Find the Hidden Treasure! (Digitally)

In order to make a location-based treasure hunt using augmented reality, all you really need are two things:

1. a reason (IOW: questions you want the students to answer in order to learn any topic you want)
2. pictures of recognizable things in the location where you are holding the treasure hunt.

Oh. And there’s a third thing you need: a subscription to Treasure HiT (which is free)

So that’s easy enough, right? That’s why I decided to use it!

Our school has an English Day each year for the 7th and 8th grades; this year it was about Australia. I wanted to do something technological, cool and fun!  

Treasure HiT is an Israeli-based app that lets you invent cool location-based treasure hunts (IOW: in order to get the questions you need to answer, you have to go physically to a specific location).

Using augmented reality, you add a layer of information, which is  accessed via a QR Code that gets scanned from within the app. (It sounds complicated, but really is quite user friendly!)

So the English Day works like this:

We have two of them: one day for the 7th grade and one day for the 8th grade (over 100 kids in each grade).

Each grade is divided into smaller groups (homeroom classes are divided in half or thirds) and made into teams of between 8-12 students. Teachers who are relieved from teaching those classes on those days, are assigned to the groups as chaperones.

Each English teacher runs a station that requires the participants to do something related to the theme. We try to have a wide variety so that all learners get to participate in activities that appeal to them (music, arts and crafts, puzzles, dancing and more). I like to do digital stuff (surprise!)

Treasure HiT:

For the activity I prepared that has the kids discovering popular tourist attractions in Australia, the participants needed to use their mobile phones, wifi, and, in the end, place the sites they found on a Google Map that I had prepared ahead of time and screened on the board.

Preparation:

1. I registered for Treasure HiT (keep in mind that it can take a few days for the registration to be accepted).
2. I collected information about different tourist sites on the internet, and found  short 360 degree clips for each (it’s not a “must” for your treasure hunt - you can make one with just Trivia questions - but I wanted to actually provide information).
3. About a week before the English Day, I walked around school taking a bunch of photos of different places on campus that would be easily recognizable by our 7th and 8th graders, to serve as the clues that would be sent to their phones.

For example this drawing on one of our walls:

or a sign in the cafeteria (which EVERYONE knows how to find)

or just  a sign showing the building number:

4) Then I started putting it all together:

You can download an editing guide from their site here.

  

In the classroom, the students divided up into groups of 3 or 4. Each group needed to use ONLY ONE smartphone for the game (they needed wifi and location set to “on”). Others could use their smartphones in order to translate words, if needed, or look stuff up on Google. Each group had to choose a group name and enter it, after joining the game with the game code which you get as soon as you make the game.

The program sent them a clue (a photograph) to lead each group to their first station. Once at the station, they had to scan the barcode (which I printed out from the program and hung up earlier that day). Once the phone read the barcode, it displayed the name of the tourist attraction, a short description of it, and a video clip. The multiple choice question they had to answer was about something they saw in the clip. (I used MC questions rather than open-ended ones because there were just too many possible answers. If you are setting a question with only one correct answer, you can use the open ended option.)

Since I set the program to start each group at a different station, they were running around in different directions. I made up more stations than could possibly be covered by one group in 20 minutes, so that TOGETHER the groups would cover ALL of the stations. The students were told to be back in the classroom in 20 minutes.

From this point on, I had 20 minutes to myself (because THEY were running around our campus discovering information about different tourist sites in Australia)!

Once they returned, they had to copy the information gleaned from each site, onto post ‘ems, and stick them on a Google Map of Australia, which I had already marked out with the different sites they would be finding. (Note: IF I had been doing this with my OWN class, and we had a double lesson, I would have taught them to mark the places on a Googlemap, themselves, but we didn’t have the time to do that here.)

There IS a support team, if you run into trouble, but it takes a few days for them to get back to you, so DO prepare this at least a week before you need it so that you can check it out, see if there are any glitches and get help if you need it.

The Treasure Hunt was GREAT fun, and I’m already using it for other classes / courses. So - how would YOU use this in YOUR EFL classroom? Share your ideas, below!

Digitally yours!

@dele

Venturing Outside my Comfort Zone with LBL

I love my comfort zone (who doesn’t?). Luckily that zone is relatively wide, especially regarding different technological tools. I also enjoy stepping outside of my zone – just for a visit. Just for a while. It enables me to further widen the perimeters of my zone. This week I had the opportunity to do some major zone-breaching.

  

About a year and a half ago, I experienced a program that enables LBL (Location Based Learning). LBL physically takes the students out of their chairs, out of their classrooms, out of their schools. It gets them on a mission to learn something – actively. It gets them using their mobile devices and collaborating. For me, this is the quintessential objective for a Web 2 tool. Ok – they are still with their screens – but their screens come with THEM (as opposed to them being rooted into their chairs in front of their screens). Their screens are used to further their learning process. Their screens are truly the means, rather than the end.

