Dialogue with Insects

After many months of researching insects on You Tube, interviewing bug experts, insect hunting, making observations, going on field trips, reading insect books, creating insects and their life cycles, it was finally time to share our learning with others. Our overall goal of our two Digi Award entries was to create a digital outcome that would give insects a voice and help raise awareness of their importance.

Why?

To retell the story of Rāta and the Tree in the hope that it would increase awareness of insects and their significance.

To create an AR experience “so our audience feels like they are inside the story” - Ethan

The Re-Write

Re-writing Rāta and the Tree was lots of fun! We did lots of acting to help us get a feel for what it might have been like for Rāta. This helped us generate interesting WOW words to use in our story.

After re-writing the story, groups had to decide which parts they wanted to keep, which parts needed re-wording or thrown out! They wanted the information to help the reader see it in their minds.

Teams practiced the following skills to make this task successful:

- team work, focus, turn taking when talking, active listening, identifying WOW words, thinking critically and making decisions that help work towards an end goal.

Augmented Reality Inspiration

Even when we first started re-writing the story, we still didn’t know what else we could do to make the audience feel like they were inside the story.

Until one day, we noticed the pop-up card Alice had made.

This inspired the creation of 3D Monarch Butterfly pictures soon after.

Both activities left us wondering - How could we make our Rāta and the Tree movie pop?

The digital solution - create a Digital Pop-up book using AR Makr.

Planning the Scene and Props

Small groups of students discussed, planned and drew the props and characters they wanted to have on each page to help tell their story.

Drawing on Sketches School

Students then spent some time turning their picture plans into drawings using the Sketches School app. They uploaded photos and then drew over them as a guide. This was particularly helpful in increasing some people’s confidence levels in drawing.

Photographing the Backgrounds

Creating the Insect Characters

We also designed and created our own insects on the iPad. We selected and positioned shapes and objects from Keynote to form insects. Many of the students used shapes that wouldn’t normally be associated with insects and this gave their insects their own character.

We also used our colour, shape and pattern photos to change the fill of each shape so it looked more like an insect.

The students worked in pairs to discuss, design and create the insects, which they loved.

Creating the AR Experience

After they uploaded their drawings to AR Makr, small groups of students positioned each prop carefully to create the scene. This involved lots of patience and perseverance as it took many tries!

The teachers uploaded these to iMovie and the students recorded their voice overs to help tell the story.

Creating the Music

How can we tell the story of Rāta and the tree through music?

Nikau, one of the students in our class, is always keen to make music on GarageBand. It was his passionate need to do this that lead us to set the mood of our story with music.

The first step to developing music for our story was to work out how music can have an impact on us and our emotions. We listened to many different types of music - ranging from scary Harry Potter music through to Funky Town! Dancing around the room, we quickly realised that some instruments and the tempo (speed) of music was what made us feel different emotions.

Havana said “I felt like a train, how it goes around and around” as we listened to ‘The Bee Symphony’.

We created a Mood Map for ‘Rāta and the tree’ to organise what music we would need to create in our groups and then got right into using GarageBand!

The best way to learn was to practice and have fun. So that is what we did. We explored LiveLoops on GarageBand first and then moved into using the Smart Strings, Smart Piano and Smart Drums features within GarageBand. In our groups we made some tunes and shared them with the class. We discussed the music and where it might fit within our story.

Trying it out

We then uploaded the movies to an app called EyeJack and used the pages (ie photo backgrounds) as triggers. This means that when the reader points their device at each page of the book, part of the movie is launched.

Problem Solving

We realised the insects that we had created on Keynote were lost in the scene and didn’t look as realistic as we had hoped. So we redid them on Sketches School by drawing over existing photos.

Check out the final movie here using the QR Code. Open the Camera app on your device and it will take you to the completed movie.

Why?

To connect other students with insects and give insects a voice.

To inform and increase awareness of insects and their significance.

To help students make stronger connections and show more manaaki towards the creatures in our school environment.

To engage the audience in our reports by creating an interactive experience.

How?

After researching and writing our insect reports, we wondered -

How are we going to present this information to our audience in a way that is interesting and achieves our goals?

So we made our reports into mini movie clips using the Do Ink Green Screen app, turning the students themselves into the insects they researched - literally giving insects a voice!

For the characters in the report, we used our Rāta and the Tree insects that we had created on Sketches School.

We then took photos of where we wanted the reports to be launched and turned these parts of the garden into triggers using the Eye Jack app.

We created photo signs and placed them next to the plants. This also helped show the viewer where to point their cameras so it still gave the feel of an augmented reality experience.

The Final Product

Check out the final report here using the QR Code. Open the Camera app on your device and it will take you to the completed movie.