imagination – iLearn Technology

Get Qurious: Interactive and Digital Play Kit

April 10, 2017April 10, 2017Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment51138 views

What it is: Get Qurious is a company who’s goal is to keep kids curious, creative, and expressive by combining technology and play. The Get Qurious Maker Box is packed full of interactive play opportunities. In this box, the story of the Three Little Pigs comes to life in ways like never before with interactive games, puzzles, and activities that encourage creativity and discovery. Students can scan physical play pieces with the Get Qurious app and the play pieces come magically to life. In the box students will find story cards, masks, a puzzle, and a sticker book. Each piece comes to life when scanned in the app. The story cards help students sequence the story, and bring the story of the 3 Little Pigs into animated life. When students put on the masks, they become part of the story through augmented reality, students can tap the microphone button to record themselves as they re-inact the story. The puzzle building activity lets students build their own house. The pieces of the puzzle can be scanned to bring the house to life in 3D. The reusable stickers in the sticker book let kids create their own version of the Three Little Pigs.

How to integrate Get Qurious Maker Box into the classroom: The Get Qurious set brings the story of the Three Little Pigs alive in new and fun ways. I particularly like the way students are encouraged to think about story sequence, how they can remix the story to highlight a different point of view and characters, and the way they can become part of the story. This set is a wonderful way to bring the joy of reading to life. Students can interact with the familiar story as a center activity, or as a take-home kit. If you teach in the primary classroom, Get Qurious could be a great kit to send home with students throughout the year. A lot of times, parents may not have time to, or simply don’t, read with their children at home. The Get Qurious kit is engaging enough that you won’t have to “convince” your students to go home and read. The kit encourages exploration and discovery and combined with the app, leads students through the familiar story in new ways. For your struggling or reluctant readers, the Get Qurious app really shines because it offers immediate reading support as they scan story cards in the app. Students can record their reaction to the story, or expand on the story to tell it from a different point of view. They can also practice re-mixing the story using the re-usable sticker book and app.

Tips:

While I love the intent behind Get Qurious, a few cautions: 1) It is called the Get Qurious Maker Box. The name is a bit of a misnomer, it definitely isn’t what you think of when you think of the Maker Movement. While it does blend technology and play, I wouldn’t call it a Maker Box. If you are looking for resources for your Maker Space, this isn’t it. This kit is better billed as a blended learning play kit. 2) The recommended ages are 4-9 years old. I think it appeals more to the 3-7 age range. This is best for prek through second grade classes.

Get 20% off your purchase by signing up for the Get Qurious newsletter!

Get Qurious was generous enough to send me a kit to explore for this blog post. Thanks Get Qurious!

Addison Tales: Ignite Your Student’s Imagination

October 17, 2013Kelly Tenkely6 Comments10354 views

What it is: Addison Tales is an interesting interactive site that asks your students to contribute content. This ongoing competition challenges students to invent an imaginative story character for Addison’s Tales. When students visit the site, they will be introduced to Mr. Cornelius Addison. If students click on the sparkly stars, they can visit the story’s characters. When students click on Mr. Cornelius Addison, they will be taken to a story called “The Dream”. The story is about Mack’s wild and imaginative store where he sells characters. The story urges students to add characters to the store and then to “trap” their characters inside finished stories so that they don’t just remain figments of the imagination. When students create their own characters, they make them “real” like the solid characters in the cottage that can be discovered inside the apps that are available from Addison tales in the app store. The challenge is for students to write and draw interesting characters.

How to integrate Addison Tales into your classroom: I think the way that Addison Tales combines technology, writing, drawing, story and imagination is brilliant! Read “The Dream” with your students using classroom computers, an interactive whiteboard or projector-connected computer. For those of you with iPads in the classroom, “The Dream” is also available as a free app. After reading the story, talk about the types of characters described in “The Dream.” This is a great way to get your students thinking about description and imagery! Ask students to write down the adjectives and descriptive words that they remember from the story. Students can choose a character from the story to draw. For a fun class activity, invite students to all draw the same character and see what similarities and differences exist between student drawings. (This can lead to some fun discussion about artistic license!)

After students try their hand at describing characters from the story, they can work on creating their own character. Students should think carefully about word choice and imagery. Through December (2013) Addison Tales is running a competition where students can submit their characters. Each week, Mr. Addison will frame a select number of characters on his wall with the artist’s nickname, country and character name for everyone to see. At the end of the month, one of the most curious of the characters submitted will be turned into a plush toy and sent to the lucky artist. Pretty great reward!

Tips: The contest portion runs every month through the end of December. Even without the contest, the site offers a great way to introduce your kids to descriptive writing and imagery!

What do you think of Addison Tales? How do you plan to use it in your classroom?

Color in Motion- Exploring Color

January 31, 2011Kelly Tenkely9 Comments3350 views

What it is: Amazing really doesn’t do this site justice. No really, this might be my favorite site of the month…that is saying something! Regardless of if you teach about color or art, Color in Motion is a must see just for the creativity and brilliance of the site. Color in motion is a wonderfully animated and interactive experience of color communication and color symbolism. Have you ever looked at an art website and thought, “really, this is the best they could do? It is a site about art for crying out loud!” No? Just me? 🙂 Color in Motion is not one of those sites. The minute you begin exploring you know that this isn’t just a site about color, it is a work of art. There are three activities on Color in Motion. The Stars introduces students to the color stars (primary and secondary colors personified). When students click on a color stars profile they learn about their blood (the color(s) that make them up), what the star is hired to represent (the feelings the color gives), the positive and negative traits, and what the color represents around the world. In the movies, students can sit back and enjoy the show as they learn about the symbolism of each color in a fun animation. In the Lab, students have the opportunity to interact with the different stars. Students can direct a scene acting as a movie director based on a word that represents the color choice. In project 2, students are a color star manager. It is up to them to decide which production their star is going to participate in based on what they learned about color symbolism. Project 3 is a kaleidoscope where students can just have fun and “play” with color in a virtual kaleidoscope.

How to integrate Color in Motion into the classroom: Color in Motion is a fantastic place for students to learn more about color in a highly interactive, engaging, and fun way. Students learn about color through story. They meet each of the colors as a different character being cast for a production. The site is great for any art or design class but could be equally wonderful for a creative writing project. After your students have had some time to explore the site and interact with the different characters, ask them to choose a character to write a story about. Students should write the story based on the character traits they know about the color.

As a getting-to-know-you activity, students could choose a color that they feel best represents them personally. Students can list all of the color attributes that they feel describe them. Are they a mix of colors? Have students write down what the mix is and why.

Looking for a way to spice up spelling/vocabulary practice? Have students assign each word a color based on the word meaning and the color character traits that match. Students can compare and contrast the colors they chose for the words with the colors other students chose for a light persuasive argument.

As students study historical and literary figures, they can assign each a color based on the matching character traits. It would make a really neat bulletin board to have a color wheel with pictures of historical/literary characters on each color based on the similar character traits. These types of activities help students draw parallels and think about history and literature in new ways.

Younger students can think about what color an animal would be if it was the color of its color character traits. The creative possibilities with Color in Motion are endless.

Oh yeah, in addition to all of those “spin-off” ideas, there are great creative activities right on the site many of which would be great for whole class with a projector-connected computer or interactive whiteboard, for small groups in a center activity, or individually in a one to one computer situation.

Tips: Color in Motion can be viewed in both English and Spanish. If you have students learning English or Spanish as a second language, the colors and adjectives on this site are wonderful!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Color in Motion in your classroom.