1st and 2nd Grade Augmented Reality (AR) Projects for Open House

I finally decided it was time to try out some Augmented Reality in our classroom. I have heard a lot of great things about it, but honestly have had a difficult time finding a reason that I think it might be worth the effort to create such a project other than for just a coolness factor. Open house (coming this week) seemed like a great opportunity and I discovered that AR isn't really as time intensive as I had thought it would be.

1st graders created 2 AR projects each. The first project used Chromville. Since we have studied habitats and weather recently, their coloring pages fit well with the curriculum. I gave each student a choice of the cloud, forest, or underwater kingdom. They colored a page of their choice. We discovered it really is important to leave the background blank--students who colored their ocean all blue could not get the animation/3D to happen. After discovering the 3D floating/moving figures each student wrote a story to go with their picture and the 2 are displayed next to each other. The 2nd project they did used Aurasma. Each student created an imaginary rainforest animal with several adaptations that would fit that habitat. They made a paper bag puppet of their imaginary animal to hang on the wall. They videotaped themselves explaining the adaptations and how each would help the animal survive and linked that through Aurasma to the puppet.

2nd graders created 3 AR projects each, all using Aurasma.  Their 1st project was a video explanation of what they did with their Flat Me and what their friend/relative did with the Flat Me (Flat Stanley project) as well as what they learned about the part of the United States that their Flat Me traveled to. Their 2nd project was a video PSA about some aspect of taking care of the Earth that they researched (conserving water, recycling, conserving electricity, etc) that is linked to a poster of them making the world more beautiful (following read Miss Rumphius by Barbara Clooney). The last project was a video of facts about a rainforest animal. This linked to a paper bag puppet of that rainforest animal.

It will be interesting to see how parents respond to the AR at open house and how it works with all of them walking around with headphones and iPads.