy in the history of education.

If you are reading my blog, you have the tools you need: computer and Internet connection. Read on, gather knowledge, and share!