Oculus Quest First Steps

I have always been interested in VR and I've played around with Google Cardboard but I was not prepared with the huge difference that comes with a real VR headset. My school is investigating ways to use VR in teaching. I knew that I needed to get my own device so that I could really take the time needed to learn about VR.

It's always been my habit when using new tech, to find a way that is meaningful for me personally so that I can really see what the possibilities are. I soon learned from the free sample apps on Oculus that there is a whole world of VR fitness. I started to watch Youtube videos about different apps and decided to start with Beat Saber. 

The game took my interest straight away. You get two lightsabers to slash flying blocks in the direction of the arrows on them. The larger your movement, the higher the score will be. It's a rhythm game and it's great to move and slash in time with the music.  Watching Youtube I soon learned that there is a way to add songs via a program called BeastSaber. This online community hosts a huge collection of popular songs created by users for playing with Beat Saber. After a bit of working out (and watching a few tutorials) I learned how to set up my Developer account with Oculus, enable that mode on my Oculus app on my iPhone and then add songs via SideQuest and BMBF. The difference in gameplay was huge because now I could choose from hundreds of songs, and many already rated by the Beast Saber community. 

Now, I'm not saying here that fitness in VR is something that will be used at school but, who knows right? I see this as a way for me to learn how to use the Oculus and I might even improve my own fitness in the process. 

Soooo, I played about 14 games today in Beat Saber and it gave me enough exercise on my Apple watch to close the green exercise ring. What a plus! You might be reading this blog and wondering what's this got to do the education? Everything! I have always learned new tech by playing with it. Learning whilst in 'play mode' helps me to make connections that I might not get if I am too focussed on conquering the new tool. 

Here's a video of one YouTuber playing Beat Saber. Maybe I'll learn how to use the green screen to make my own video like this? Maybe I'll learn to make my own Beat Saber map? What's that? It's creating those flying blocks that go along with the song to be played in the app. So many new things to learn! You know, I am starting to make connections as to how VR could be used already. Can't wait to learn more ...

Make a Jigsaw in Google Slides

I wanted to create an online puzzle activity for  Grade 5 now that everyone is learning from home. The problem with many sites is unwanted ads or that users often are required to sign up. I have been playing with the idea of collaborative puzzles so that students can work together whilst practicing using a trackpad. Using Google Slides makes it easy to share and control how many users are in each puzzle. There are no ads and I can check which students are working on what puzzle as their Google accounts will show me who is in which slide deck. And it's fun!

I thought that solving a jigsaw would give some practice in clicking and dragging the puzzle pieces whilst being careful not to resize them. I can also teach the students command-z which is undo on a Mac. 

How to make the Puzzle

Start by opening a new Slide doc from Google Drive and creating the image that you wish to use for the puzzle. It's a good idea to use a blank slide as the proportions match well with the puzzle website. 

Pro-Tip

In Google Slides you can easily search for images by clicking the photo icon from the menu bar and selecting 'Search the Web'. Be sure to use photos that are labeled for reuse. 

Once you have created your finished image - download that slide as a JPEG ready for uploading to the online jigsaw puzzle maker. 

Go to https://thejigsawpuzzles.com/ and create an account. It's free and it will save your project work. You can save up to 30 puzzles for free. Create a new puzzle and upload your JPEG. 

I prefer to leave my puzzles unchanged so that the pieces don't have to be rotated. This mode is easier for beginners and for students working in groups to solve the puzzle. 

When you want to create the pieces, mouse over the thumbnail of your puzzle to select what kind of cut and how many pieces you want. It's 100 pieces by default but I prefer 50 so it doesn't take too long to solve. Once the puzzle pieces have been generated, you will need to copy each one by one over to your Slides document. 

I like to use a split-screen on my Macbook so that I can copy-paste the pieces. You can't do them all at once as it will act as one image. You will need to copy them one by one. Do this by right-clicking each piece and choosing copy and then on your slides window click command-v. There are a couple of advantages to making the puzzle in Google Slides, no ads, no sign-ups, and students can work in small groups to solve the puzzle. Once you have all the pieces copied over, try making the puzzle to check if the size works. I didn't change the size which works well as it is smaller than the default slide. 

Once your puzzle is ready, all you need to do is share it with your class. You can even make copies so that you can have smaller groups working on the puzzles. It's a fun way to learn about controlling the trackpad which is such an important skill for students learning to use a MacBook. 

The Power of Publishing

Recently I ran two online workshops via Google Meet for the Emmanual Foundation's Innovative Schools Project.  The workshops were to help their graduates try to meet the needs of online learning now that all schools in Indonesia are closed due to the pandemic.

The first workshop was designed for teachers that are new to Google apps. I introduced Slides and led the participants through how to make a simple layout with layered photos in Slides. 

I wanted to keep things very simple so we stayed completely within the app and used the Google Image Search that is inside. I taught the participants how to add .png to a photo search to get vector images with transparent backgrounds. 

The task I set was to make a lesson that used photos and instructions. The participants were so keen that the workshop went on for 2 hours. 

For the follow-up workshop, I taught the participants to create a virtual reading room. Here is the example that I used Virtual Reading Room.

The example that I used with the group was in Indonesian. I published these stories almost 8 years ago. They were written as a part of the backpack project that I did back in 2012 in a small village in North Sumatra. I worked with the children in that village to write every day stories about their life. 

There was a lot of discussion about these books and I hope that I inspired these teachers to try publishing stories of their own. I used Book Creator to publish these books and they even have a free version that includes 40 books. 

I was so proud to see that these teachers (70 attended my session) were able to make their own reading rooms. Here's an example from the class. Here is a screenshot of a virtual reading room created by one of the participants. She even put links to each book and filtered the YouTube videos with SafeTube. I'm happy because I did go in detail about online safety and whilst YouTube has so many awesome videos, it's much safer to filter out unwanted content. 

Kumparan National Children’s Online Festival

I want to share about an event that fellow ADE Hugo Indratno I did with media site Kumparan.com here in Indonesia. We had an amazing time creating a sharing about our JIS Elementary Personal Learning Program. It's a MakerEd program which is very PBL in nature and blends Apple technology with hands-on learning. Our message for this online event was all about how parents and schools can develop children's passions and creativity. The program ran via live streaming on YouTube (Festival Hari Anak Live - Hari Ketiga - YouTube ) for a couple of hours and included a making tutorial, tips for parents, and a live talk show all about fostering passions. It was so exciting to have President Jokowi and his wife introduce the event! 

Hugo and I worked with the Kumparan team to create the story behind the segments and the talking points for the talk show.  It was pretty cool to be able to share our teaching with such a huge audience. The video on YouTube has had over 24,500 views. 

IB Dunia at Global Jaya School

 Today I presented at IB Dunia. I share about Augmented Reality and how you make it. In my workshop taught about how to create interactive augmented reality on an iPad using Apple Reality Composer. It was a pack session and I took a suitcase of iPads from school for participants to use. We also explored Merge Cube together with Tinkercad as older iPads can use this. I wanted to make sure that I offered a number of options for schools with different types of iPads.

I also share about my new book Create Your Own AR Pet.