Augmented reality

Technology Feature

Augmented Reality: pushing educational boundaries ‘Augmented Reality’ (AR) has the ability to revolutionise the education experience for students and teachers alike. Here Darren Pepper and Graham Thorpe provide an insight into the world of AR and how it can enable students to push the learning boundaries.

Imagine holding a beating heart on a piece of card in your hand that you can rotate and dissect as you explain circulation in front of your class. Or students on a field trip looking at a coastal landscape and having each of the geographic and geological features being highlighted over the view.

Augmented Reality (AR) has existed for some time, but has never really gained a major foothold within the education sector due to being considered too complex, too expensive or having so little content that its application was merely a curiosity.

The increased use of AR technologies in the entertainment and consumer sector means that it needs to be seriously re-evaluated as a

e-learning UPDATE n www.teachingtimes.com

potentially exciting tool for education.

AR means pupils and teachers being able to take opportunities from the Virtual Reality (VR) world and combine them with the real world to provide a new, powerful paradigm that stands in its own right.

Virtual Reality versus Augmented Reality Students exposed to the internet, social networking sites and gaming technologies routinely experience the whole of Milgram’s virtuality continuum as illustrated below. This is the concept of a continuous scale ranging between reality and virtual reality. In the education space, however, most experiences are at the two ends of the continuum, reality or computer based simulation.

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Technology Feature Figure 1: Milgram’s continuum

A large number of schools now operate chroma key green screen systems in their creative media departments allowing real people to appear in virtual worlds. This facilitates the use of a green background which can then be replaced with the background of choice, allowing a person to appear in a virtual setting.

Augmented reality turns this on its head allowing virtual objects or data to apparently appear in the real world. e-learning UPDATE n www.teachingtimes.com

This moves the technology beyond being a motivating presentation tool for learning outcomes to one that can deliver information and promote understanding during the learning process; and it looks impressive too.

AR: here and now There are two main versions of AR that are penetrating the consumer space and hence the education space.

The first of these is based around bringing inaccessible objects into the

classroom. This technology is based on simple webcams and markers (a piece of card with a black and white pattern printed on it) that allows the software to place the virtual object in the real world. As the card is moved around, the 3D model is manipulated in real time so the user can explore the object from all angles as well as being able to zoom in and out to examine it in closer detail.

This technology has been around for some time, but the lack of content

and early high cost made it less than useful in the school context.

This situation is changing, with an increasing amount of content being produced for education both by commercial publishers and through ‘self generated’ content using freely available tools, and the cost has fallen to literally a few pounds.

An example of this is found in the European provider ARSITES, which through the use of Google maps allows 3D models of buildings to be ‹‹ PREVIOUS PAGE n NEXT PAGE ››

Technology Feature manipulated as described earlier. The choice via this route is considerable.

Users are not limited to viewing models provided through the website however as there is a plug-in available to allow objects to be displayed and manipulated from within Google SketchUp. The benefit of importing models into this source where they can be viewed and manipulated is that it is freely available and the range and number of models is continually increasing as users submit content.

AR is no longer tied to the desktop PC or even to laptops. Applications are increasingly available on highly portable devices, such as handheld gaming consoles and smart phones.

It is this increased portability that has allowed the second version of AR to take off. The second version is where information is overlaid onto a live video of what the device is pointed at. The data overlaid is often linked to geographic location and can be sourced directly from live data sources.

This is the technology that will allow students to walk down a street and as they look around be able to view building names, directions, and e-learning UPDATE n www.teachingtimes.com

further information hovering as little bubbles above each property.

AR: opportunities The increasing simplicity and portability of AR systems, coupled with the growing stock of relevant content is starting to drive real educational possibilities. Using AR in the classroom is not only engaging but can assist in giving real world context to abstract concepts or complex explanations. The ability to annotate real life objects and scenes can make the link between learning and real life experience that is key in education - not least to the successful teaching of vocational subjects.

AR can also be used to enhance static printed materials, replacing 2D illustrations with video or 3D models that can be manipulated by the viewer.

This brings a new dimension to text books that need to convey information where a specific spatial configuration of elements is essential, such as mechanical parts in an auto engine or molecule shape in chemistry.

AR also has a significant advantage over other 3D technologies,

either onscreen representations or projection, in the way that models are manipulated. There is no interface to learn, you simply pick up the marker and turn it around; the 3D model follows the movement. If you want to look closer, you simply move the model closer to the eye (a camera in this case). This makes a direct link between the kinaesthetic real world action and the position in space of the model, and makes tasks such as checking a CAD/CAM model the student has created simple and intuitive before sending it for milling or 3D printing.

AR has a number of applications beyond the direct use by students in lessons. AR can assist students in finding their way when the student’s personal device becomes an interactive map of the school, providing room and timetable information and even directions.

Imagine pointing the device at a classroom door and the device indicates where you are, what lesson is inside and where you need to go for your lesson. Impossible? Perhaps we are not quite there yet in school,

but for this year’s Wimbledon, IBM created an ‘IPhone App’ to help Wimbledon fans figure out how to navigate around the tennis courts, to find bars, toilets, courts, and so on. It even included real time data feeds to help visitors avoid queues.

Outside of education there are a number of AR applications that allow the device to be pointed at a person, and face recognition then overlays contact details. In education, this technology securely linked to the MIS could allow a member of staff to survey a class and have immediate access to targets, attendance, attainment and potentially behaviour data overlaid on the view of the class – a supply teacher’s dream!

AR: what next?

It is apparent that the use of AR outside of education is increasing dramatically. It is already being used within the gaming and entertainment sector and, with the increasing amount of mobile applications that are available, it is being widely used to provide information services. This ranges from tourist attraction data ‹‹ PREVIOUS PAGE n NEXT PAGE ››

Technology Feature overlaid onto city vistas when viewed through a suitable device, or to provide food prices and information regarding restaurant bookings as you walk around an unfamiliar city.

The key to moving AR into education and avoiding it having the same fate as videoconferencing in the mid 90s is to ensure it is being used for a real purpose with positive outcomes.

It is likely that the driver for this will be the content that is available, as the software and equipment to use AR is already freely available. The big question for educators is if this content will come from traditional content producers or will be ‘crowd sourced’ (i.e. self generated) to use current jargon.

Currently most 3D content producers are concentrating on the 3D projection market, but the same models could easily be ported for use with AR as the file types are generally standard formats. In the meantime it seems that user generated content is likely to be the more common.

Opportunities for students or staff to create AR are increasing, as tools requiring less ‘hardcore technical’ e-learning UPDATE n www.teachingtimes.com

skills become available, especially where such tools are based around commonly used interfaces such as Google maps.

AR also provides some interesting opportunities as it is merged with 3D projection and other ways of controlling the way models can be manipulated. Within the next 12 months we are likely to see how interfaces such as those in the XBOX Kinect or the Playstation Move Motion increase user expectations on the way they manipulate and interact with the virtual world.

AR will be a true success when we no longer consider the technology, but rather use it to access data and objects as part of everyday learning. Taking into consideration the number of AR apps available for smartphones, and the simplicity of their use, this possibility is probably not far off.

Capita IT Services, part of the Capita Group Plc, is a specialist supplier of integrated ICT solutions to schools and communities in the UK. ­­www. capita-its.co.uk

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