What type of reader are you?

Hello! It's Ana again, a student of the Master in Bilingual education at Rey Juan Carlos University! You can follow our tweets in the hashtag #ictclil_urjc

This week we have been working with Aurasma in our TICS subject. Do you know what Aurasma is? If not, don't worry because at the end of this post you will understand it!

Aurasma is an augmented reality platform, you can download it for free in your iOS or Android mobile device. This application's  technology uses  the camera of your device to recognize real world images and then overlay  different media on top of them  (animations, videos, 3D models and web pages). You need to have Aurasma in your mobile in order to be able to check if  the "Aura" (the augmented reality) that you created works well or not.

But first of all you need to start working in your augmented reality in your computer! How can you do that? 

The steps that you have to follow to  sign up in Aurasma  and start creating your own Auras in your computer are not difficult. I would like to recommend that you see  a fantastic tutorial made by my partners @nepeuspu @Alvaro_Gope @Marta_Gayarre  so you can  understand  all the steps.

As you can see it is not difficult at all! Don't you think so?  So this is exactly one of the challenges that we have been working with in our TICS subject. As you probably now, next 23rd of April we celebrate the World Book Day. For that reason our work is related to this topic:

Our teacher María Jesús asked us to create our own augmented reality but with one condition, we had to tell the world what type of books we read,  which our  favourite book is and why we recommend it and finally  what features define us as  readers.  This was going to be the overlay of our augmented reality. 

From the very beginning I knew exactly what I was going to talk about.

I consider myself as a super reader since I try to read as much as possible, my favourite genre is fantasy and without doubt my favourite book is Harry Potter and the Philosopher Stone,  However, not only do I read fantasy books, but also other kind of genres. I like when people that I read books, when these books are different from the ones I am used to reading. If it hadn't been for these recommendations I wouldn't have read  these books:

"La piedra de toque" by Monserrat del Amo.

"El curioso incidente del perro a media noche" by Mark Haddon

"El niño con el pijama de rayas" by John Boyne

"El mundo azul ama tu caos" by Albert Espinosa 

"Wonder" by R.J Palacio.

Once I knew what I wanted to say, I recorded my voice with my mobile phone. When I liked the final result I thought that, apart from my voice I wanted to create a videoclip to appear in my overlay.  In this subject we have been working with some video editors. However, I wanted to investigate and look for something new. I had a look at internet and I came across with KIZOA which is a free movie maker online tool, what's more, you are not required to register if you don't want to. I started trying how it worked and the thing is that I liked it so much, so I decided to create my video with this programme.  To create videos with this application you can use a template already done or create your own video from the beginning. I decided the second option. Then you can add your photos, music, animations, trasitions between the photos, and effects (for example to make your video look like an old film).  You can also choose how much you want your photos to last in your video adjusting the seconds. At the end you can download your creation or share it in several social nets such as YouTube, twitter  or facebook. I decided to share it in YouTube, here you can see it:

Once I had the video I moved to the next step  and I create a meaningful collage of create a meaningful collage of myself portrait as a reader. Always using Creative Commons images. To create my collage I used Piktochart since it is an online e-tool that I am already  familiarise with. I chose the option create a poster and I started creating the collage by adding photos, choosing a background and deciding a title:

This image is a really good one to define myself as a reader. In the collage you can see me in the platform 9 3/4, just about to get the train to Hogwarts! hahaha and then I am surrounded with Harry Potter images.

When I had both (the video and the collage finished) I followed the steps of the tutorial that I told you above. I signed up, then I completed all the gaps accepting the terms. I click in create a new Aurasma, once I was there I selected my trigger image (the collage about Harry Potter) and I saved it, after that I uploaded the video, selected it and click saved!  Then my video appeared on top of image, I made it bigger and then I pressed next again. Then, I decided the name "What type of reader are you?"and I saved it! I had already created my aurasma! 
In order to make sure that I had done things right I tried with the Aurasma application for mobile phones and .... What a surprise! The overlay media came out!
Would you like to see it? Here you are the image, go to your Aurasma mobile app and put the camera in front of the image! What can you see? Isn't that fantastic? 

As a teacher, I think that we can use this application for many purposes. For example to flipped our lessons. In this way we could create Auras and then give our children the images, so they can have a look at them at home.  I let you a video in which you can watch a full explanation of flipped classroom. Or we could ask our students to do a similar activity like the one I have done. Why don't we ask them to talk about their favourite book and create an Aura to do so?  That activity would be really nice to put in practice in our lessons as our children would be practicing their speaking skills at the same time the discover the fantastic world of the TICS. Furthermore, they could encourage other peers to read their books!




The final result was added as a pin to the collaborative board "A Wall of Books" that our teacher María Jesús created. So we can celebrate the World Book day all together!  I like having this open resource bank shared with a lot of people since I am sure that it is going to be useful for the future to work with my children. Thanks to these walls I will find it easier to find resources!



I hope you enjoy this post! Do not hesitate to ask me if you have any question! 
And have a nice World Book Day!

*All the images and gifs used in this blog have Creative Common License.