In this free issue of
I came across an article titled ‘lessons learned about signing augmented Realities’ in the freely available inaugural issue of the International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations. In it the authors talk about augmented reality and a project in which they provided middle and high school students with handheld devices equiped with GPS. In the words of the authors: ‘As the students move around a physical location, such as their school playground or sports felds (Figure 2), a map on their handheld displays digital objects and virtual people who exist in an AR world superimposed on real space (Figure 3). When students come within approximately 30 feet of these digital artifacts, the AR and GPS software triggers video, audio, and text fles, which provide narrative, navigation, and collaboration cues as well as academic challenges. In Alien Contact! the students are presented with the following scenario: Aliens have landed on Earth and seem to be preparing for a number of actions, including peaceful contact, invasion, plundering, or simply returning to their home planet, among other possibilities. Working in teams (four pupils per team), the students must explore the augmented reality world, interviewing virtual characters, collecting digital items, and solving mathematics and literacy puzzles to determine why the aliens have landed. Each team has four roles: chemist, cryptologist, computer hacker, and FBI agent. Depending upon his or her role, each student will see different pieces of evidence. In order to successfully navigate the augmented reality environment and solve various puzzles, the students must share information and collaborate with the other members of their team’ (pp 4-5).
This is very neat indeed. I tried doing something similar before by using podquests, but these did not have inbuilt GPS so obviously were limited compared to this project. This is an excellent use of technology to encourage - and support - out-of-class learning.
Tags: augmented reality, games, mobile