Tag Archives: augmented reality

altc2023, apple

Vision Pro announced – Weeknote #223 – 9th June 2023

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Somerset Levels

A full week back working after a week off. I nearly wrote a full week back in the office, but these days I rarely am physically in the office for the whole week.

Of course, the first day back was spent dealing with the bundle of email in my inbox. Though I use this approach to deal with my email, I also plan my work and communication, so that when I do get back from leave there is generally nothing urgent or critical to deal with. However, I did have one critical thing to do which was contribute a board report. As I have a range of smart objectives, use of JIRA, and these weeknotes, it was relatively simple to put a report together.

My submission for ALT-C this autumn was accepted. This is the first time since 2017 that I have presented at the conference. I didn’t submit a session in 2018, I didn’t attend in 2019, the conference was cancelled in 2020, it was online in 2021, I did attend in 2022. At this point the only thing I will say is that the session is not about dead VLEs.

Apple Vision Pro

I was totally impressed with Apple’s new Vision Pro, and totally disappointed that it will be US only in the first instance!

The more I hear and read about the Vision Pro, the more I am intrigued and impressed. Will it be a game changer? Don’t know, but I do see it more as a (remote) individual technology compared to say a class set of iPads.

I’ve blogged about AR quite a bit over the years, this post was 13 years ago in 2010. What I think Apple’s Vision Pro will do (in the future when it is cheaper) is make this a more engaging AR interaction. The key, will it be *better* than a flat screen?

Agreed with this comment from Alex Lindsay on the Twitter about the WWDC keynote.

The event video was so great… I can’t go back to watching stage events. The era of the “Keynote” has less than 3 years left before it’s gone everywhere.

Freeform

Discovered Freeform for the Mac and the iPad. It looks like a great planning tool, I did wonder if it would be useful for sketch notes, it could be, but it is missing many of the functions that I use in Paper by WeTransfer.

Spent time organising the final Senior Education and Student Experience Group meeting for this year, which takes place next week.  Originally planned to be in Scotland, it will not be happening online.

Library

Did some work organising and planning Intelligent Library community event for the 21st June, which is now pretty much full, which is nice.

Got some feedback from the Intelligent Campus Community Event I ran a couple of weeks back. There was 100% satisfaction with over 66% very satisfied.

Small group forum worked well, good space for interactions, right duration.

Had an excellent meeting with a University about their current work in the smart and intelligent campus space. It was really refreshing to see an institution actually delivering on the theoretical and vision concepts we imagined in this space five years ago.

I take way too many photographs like this….

My top tweet this week was this one.

learning, learning technologies

Understanding your audience

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puppets
Photo by Umut YILMAN on Unsplash

Back in February I saw this tweet on the Twitter

I started writing a blog post about this and then never finished it, so then I found the draft and decided to reflect on this technological development.

Imagine if such a technology existed and was in use. A lecturer using an Augmented Reality headset, which uses facial and emotional recognition gauges student engagement.

Now there is a huge question mark over whether we could even develop such a technology and create the unbiased algorithms  that would be required to both define student engagement and how using facial and emotional recognition would actually be able to measure that engagement.

Just because someone said they were engaged in a session doesn’t mean always they were.

One of the other key questions for me that needs to be answered is, what does a lecturer do if using such a system, found their audience disengaged. Do they continue despite knowing this, stop and send people home, or do they launch into a song and dance routine or even a puppet show?

What do lecturers do now when they believe that their students are disengaged?

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Ten ways to use Pokemon Go for Learning

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Pokemon Go

Sorry no this is not a post about how to use the current fad of the week in relation to teaching and learning!

If you have even a passing interest in tech news, or are on the Twitter, you will no doubt have seen the explosion of articles on the new AR game, Pokemon Go. I am surprised no one has gone and written an article entitled “Ten ways to use Pokemon Go for Learning” as often happens with new tools and technologies.

I am not alone in this, just after I started writing this article, Martin Weller posted this on the Twitter.

https://twitter.com/mweller/status/753287885017710592

There will be lots of people posting on Twitter and in blog posts and discussing over coffee the impact and importance of Pokemon Go and some will even say how this will transform learning.

I do wonder sometimes why the edtech community gets so excited about consumer technologies and thinks that this will have a real impact on teaching and learning. However we have been here before many times with the iPad, Facebook even Twitter. However often the edtech interest isn’t what drives use in education, it’s more the use by the general public. It often takes consumer interest in a digital technology or tool to kickstart the use in education.

The tablet device, in the Dynabook was envisaged in 1973, there was lots of research on mobile learning in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but it wasn’t until the consumer success of the iPad from 2010 that really saw the potential of tablets (and mobile devices in general) to enhance and support teaching and learning.

The Gutenberg project in 1973 started a huge library of ebooks, but serious widespread educational interest in the potential of ebooks didn’t really happen until consumers got their hands on the Kindle (and the iPad).

I also see it going the other way, there was no real consumer demand for virtual worlds such as Second Life, as a result it never really hit the educational mainstream, and was ignored by virtually everyone including most of the edtech community.

I see Pokemon Go along the lines of Flappy Birds, a fad that will come and go, like a lot of games. It will probably (like both Flappy Birds and Angry Birds before) inspire developers to create a range of similar and copycat games. I am expecting to see a zombie style Pokemon Go game in the next few months (or even weeks).

