Augmented reality is one of the few technologies that have come out within the last few years that really have the ability to simply drop jaws. Primarily, it’s hung out in the marketing field, and been used in car ads and recently on the cover of Esquire magazine. Home versions include a DIY lightsasber and Addidas has announced plans to include an AR code into several of their upcoming shoes, allowing people to actually use the shoe as a controller for a video game. Seriously. I really couldn’t make that one up.

The big question of course is, does Augmented Reality have a place in education, and if so… what is it? At FETC, the folks over at SMART had a small corner of their booth devoted to Augmented Reality. The person there said flat out that they have nothing in production right now, they really have no idea where it’s going to go, they just think it’s neat, has potential and wanted to hear what educators thought.

Well, I got an email about a month ago from a company with a product called Imaginality, and they’re much farther along the path of figuring this stuff out than anybody else that I’ve seen yet. They’ve taken the ordinary webcam, combined it with images that you print out and created some pretty dynamic modules. Basically you download their software, choose which modules you want to purchase, and setup your webcam. Then, when you hold the ‘paddles’ in front of the camera, it displays various 3D objects. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. What’s really interesting is the way the paddles can interact with each other. For example, check out this video of the Solar Explorer module.

As you can see, each paddle representes a different planet. The planets spin at the correct proportional speed, and have some bars in the corners representing various stats about them. But what’s interesting is when you move the planets within a few inches of each other. They resize themselves proportionally. The most dramatic example of that is when you move any planet next to the sun. Pretty powerful effect, much more so than holding up the pumpkin and a marble.

A few other examples. The video below is about the human heart. One paddle shows a beating heart, and by rotating it around you can see it from any angle. But the next four paddles display each of the four chambers. By holding up the ‘info’ paddle, you can make it translucent and see how blood flows through it. But when you start moving the paddles next to each other in the right combinations, the chambers actually connect to each other to create a complete heart.

Is this all you need to teach a student about the heart? Absolutely not. But you do have to admit that it’s a pretty amazing demonstration of the direction technology is moving. I mean, this isn’t something that you find in a museum, it’s being done with ordinary webcams and bar codes you print out. Pretty amazing.

The big question is, where does this belong in education? What kinds of AR should people be building? Science seems to be the most obvious application, and everything from biology to chemistry could make use of this. Think about the building blocks of matter, and how atoms interact with each other. But Imaginality also has a math module, using blocks to demonstrate how multiplication works. It’s more of a proof of concept right now, but it really does show some great potential.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about this one. Where does Augmented Reality fit in? If you could ask them to build a module, what would you want them to create? How would you use it in the classroom?

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Illinois Computing Educators 2009 has come and gone! I’m too tired to write a coherant wrap up post right now, but I will say this: There was a closeness, family type of feeling there this year beyond what I’ve seen in years past. Not that it hasn’t always been a tight knit group, and a wonderful conference to attend, but this year it seemed to be a little more so than in years past.

I can only attribute it to 3 things. 1) The addition of the PLN Plaza. An open lounge type area for people to network/hangout/plurk in. Scott Meech did a fantastic job putting it together and keeping it active. 2) The bar area being smoke free. In previous years, only the smokers would hang out there, and everyone else would do their best to hold their breath and race past it. This year, it was a place for anyone and everyone to congregate. And congregate they did. 3) The attendance of Kevin Honeycutt. Not to take anything away from anybody else who was a speaker or traveled many many miles to come, but I must say hanging out with Kevin was like a breath of fresh air. Truly a kind and genuine human being and it was a pleasure to watch him ‘in action’.

So, with that, I’ll just share two highlights. So long as we’re on the subject of good feelings, Thursday night Kevin broke out his guitar and we were treated to a fantastic jam session. Here’s just a little taste of it.

The second is my ‘geekbumps’ highlight of the conference floor. The latest and greatest from SMART. Their response to the Microsoft Surface. But this thing is produced for the consumer market and ready for sale. I played around with it for about 10 minutes and was way impressed. It ain’t cheap, but it truly is a magnificent piece of technology. The vendor showing it was Bradfield’s, so if you’re interested in it feel free to drop them a line.

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