The name of the tool is “The Wandering” and it is an Israeli application that was developed by Shani Ziv as part of the Idiosyncratic Project. But I am not going to write about the project – you can read that for yourself.  I want to write about my experience.

I had tried playing around with the tool in the past, and I had more or less figured it out. But I could find no clear purpose, no clear aim for persevering until I “got it” – until I learned it well enough to feel it was “mine”. I had found no excuse to drag it into my comfort zone with me (or rather expand my comfort zone until it could encompass the tool).  Until this week.

I was asked to give a 3 ½ hour workshop for Amal EFL teachers, on Teaching the Digital Native: incorporating technology into the EFL classroom.  Ok – I could do that. And I could do that by devising an entire workshop around tools I know and can use with my eyes closed. But no. This sucker for punishment does not know how to do things the easy way. THIS sucker for punishment wanted to do something that would be new and different for even the most advanced of the teachers at that venue. I did my homework first – sent out a GoogleForm to try to gauge the teachers’ proficiency (and it was an EXTREMELY heterogeneous crowd, let me tell you!).  A few of them were very proficient - so I decided that time had come for me to “crack” this “nut” called The Wandering – since none of them had even heard of it!

It took me a while. Before asking for help, I always try to figure things out myself. That is the best way for me to learn, and even if I do not manage completely on my own, at least I learn a lot through my mistakes along the way. As I said – a “sucker for punishment”, but that’s my learning style...you know … there are kinesthetic learners, audio learners, visual learners….sucker-for-punishment learners.

I had spoken with Shani a few weeks earlier, and he had given me a pretty clear direction. In order to build a learning station properly, one needs to be relatively familiar with the venue (which I was NOT). The venue was “Eretz Yisrael Hayafa”, a place I had been a few times, but not very recently. I had intended to pop in when I was in Tel Aviv the previous week, but I didn't get to Tel Aviv, and therefore, didn't get to stake out the joint. Finally, two evenings before the workshop, I had reached the conclusion that since I had not gotten to the venue I would have to present a much simpler LBL task. My plan B was to travel up to the site that same day, and before my workshop was due to start, at noon, I would put together a simpler LBL activity, using barcodes. That was when Talila literally popped up on my FB. She graciously offered to help me use the tool, about which she has become so passionate while using it as an arts teacher.

Numerous hours later – after playing on my own, talking with her and then Shani, and then Talila again on the phone, I had put together something I felt would work.

The application seems a bit complicated to use at first, but once you understand the rationale behind it, it is just a matter of taking the 30 +- minutes it takes to put together a station, and then: voila! You have an LBL activity that you can reuse as needed.

The aim of the activity I put together was to encourage the participants to learn something about the venue at which they were convening, as well as the experience about learning while moving and collaborating (not to mention learning about their smartphones) – mostly by means of observation and manipulation. The activity was based around the fountains that greet you as you enter the building. Unfortunately for us, the building is currently being given a facelift – and the fountains do not currently have water cascading out of them. In fact, you have to look REALLY hard to even see that they are there! Therefore, the participants were asked to find the non-functioning fountains, and do three different things (“stations”):

1. Build a human statue that was inspired by the fountain – including all of the members of their group – and then to have someone NOT in their group take a photograph and upload it to the activity site.

2. Draw a picture imagine the fountain will look like when it is completed, then to take a photograph of it and upload to activity site.

3. Write a short description of the imaginary or haiku and upload that.

The “stations” were built on The Wandering. They were stitched together using another application devised by the same person, called “Experiencity”.

Here is a link to the site where you can see the activity and the products of that activity. First click on “Start” then go to one of the thumbnails of the three different stations, on the right.

• To get the instructions, the participants had to click the blue button with the “check” mark.

• To upload a product of their search, the participants had to click on the button with the cloud.

 

The participants had 45 minutes to do this activity. It wasn't smooth sailing for all. Despite the fact that they were in groups of 3-4 (enabling those who do not have smartphones to participate, as well) some of them had trouble fulfilling the activity and became frustrated before they managed to complete it. Some finished only one station in the given time, others completed all three. ALL of us (including myself) were booted right out of our “comfort zones”. But as I explained at the beginning of the workshop – nobody can learn anything, in any subject, on any topic, unless they are willing to step out of their comfort zone every so often.  I can't wait to find another opportunity to use this tool! If you participate in our summer REED Days, there is a very good chance you will get a taste of it!

Have you ever tried LBL? Have you ever used The Wandering? If you have, please share your impressions, below. 

Digitally yours,

@dele