A simple telephone app finished the punk rock character that teacher Mark Mugler assumed for costume day on Halloween. A smart phone taped to a fake guitar allowed him to swipe its touch screen and produce realistic guitar music. Mugler, a seventh grade social studies teacher at Bayside Middle School, walked through the hallways before school strumming cords on the cell phone that was attached in line with other fake strings on the prop.

“A lot of people thought it was a real guitar,” he said. “It even fooled me that they thought a piece of plywood was really a guitar.”

Mugler said he simply searched apps for “electric guitar” and found one that looked and sounded real for his cell phone. He taped it to a guitar form that he had made for a previous costume for the rock group KISS.