QuiverVision just came out with a new AR (Augmented Reality) iOS app and coloring pages just in time for Halloween!
If you are not familiar with QuiverVision, they put out apps and coloring pages that are a great way to introduce students to AR.
Quiver Masks is their newest app that uses AR and face tracking.
You can color and scan pages with animals, hats, and pumpkins.
If you are in a rush, you can scan the blank page and click on the rainbow. 
With Quiver, here are always fun extras. With the hats, you can press the different flags and hear some say “hello” in that country’s language.
This is the owl mask with the night background.
It tracks your face and when you open your mouth it makes owl sounds.
If you have not played with the original Quiver apps yet, it is worth exploring. I have had my students use most of them and there is always a surprise or something interesting.
Quiver – 3D Coloring 
Quiver Education 
Quiver Fashion
On some of them, you have the ability to capture a photo or video. This is the dragon page.
Middle School is full of drama. There’s just no way around it. It starts to creep in around third or fourth grade and is in full force by 6th grade. Most of the drama is focused on a child’s need for two competing forces, autonomy and acceptance. By the time they start middle school, the drama becomes a part of everyday life as kids realize they are more autonomous from their parents and they seek acceptance from their peers. This was true long before social media came onto the scene, but it does amplify the drama of the middle school years. Now social media is a part of our children’s social, emotional and intellectual development. Some ways that your child and his/her friends use social media may shock you and, the more you know, the better prepared you will be to deal with it.
Our common strategy for most parenting issues is to reflect upon how we were raised. Unfortunately, this does not help us since social media was not around when we were kids. Grown-ups may use social media but certainly not the way our kids are using it. Keep in mind, there are real benefits to kids using social media, including access to information, increased communication, and help in developing a sense of self. Just as we prepare our kids for life in the real world, we need to prepare them for life in the digital world, so we need to start teaching them about privacy and judgment when posting online. Two general rules to follow are:
As we all know, there can be serious downsides to online sharing too: cyberbullying, de-friending/following, exposure to inappropriate content, and sexting.
Be prepared to discuss:
The last discussion topic is sometimes the hardest conversation to have. Be real about what your expectations are for your child and discuss them before an issue erupts. Draw up a contract or plan. The American Academy of Pediatrics has a useful family media use plan tool, and give your kids some input so they are a part of the discussion. It is important to give them a pathway so they feel safe to involve the adults around them. It is also important to support them as they deal with both the social and emotional impact of social media.
The drama of middle school will not end anytime soon. The best ways parents can navigate through this tough time is by being knowledgeable that what current trends are in social media and keeping the lines of communication open with their children.
Here are some great resources get you started:
Common Sense Media – Parent Concerns
https://www.commonsensemedia.org/parent-concerns
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP): Media and Children Communication Toolkit
https://www.aap.org/en-us/advocacy-and-policy/aap-health-initiatives/pages/media-and-children.aspx
The Family Online Safety Institute
Netfamilynews.org
I gave this note, with the candy to match, to the students in my advisory who graduated this week. It was hard trying to write it with nut-free candy but they loved it.
Dear ___________,
My sweet send off to you:
May you be Jolly Ranchers and Smarties
When you feel like a Dum Dum,
Or you have hit a Sour Patch,
Remember, sometimes the smallest act of kindness can be a LifeSaver
You are all Starbursts I have enjoyed our time together.
Kisses,
Mrs. Morra
Sometimes it really is the little things that make a big difference.
I love using Google drawings with my students and today we noticed that they added gradients to the fill tools in both Drawing and Slides.
There are two types of gradients: linear and radial.
In Drawing the fill menu looks like this:
In Slides, they added a section of colors that matches the slide color theme.
The Slides fill menu looks like this:
I would love to see more choices. More colors, blending multiple colors, changing the direction of the linear gradient or changing where the gradient starts and stops would be great tools to add. Hopefully. this is just the beginning. Meanwhile, my students and I will have fun playing with them.
If you have access to iPads in your classroom, a great activity with your students is to make pictures talk, create animations that anthropomorphize objects, or use personification to demonstrate understanding. It’s a great activity anytime of the year.
