Dynamic Dinosaur Reports using PebbleGo + colAR Mix App

I have a confession...I am a HUGE dinosaur fan! Ever since I was small I've always loved them. And much to my happiness my daughter does too (in fact this year for Halloween she wanted to be a princess dinosaur. Best. Idea. Ever!!) My students are always a big fan too so I try to make sure I incorporate them somehow even though they aren't apart of our science standards or reading curriculum. So I started using dinosaurs to help us learn about creative writing, habitats and research. For the last few weeks my class combined my aforementioned  LOVE of dinosaurs (did you know there is a new Jurassic Park movie coming out this summer?!?! SOOO excited!) and my love of PebbleGo PLUS some super cool AR (Augmented Reality) using the app colAR Mix. The end product was a lot of great learning with an amazing technology twist!

PebbleGo's Dinosaur Section

Dino Report Form

To start my students had all week to explore the dinosaur section of PebbleGo. They got to do what they do best investigate, learn and have fun! There are many reasons why I love using PebbleGo for research reports in early elementary, check out my previous blog post here to learn more!  Then on Friday during our guided reading groups we created our own personal dinosaur reports. I created a form (shown left) where the students would imagine what their dinosaur would be like, including what it eats, where it lives, what its babies are called and what makes it special. Of course we give our dinosaurs our own unique name: _____-a-saurus. (So my would be called Norman-a-saurus!) I asked the students to think about their research on PebbleGo and generate possible ideas for each area. They then drew and labeled their information. I didn't restrict any of their ideas, so of course we had a few dinosaurs that liked to eat cupcakes and live in a house. Creativity is fun isn't it?!?! Despite our silliness we still had some good vocabulary tied in with this report and the students were instantly engaged.

A finished report

After our reports I told the students that they were going to get the chance to create their own dinosaur and make it come to life right here in our classroom! Their eyes lit up with wonder and excitement! To do this I use the colAR Mix App. Find an app review for colAR Mix here. I went to their website http://colarapp.com/ and printed off their dinosaur sheet that is a part of the Dover pack. The only downside here is that there is just one dinosaur to choose from. I'm hoping someday colAR Mix will expand to others so that my students can have more choice.  During our writers workshop we worked independently to color our dinosaur however we wanted to, thinking about the research that we had done and our creative writing piece.  For instance, one student colored their dinosaur in all blues because she said its' habitat was the beach and that way it would be camouflaged. How great is that!

1: The dinosaur coloring page

3: The dino comes to life!

2: colAR Mix app reads the image

Projecting our dinosaurs on
the SmartBoard

Then we sat down and I opened up the colAR Mix app (you have to pay for the Dover pack in the app-it is not free for the dinosaur picture. The good news here is that you really only need 1 device to project it so you don't need multiple student devices or to buy it VPP unless you want each student to be able to access it later) and projected each student's dinosaur onto the screen. While we were projecting their dinosaur the student stood by the SmartBoard and read their report. Such a fun way to build our speaking and listening skills with a super cool technology twist! And because I'd want to touch a dinosaur if I could, I let each student then try to pet their dinosaur. They LOVED this part!

Trying to pet our dinosaurs!

Shows how AR works! How cool!

Overall, this continues to be one of my favorite activities in January and the engagement of my students is sky high! Remember, it is all about taking the super awesome technology that is out there and adding accountability and academics to make all of our students successful and excited about learning! I have put the writing forms I used below, feel free to use them if you want! Let me know if you do anything similiar or have any questions!