Augmented, Alternate and Virtual Realities in Education

Gary Hayes, Futurist and New Media Evangelist - The media and storytelling landscape is constantly changing but in the last six years we have never seen such monumental change.

"I was invited to present to a small public group last month on Media Futures up in the Northern Territory here in Australia – this followed an ABC only presentation. I generally don’t do the Futurist thing, I feel uneasy, stepping into tarot, astrology or doom sayer territory, where many factors such as user behaviour, new devices or new format/marketing development are on unpredictable shifting sands. So I prefer to call my approach to future ‘no brainer’ism’. There are some things that are so obvious, in terms of where we are heading, that simple trends analyses will give us some clarity in around a 2-5 year timeframe."

We made an augmented reality pop-up book in my first year seminar last spring. Perhaps you’d like to make your own? 1. Go to Junaio and register as a developer. 2. Get some server space that ...

KF:  Consider the possibilities of the 3D pop-ups - these could be visualisations of complex data, simulated animations of processes, and much more.  The educational possibilities are really only just beginning to be realised.  In a health setting the 3D could be used to explain therapeutic approaches and assist with patient autonomy.

"If you have an artistic temperament, but you weren’t blessed with steady hands or an eye for color, Konstruct might be the app for you. Not only does the iPhone app let you produce generative art using words, warbles and whistles, but it also uses augmented reality to bring your artistic creation to life."

AR SPOT is an augmented-reality authoring environment for children. An extension of MIT’s Scratch project, this environment allows children to create experiences that mix real and virtual elements. Children can display virtual objects on a real-world scene observed through a video camera, and they can control the virtual world through interactions between physical objects.

KF: As always the Kindergarten is the precursor to quality higher education. This little application is terrific way to introduce wary adult educators and learners to the principles of augmented reality. The simple functions take away the technology concerns while they focus on thinking about the interactions that they can create.

Imagine how those boring history lessons at school would be if the children would watch an augmented view of the lesson, like a 3D Solar System Model or Galileu talking directly to them, and they were able to interact with this augmented information. Children learn better the lesson if they see it like a game.