Two fantastic sets of free apps for creating talking pictures on iPads are ChatterPix /ChatterPix Kids and YakIt / YakIt Kids. With both sets, the “non-kid” versions provide additional sharing features such as uploading to e-mail and social media sites like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, while the “kid” versions only save to the Camera Roll.
ChatterPix Kids and ChatterPix from Duck Duck Moose are simple, elegant, and useful apps. Duck Duck Moose is now a part of Khan Academy. Both apps allow students to take a picture or use an image saved to Photos. With a swipe of their finger, students can draw a mouth on any image. There is one button to press to record, and the mouth then animates with the recording.
Features:
YakIt Kids and YakIt from Freak’nGenius are similar to ChatterPix Kids but have a few more features which make them slightly more complicated to use but add more to the final product.
These apps have the same features as ChatterPix Kids and ChatterPix plus:
Since all of these apps save to the camera roll, they are great for building and blending with other apps to create something that exceeds the possibilities of just one app.
Face On Coins Booth + ChatterPix Kids
Garageband + YakIt + iMovie
Creating talking pictures or animations offer amazing possibilities in the classroom. These two apps are so easy to use, students can complete a simple project in a short amount of time or make more complex projects that can lead to collaborative videos, ebooks, or websites. Not only are these apps fun for students, but they also allow them to think, create and demonstrate understanding.
I have been having some wonderful adventures with 3D printing in my classroom. One of our favorite activities is to draw something and 3D print it. You can use this for any image. It is quite simple even though you need to convert the file a few times. Here are are the instructions for creating a 3D print from any image.
Download the PDF here: 3D Print From Any Image
Enjoy!
Websites Used:
Online Convert
http://www.online-convert.com/
TinkerCAD
Google has been busy. Updating its logo was a big deal, but there are some pretty cool new things in Google Drive.
I have been creating a ton of new docs, sheets, slides, forms, etc for the new school year and I noticed several new things popped up as I was working.
Templates
So, I go to start a new Doc and a pop-up message asks me about templates, so I clicked on it. There are now bunch of professionally made templates that you can use. The templates have a very clean look with placeholders for text and images. Sheets and Slides have Templates too!
Sheets and Slides have Templates too!
Voice Typing
Under the Tools menu they now have “VoiceTyping.”
A big microphone icon pops up and turns red when you click on it to talk.
(Parts of this post were written with voice typing. It did get a little glitchy so I had to start and stop it to work a little better.) If you want punctuation you just say that punctuation. For example “period”, it will place a period at the end of the sentence and start a new sentence with a capital letter. If you want to start a new line, you just say “new line.”
***Google Support Blog Post with punctuation, languages, and trouble-shooting.***
Sharing
When you open up a shared document, you might see this blue icon that says “See new changes”. Click it and it will walk you through the most recent changes.
Sheets
When I opened up a spreadsheet a green explore symbol came up and charts were created on the right side window.
You can click on the charts and either make them bigger or bring them into the document to edit them. You have to mouse over to get the symbols on the left of the graph below.
Now I know those items are brand new, but also played with the new changes below and they are pretty awesome too.
Forms
I absolutely love the fact you can really customize forms. You can add image to the background, change colors for the form background, and have all sorts of fun with fonts. This was such a needed an update.
File Types
I noticed that every document now has an icon in the upper left corner that shows its filetype.
If you click on the icon it takes you to a page that just shows all the items you have that file type. for example I click on the Docs icon and it took me to a page with all of my docs. (This is very similar to the apps I have on my mobile devices.)
If you click on the upper left hand corner again, you will get a drop-down menu that takes you to the other file types as well as a link back to Drive.
I can’t wait to see what else I discover over the next few days.
I am so excited to present at ISTE again.
Join me on June 29th 8:30am in room PCC 125 for:
Google Chrome extensions dramatically change how you use Chrome, the cloud and the internet in general. You can personalize your online experience and use great tools and extensions. Learn how to make them work for you and your classroom!
I have had such an exciting spring launching Transform Learning.
If you are interested in my professional development services, Please check out my new site:
