Looking for an alternative to QR codes? Check out Aurasma! 

Aurasma is an augmented reality app that uses a trigger image (like a book cover) to show a picture or video. Click here to see how a fourth grade class at Cedar Creek used Aurasma to share video book trailers. 

Here is more information on how to use Aurasma: 

3rd grade students at Cedar Creek have been around the world and back! They are learning about landforms, and we took a landform tour around the world. Students were given a list of places to go in the Google Earth app. They took a screenshot and determined which landform it was. Students used their social studies textbook to help them. 

Students then put their screenshots into the Explain Everything app. They used definitions from their textbook and their new knowledge of landforms to make slideshows explaining and illustrating each landform. Check out their work! 

Third grade has been learning about how nonfiction books have different features than fiction books, such as photographs, captions, headings, and maps. Click here for more information on how students went on the hunt for nonfiction text features. 

After researching a holiday in another country or their own family traditions and completing the holiday note-taking matrix, students used the Pic Collage app to create a newsletter. Newsletters had to include seven nonfiction text features (see the rubric below for more information. 

One of the great features of Pic Collage is the in-app photo search. Students can search for pictures within the app, and don't have to worry about searching in another app, saving the camera roll, then putting it in their newsletter. It can all be done in Pic Collage! Here are some examples of students' newsletters: