Edgar Allan Poe Museum
& Haunted SMART House!

Welcome to the 2015 Edgar Allan Poe Museum

& Haunted SMART House!
WARNING! This post will probably take a while to load because there are all kinds of cool embedded Vines, Instagrams, & Tweets! This post also might be a bit scary for our younger readers – read further at your own risk! To hear a Vine video remember to click on the microphone in the top left of the embed.

Last year I blogged about how the 7th grade team rocked this amazing interactive museum, display of student artwork & projects, and haunted house experience! This year it was even better! Partly because Amazon was watching & Amazon cares about kiddos!


Out of the blue I got a direct message or DM on Twitter saying that they had seen my blog post There’s an Echo in our Library with our Vine videos about our Library Amazon Echo & wanted to invite us to participate in as special Haunted House Campaign. Since we were planning to do the Poe Museum again anyway we jumped on board & were so grateful that they gave us some smart home products & decorations to add to our experience in exchange for this post, some Tweets, Vines, & Instagrams (which we woulda done anyway!) We embrace total Tech transparency here at MHMS, so it was a total Win/Win! W00t!

  @hcpss_mhms 7thGr #EdgarAllanPoe Haunted Smart House partially sponsored by @AmazonEcho #echoholidays   A video posted by Gwyneth Jones (@thedaringlibrarian) on

Experience the FUN and the TERROR!


 

@hcpss_mhms 7thGr kiddos #EdgarAllanPoe Haunted Smart House partially sponsored by @AmazonEcho #echoholidays A photo posted by Gwyneth Jones (@thedaringlibrarian) on

 

  @hcpss_mhms 7thGr #EdgarAllanPoe Haunted Smart House partially sponsored by @AmazonEcho #echoholidays   A photo posted by Gwyneth Jones (@thedaringlibrarian) on

If you have an Amazon Echo, you can connect all your SMART devices to it to help run your Haunted house! Here’s an example of some commands you can give it – provided by Amazon:

Make Halloween Parties More Fun with the Amazon Echo

Echo can play Halloween Music. Examples of how to ask for music:

Alexa, play Haunted House Sounds Playlist on Prime Music

Alexa, play Kids Halloween playlist on Prime Music

Alexa, play Halloween Party Soundtrack on Prime Music

Echo can tell Halloween jokes and answer questions:

Alexa, tell me a Halloween Joke

Alexa, what is a Jack-O-Lantern?

 

 

A super big thanks to all the 7th grade team, Ms. Galloway-Smith, Ms. Sheppard, & the Amazon Echo for helping to make this a truly hair-raising, interactive, and SMART experience!

Look! Even HCPSS SLA liked what we did!

 

Got Poe?

Edgar Allen Poe Lives on at MHMS!

The 7th grade team came together to create a super engaging and interactive Edgar Allen Poe museum last week!



In the words of 7th grade Team Leader, Mrs. Kristin Cullison:

“We created the Poe Museum to showcase our students’ hard work and creativity with their Research Projects about Edgar Allan Poe.  It came to life when Mrs. Smith was listening to Mrs. Cullison explain the project to students and pictured this fun and interactive way to display their projects.  We wanted to create a memorable experience for our students.  We also wanted to help them gain a better understanding of Poe’s life and how it influenced his famous short stories and poems.

Word on the Street:

“Excellent educational experience!”  – Mr. Gibson

“Wonderful collaboration!! Students and staff!!”  – Mrs. Evans

“To all those who participated, YOU ARE AMAZING!!!” – Mrs. Bright

“It was absolutely out-of-this-world, amazing, sensational, stupendous, the greatest! Great job!!!!!!  You all flat out rock!  Thank you so much for making sure we all got to see some of the extra special work you all do!  Hooray for all of you!” -Ms. Adams – School Counselor
Enjoy all the Pictures!

Click for our Smugmug Gallery

Thanks Mrs. Cullison, Mrs. Krieger, Mrs. Smith (aka the Crone), and our own Mr. Tillery as the man himself, Poe!

Vine Video Summer Book Trailers

14297311842_bbf5ea9fc8_o(Warning: This blog post may load slowly because of all the embedded videos. 
To hear the audio, click on the tiny speaker in the top left of each video)
Every year I get excited to share with my kiddos the Summer Reading List and to generate new ways to catch their interest in reading over the break. This year we decided to create video book trailers using the Vine App! 6 second videos that loop with sound. No editing needed just creativity!  See what we did embedded below along with our downloadable Howard County Public School System and Howard County Public Library Middle School Summer Reading List! Summer2014MiddleSchool Reading List PDF  We wanted a fun, easy way to share video book trailers! With so many of our computers being used for testing, and knowing how long editing takes on iMovie, Vine sounded like the perfect solution! With the added benefit of easy stop action filming built into the App means that kids can experiment and be super creative! Everything we create is Creative Commons so feel free to Take, Use, & Share! The Danny and the Dinosaur Treasury: Three Huge Adventures by Syd Hoff

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky NOTE: This is a High School book & available at our local library – get your parent’s permission to read it! Percy Jackson and the Olympians Hardcover Boxed Set (Percy Jackson & the Olympians) by Rick Riordan Riordan is pronounced – RYE-or-Dan  
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
Code Talker: A Novel About the Navajo Marines of World War Two by Joseph Bruchac 
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green NOTE: This is a High School book & available at our local library – get your parent’s permission to read it!

Super thanks to Mrs. Vanderveen’s first period ELA class for their creativity, talent, fun, & daring to try something new!

Want to do this lesson with your students & kiddos? Visit our Video Book Trailer Wikispace Page for more directions, tips, a FREE Downloadable Storyboard, & More!

No Featuring: 8th Grade Slideshow Pics!