What a wonderful day! I was excited going in to today - this would be totally uncharted territory for teaching. As not many people own the Glass, there is no information to Google about other teachers' experiences. Going down a black hole like that is exciting!
One of the first people I shared it with was Maria, a 2nd grade teacher, who had taken pictures of me that morning with her fancy camera.
Her video is entertaining!
Then, one of our assistant principals, looking very serious, got to try them out:
My lesson plan I had set up was this:
- show a picture to generate interest
- have students who have seen/heard about it tell the class what they know
- explain exactly what the Glass is (still not telling them we have one!)
- show the instructional videos from Google Glass
- reveal that we have one and how we got it
- demonstrate to the class
- let 1-2 students try it (depending on time)
The lesson worked wonderfully. The interest was definitely generated at the beginning of class. Comments included:
"I want one!"
"Can we get one?"
"Where can I buy one?"
"Can you control it with your mind?"
and of course....
"How much is it?"
One kindergartener even told a classmate next to him that he had one at home! :-)
The videos were definitely the "hook". The hand-free features of the Glass truly are amazing. Lately, I have noticed it takes more and more to impress the students. Technology is such an integral part of their lives that they take it all as common-place. But Glass definitely impressed all of them.
I explained to them after the videos how I applied to the Explorer program and how very few people have one. I described the fundraising process and how both parents from our school and strangers across the country gave us money to buy it for our school. I told them that it might take a while, but that every student would get a chance to use them.
I then demonstrated the Glass for them. I was able to screencast, or project, what as on the Glass on the classroom projector for them. This took a lot of work between myself and my IT husband to figure out. For those of you who are interested, here's the details: (skip over the blue words if techy stuff makes your head hurt...)
- The Glass connects via bluetooth or hotspot to your phone to access the Internet. It also can connect to Wi-fi that is open or password protected. It cannot connect to Wi-fi that needs a username and password.
- In order to screencast, you must have a mobile device with the My Glass app on it. You can then use the phone to show people what you are seeing.
- My issue was how to get what was on the mobile device on a projector so my whole class could see it.
- Option #1: use a MHI to HDMI adapter on my phone and plug the HDMI cable straight into a projector. Turns out my Moto X is not MHI compatible.
- Option #2: Use a document camera and put my phone under it. UGH. Not pretty, and so last decade.
- Option #3: Use an iPad with the My Glass app on it and use AirPlay to mirror it to my Mac, which in turn projects on my big screen.
- Option #3 turned out to be the way to go. However, to do all that, the Glass, the iPad, and the MacBook all have to be on the same network. Since I couldn't get Glass on the school network, I enabled a hotspot on my Moto X and used it as the wireless. If it sounds confusing, it is. I still have to slow down and think about it while I'm hooking it up each time.
- Then, to top it off, the iOS app would not rotate with re-orientation of the iPad. So it showed up sideways on the MacBook screen. With no options in my MacBook display preferences to rotate, I had to do several Google searches. Turns out, there is a hidden key sequence that shows a rotation option in the display preferences. Can you say "tedious"?
Oh my, at this point they were SO excited. I was able to take a 10 second video, and upload it to my private YouTube channel all within 30 seconds without even touching the Glass - all with voice commands. I took photos and videos of them, did some sharing on Facebook and Google+. (all private and only visible to me) I also did some Google searches, showing them how it can do Math and give me directions.
This usually left enough time for me to let two students try out the Glass. I reminded them that every student would get a chance to use the Glass, just not today. I had the student sit in a chair and take a photo of the person in front of them. This alway got big laughs, as every other student would try to photobomb.
I then would let them take a video of the class. This usually resulted in mass chaos of students acting crazy.
After this class, I changed my strategy. I had them interview a person instead, asking everyone to stay in their spots while we were videoing.
They left class that day with most of them saying, "Ok, Glass..." Luckily Glass only hears the person wearing it. You have to get pretty close for it to hear someone besides the wearer!
I was able to video one of the students using Glass to take a video, and get the projection screen behind her so you can see the Glass screen on the projector:
Heres' a link to all the photos and videos from the first day. Most of them are pictures and videos the students took with the Glass. Several are ones I took with my phone, but you can tell which ones because they are photos of students wearing the Glass.
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| Click the picture above to see photos and videos from the first day @school |
I left school that day feeling that the day was a rousing success, and happy that I had delved in to this new, unexplored territory!
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