I started this week’s exploration with QR codes. I am pretty familiar with QR code generators, so I explored more with changing the colors and shapes. It was fun, but there are limitations as it won’t generate the code if the colors won’t work together. I found that a white background worked best. As I did this, I thought about how cool it would be to put my school’s mascot in the QR codes that we use this school year. The QR code I generated to share is of a music festival I attend yearly in my hometown that is coming up this weekend. If you have never heard of Floydfest and you enjoy music and all things hippie-ish, you should look in to joining us next year on the mountain. You won’t regret it!

Next, I went on a Google Expedition. I desired to visit the zoo, but was a little disappointed. There were four small exhibits that took me to see only penguins at the St. Louis Zoo and then three smaller exhibits to a zoo in Nigeria which were most disappointing. I love animals and was hoping for a more enriching experience. Instead of packing up my computer and heading out, I chose to play around a little further with Google Expeditions. I decided to visit Yellowstone National Park and here I was not disappointed. The trip was much more engaging with a lot more to see. I began my journey at the Grand Prismatic Spring, which gets it’s name from the rainbow you see within the spring. This is thanks to the broad spectrum of bacteria that live within the spring. It is also the largest spring in the United States. Old Faithful Geyser was next and I learned that it erupts every two hours and has since 1870, wow! Google should include a video of an eruption in the trip since it happens that often. The trip also included, Hayden Valley, the Upper and Lower falls with a height of 309 feet, Mount Washburn, Tower Falls, West Thumb Geyser Basin, and finally Yellowstone Lake. This trip didn’t disappoint and has me looking forward to visiting Yellowstone in real life one day.

I will continue to use QR codes in my school and the media center in a variety of ways. QR codes make it much easier for my younger students to access websites without having to type in the long urls. Our school system uses Chromebooks for students with cameras, so using an app on the Chromebook makes this process very simple once I train the students on how to do it. I plan to share the idea of using QR codes for back to school paperwork and forms with my teachers as they prepare for the new school year and back to school open house. QR codes are very useful and they save paper, which is always an incentive.

The Augmented Reality Pop up books were really cool. I could especially see boys loving these. I am envisioning these being used as a station in the library/media center.

Bitmoji classrooms are all the rage these days with so much virtual learning surrounding us. I will continue to use this platform to connect students and parents to the media center. It is so convenient to have everything in one place. In the future I plan to use Bitmoji classroom for a means of sharing student projects on a wider scale. I also want to consider creating a Bitmoji classroom specific to each grade level in my school, so I can include more specific sites, links, and apps for students at their level. This platform would also be helpful to a substitute teacher and make things a lot easier on the teacher in preparing sub lesson plans.

There are so many options with Layered Reality. It is definitely a transition we are going to see in education from this point forward.