The Powerhouse Museum Flickr Stream

Sydney's Powerhouse Museum maintains a generous Flickr stream collection of historical photographs.  Over time this collection seems to have been steadily growing.

Preparing for a quick demonstration of ThingLink, I remembered that it is possible to work directly with images from Flickr, process them in ThingLink and embed them in Blogger.

Looking for something very typical of late 19th or early 20th century Australia I just happened to stumble over this striking image. Puzzling was the only word that came to mind. My first impression was that the image had been shot in a studio as many other in the collection have.  With a little simple research it became apparent that it had been shot in Freeman Brothers Studios, on a glass plate, and was given to the Museum in 1969.

The State Library of NSW has an interesting history of the business which began with the  arrival of William Freeman in 1853 followed by his brother James, the following year.  This marked the beginning of Australia's oldest continuously operating photographic studio. The Freeman Studio is now in Shorter House at 193-195 Clarence St.  Digital works have been produced from 2003 onwards.

If you read this far you'll realise that the photo at the top of the post has its own very special story.

Augmented Reality and the Green Iguana

Green Iguana - iguana iguana

I took this photo with an iPhone4.  The beautiful creature was in a glass case at the Mogo Zoo.

Recently I've been looking for ways of incorporating augmented reality (AR) into my teaching. AR affords an opportunity for the layering of information and the learning experience.

Working with QR codes has enabled the layering information onto images and objects in the classroom. Building a dedicated QR server has extended this throughout the school into corridors, library and open spaces.

Aurasma has allowed me to add video to images placed around a teaching space and to also apply this to objects in the outside world.


Google My Places and the opportunities for sharing geo-specific data amongst students, offers immense AR possibilities.

Sharing geo-specific information amongst students in real time is an emerging option with the roll out of GAFE and when Google Glass finally arrives, well that will be an entirely different ball game.

ThingLink
Not till I discovered ThingLink have I had access to an AR tool that offers such boundless diversity of application. Almost everyone I've shown this to has seen immediate application to their own teaching area. ThingLink speaks for itself.  What can be done with this is limited only by one's imagination.

I discovered thing link while exploring options for presenting material for an up coming workshop.  My challenge is to organise some useful experiences for peers.  My theme is Surfing the Digital Education Revolution into the 21st century.  This is something that has been occupying much of my thinking lately. Blended learning is the key and in the digital era this can be a rich experience for students. My own preference is to develop digital project based learning (PBL) opportunities that rely on a constructivist approach.  Differentiating PBL to address the learning needs and styles of different students is an essential element.

Searching for useful resources to illustrate the creative possibilities of a digital approach in differentiating curriculum I came across this diagram.  Thanks are due to Susan Oxnevad and her Cool Tools for 21st Century Learners blog for this.

So I discovered ThingLink. Then I realised that I could embed it in a blog.