UPDATE: Tellagami no longer offers the text-to-speech or customization in the free version of the app. You can read more about the Tellagami changes here.
I decided using three apps and a website for one project was not enough, so I decided to throw another iPad and an additional website into the mix this time. Inspired by these Morfo projects, I thought I would use that app for a lesson I was planning on searching the internet. My 3rd graders are about to embark on a brief study of Leonardo da Vinci, but I hadn’t told them that yet. I decided to let them figure out who the mystery artist was by doing an internet search using clues from some of da Vinci’s work. I knew the Mona Lisa would be a dead give-away, so I chose some other pieces from the artist’s massive collection. I saved four of the portraits/sketches in which the subjects were mostly facing forward (one is not, and her Morfo somewhat suffered as a result) to my Photos on my iPad. Since 3 of the subjects were men, I deliberated on how exactly I was going to record them speaking. Then I remembered Tellagami. I got out a second iPad, and typed into Tellagami what I wanted one of the subjects to say. On the first iPad, I got my Morfo ready to record. I hit the Record button on Morfo at the same time as the Preview button on Tellagami, and got my video recording without having to fake a deep voice! I created the page using Canva, my new go-to site for graphic design, to display the four portraits. You can learn more about Canva here. I uploaded the 4 portraits to Canva, did a couple of page edits and then printed out the final copy. Then I fired up Aurasma Studio on my laptop, and loaded the original images as the triggers, and the Morfo videos as the overlays. I opened Aurasma on an iPad, and scanned the page. Nothing. I realized that my trigger images needed to be from the page I printed, as the original images from the internet were much smoother than what my inkjet printer produced. I took shots of each image on the printed Canva and loaded those as the trigger images instead. It worked! Each portrait “spoke” when I aimed the iPad at it with the Aurasma app. I’ll be honest. I wish the Morfo videos merged better with the printed images (maybe some of you have a suggestion?). Instead, the video overlay puts a black box on top that kind of ruins the effect. But the students did not mind at all, and were completely engaged in taking notes from the spoken clues. This will be great prep for when they make their own. So…
Interested in checking out the finished product? Be sure to follow the Hidden Forest Elementary channel in the free Aurasma app before you print out and scan this file with Aurasma (and turn up the volume on your device!) Also, be sure to check out myAugmented Reality page if you are interested in finding more resources.