However I also think that what Pokemon Go could do is make Augmented Reality more of a realistic proposition for others, including those in the education sector and (probably more likely) the museum sector. I also suspect that we will see an increase in the use of AR across other sectors, notably retail and entertainment. There is a chance that Pokemon Go could move augmented reality from the fringe into the consumer mainstream and there into education.

So what do you think, is Pokemon Go just a passing fad, or is it the first step to mainstream adoption of augmented reality?

conference, digifest15, jisc

Augmented reality as an entry to learning experiences – Jisc Digital Festival 2015

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I enjoyed this session at the Jisc Digital Festival 2015 on Augmented Reality

This demo will look at how augmented reality can be used as an entryway to learning, not just as a simple overlay of video content.

Augmented reality platforms have come a long way in the last three years and now offer far more interactivity options through simple drag and drop interfaces.

Examples were showcased to show how the technology can potentially be used. Advice was available on the range of platforms for development and their suitability for you. Selecting the correct platform for development is an important step on the route to effective deployment of the technology.

As with any technology, the key decision you really need to consider is how will this impact on teaching, learning and assessment and what difference will it make.

stuff

Augmented Reality, now here’s an idea…

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I saw this augmented reality video earlier today about using a “kinect” style setup with Lego.

Reflecting on watching it, though it’s about Lego, it certainly started to make me think about AR scenarios for education using a similar setup.

Science experiments that you couldn’t normally do at a desk as too dangerous could suddenly become possible.

Electrical circuits without needing batteries or fused components.

Economic models with cards to represent different parts of the economy.

Not sure at this time how you would configure a classroom to contain this technology, but certainly it has potential.

So do you have ideas how this technology could be used?

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Indoor augmented reality

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I have been using outdoor augmented reality Apps for a while, ones that rely on a decent GPS signal in order to work.

Was led to this video by Mark Power on Junaio, an indoor augmented reality App.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRcSFXvoPkU

The KIOSK EUROPE EXPO 2010 Channel is the first real life implementation of junaio®’s advanced indoor navigation capabilities on your smartphone, presenting an interactive mobile guide to the world’s largest trade fair on electronic self-service and innovative retail solutions. junaio® is the first augmented reality platform to overcome the accuracy limitations of GPS navigation, offering pinpoint indoor navigation services. Point, click and view information on individual exhibits or find directions to interesting events and locations. Available for iPhone and Android.

Certainly looks like it could be a useful idea for educational institutions.

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BIG QR Codes

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I have been interested and using QR Codes for a while now. I mentioned them on this blog nearly three years ago.

You then take a photograph of the barcode, and with special reader software you are able to convert the barcode into information, which could be a link to a website or just plain information.

Since then I have used them myself a fair few times. I used them at ALT-C 2009 to allow people to more easily vote for my poster (didn’t win by the way).

In presentations I have used them for titles or to share my contact details (though to be honest in the main to show people the potential of them).

We are using them in the Library at our Gloucester Campus to allow learners to access more information, links and further resources.

With the advent of Augemented Reality (AR) with Apps like Layar on the iPhone and Android, I have been wondering if there is a real future for mobile phone 3D barcodes.

There seemed to be very little use of them made in the mainstream public environment. Though interestingly Mashable reports today on how the City of New York has “outfitted Times Square with giant QR codes”.

[img credits: NYC Media]

To celebrate Internet Week 2010, the City of New York outfitted Times Square with giant QR codes earlier today. It’s called “The City at Your Fingerprints” and eleven New York agencies participated in the interactive billboard initiative.

Times Square denizens could use their smartphone barcode scanning app to scan the QR codes — which were featured in an animated sequence on the Thomson Reuters building in Times Square from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. ET — and pull up information relating to specific agencies being featured.

Some mobile phones come with a reader built in, I think my Nexus One did, and the Nokia N95 certainly did. Other phones don’t and need to have an app downloaded, I use Optiscan on my iPhone for example.

So where are we with QR Codes?

The University of Bath have been doing some extensive work on using QR Codes in education and their blog is well worth a read.

They are not mainstream and I know if I show them outside the mobile learning community and geekdom that most people have no idea what they are.

Are we at a point where they will take off?

Probably not.

I am sure AR will mature more and will be more useful.

stuff

Learning with AR

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Learning with Augmented Reality.

LearnAR is a new learning tool that brings investigative, interactive and independent learning to life using Augmented Reality. It is a pack of ten curriculum resources for teachers and students to explore by combining the real world with virtual content using a web cam. The resource pack consists of interactive learning activities across English, maths, science, RE, physical education and languages that bring a wow-factor to the curriculum.

As noted on my Twitter community of practice some of these things work and some less so.

eLearning with AR. Hmm…I think the anatomy elements have potential but not convinced by the multi-choice quizzes as surely it would be much simpler to set that up in a browser and engage with it through a more traditional ICT way…?

I have to agree, some of the concepts need a little more work to be innovative, some are too much like replicating pen and paper!

What do you think? Does this have potential?

stuff

Augmented Reality Explained by Common Craft

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Common Craft have released another of their excellent videos, this one on Augmented Reality.

This video is an introduction to augmented reality – a new and growing way to use smartphones to learn about the world around you. This video introduces the technology and covers the basic applications. It includes:

  • A high level introduction to the big idea
  • Using it to find a restaurant
  • Using it to compare products, be entertained
  • A look at future possibilities of augmented reality