The Augmented Reality Sandbox in Action

If you read our earlier blog post on our district’s Augmented Reality Sandbox, you likely have an idea of how the tool can enhance student learning through hands-on and experiential activities. As the sandbox has made its way to different buildings in the district this year, our creative teachers have added their own spin to how they use the sandbox to engage their students.

Amber Korn at Huber Ridge is one such teacher. Amber took full advantage of the sandbox’s time at Huber Ridge to deepen her 4th graders’ understanding of weathering and erosion. Working in stations, students built landforms, reproduced natural events, and observed the impact of weather on topography. While they greatly enjoyed building mountains, digging out lakes, and causing earthquakes, the most exciting part for many of the students was making it “rain” in the sandbox with virtual water. By making it rain, they were able to see the movement of the water and predict the impact water has on landforms. But Amber didn’t stop there! She brought the learning experience home through the use of higher-level thinking activities. Once everyone in the class was able to experience the sandbox, the students got together and connected what they had observed in the sandbox with what they had already learned about landforms, developing a more thorough understanding of the meaning and impacts of weathering and erosion. The class created a collaborative document detailing their understanding of these concepts and each student made their own artistic representation of the impact weathering and erosion have on Earth’s landforms. Through manipulating the content in multiple ways, Amber used the power of experiential learning to engage her students and bring her science unit alive in a new and exciting way that her students won’t soon forget.

Watch this video by UCLA to see how the AR Sandbox works.

The AR Sandbox has great potential for any grade level and subject, such as illustrating point of view, making inferences, solving multi-step problems, demonstrating cause and effect, creating sculptures that reflect contour lines, and even helping students process emotion, to name a few. Want to experience the AR Sandbox for yourself? Good news! The sandbox will be a part of Westerville Partners for Education’s Starry Night event on April 8th at Westerville North High School. Come and check it out!

If you would like to explore how to use the sandbox with your students, contact your Ed Tech Coach!

Showcase: On the Journey to Personalizing Learning

Beth Eddy, a chemistry teacher at Westerville South High School, has been interested in creating customized learning opportunities for her students throughout her career. In the videos below, Beth talks about her journey to create these opportunities and shows how she has harnessed the power of technology to expand upon her efforts. Beth does not view herself as a "techie" teacher, but her passion for helping her students build ownership in their learning and approach the content in ways that make sense to them has driven her to make creative use of the digital tools available to her. In the first video, Beth takes you through her process, talking about how she came to creating a learning environment that allows students to learn at different paces and through different methods, and discussing some of the challenges and successes that she has had along the way. 

In the next video, Beth takes you on a tour of her Schoology course. You will see how she has set up her course, what Schoology tools she uses to deliver varied content to her students, and how her course design encourages students to reflect on who they are as learners and how they can be successful in her class. 

The way that Beth has designed her course allows her students to take part in classroom activities when they are ready, helps them reflect upon their understanding throughout the learning process, and encourages them to truly master the material. And she isn't done yet! Beth is continually reflecting upon her own practice, trying out new ideas, strategies, and tools to further engage her students and individualize their learning. As Beth points out, success is a messy business, but the messiness makes it all the more rewarding.

Interested in learning more about how you can develop ways to customize learning opportunities for your students? Contact your Ed Tech Coach today!

#WestervilleWay

Showcase: A Westerville Teacher Shares How She Uses Video Design

Our Westerville community has an abundance of creative, driven, and passionate teachers committed to engaging students and helping them grow as modern learners. We want to showcase the incredible work we see every day! In the attempt to do just this, each month we are going to showcase at least one impactful activity going on in our district. Introducing our first teacher...

Lori Searfoss, ESL Teacher at Blendon Middle School

Lori is continually seeking out ways to engage her ESL students in activities that boost their self-esteem while also helping them develop the four language skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Recently, Lori decided to have her students create videos that incorporate their writing, reading and speaking skills. Her students used WeVideo, a user-friendly video creation and editing tool, to record themselves first reading from posters in their school and ultimately from their own work. In addition to practicing forming sentences,  reading and speaking in an engaging way, and learning how to operate a tool that they can use in the future, this activity got the students looking more closely at the decorations in their school, which also sparked conversation about why different posters exist and what the messages on the posters mean to different individuals in the building.  

Lori took her students through concrete steps to create the work they ultimately recorded. Listen as she takes you through the preliminary steps to help students create the content they ultimately used in their videos:

Below is an example of a student using WeVideo to practice reading signs in their classroom. The choice to not include music in the video allowed for the student's voice to shine. Allowing the students to choose the posters they read led to discussions about the content of the posters, reasons for the placement of the posters, and meanings of the posters to different students.

The following clip is an example of a student working on her reading and speaking skills by reading some of what she created during the preliminary activity discussed in Lori's video:

Video design is an engaging activity that can be incorporated into any aspect of a lesson or unit. Interested in designing lessons or projects for your students using video design? Contact your Ed Tech Coach!