Augmented Reality day for International visitors (Feb 18^th, 2015)

We worked with the international office, ALSS, and University Librarians to host a one day event creating an “Augmented Reality Poster”. Delivered to 55 Panamanian visiting English teachers and student teachers, hosted by ALSS as part of a language acquisition programme, ‘PANARU’ – sponsored by the Panamanian government. Participants were engaged in a day of activities that introduced AR and used this as a focus for creating a poster reviewing their favourite book, enabling them to create a short video triggered by the book/poster. All the materials and resources for the day were produced by Mike and Debbie, with help from the librarians (details and photographs of the day are on the project blog site).

This session included three Indian Professors of Media Literature and English as part of the British Council FLAIR programme for fostering linkages in academic innovation and research. One of the professors gave a presentation on using stylistic elements to convey emotional context. The three FLAIR participants further engaged with the workshop, working with the rest of the team to support language acquisition as the Panamanian visitors developed their posters.  to facilitate  for . n, who wanted to experience best practice, cutting edge teaching.

Team: Dr Mike Hobbs, (Computing and Technology), Dr Debbie Holley(Education), Averil Robertson (technical lead University library), Chloe Menown(subject librarian).

Here is a short video that shows some of the action:

Getting started with Augmented Reality: Aurasma – early steps

There are a number of different packages that offer access to Augmented Reality – ranging from very expensive high end industry/ government funded simulations to bespoke equipment giving the ‘immersive feel’ such as OCULUS RIFT. For educational purposes, some packages will offer a small number of credits/ pages, but for user generated content by students for students AURASMA is hard to beat.

Our first venture into using AURASMA has been with our ARU first year Computer Gaming Technology students, who experimented with creating Augmented reality artifacts as part of their CPD activities, and a further post will showcase  their results.

We then interviewed the different groups to see what, if any benefits came out of working together in this way. A enhanced sense of team work, communication and a marked focus on the future world of work were early themes, a report is forthcoming.

Our early findings were presented as a poster at the ARU Faculty of Health,  Social Care and Education (FHSCE) Awayday, and generated significant interest from the staff. We also used it as part of an Augmented Reality ‘wall’ as a technology teachmeet for new staff studying for their PGCERT.

You can download the poster from here : Augmented Poster, and the instructions on how to download and install AURASMA onto your mobile device here:  Aurasma Getting Started. Print the poster and find the embedded ‘trigger’  videos of the students talking about their projects by pointing your device at ‘GROUPWORK’ and ‘REFLECTION’

For our new workshops, where we will be getting staff, students, visitors and anyone else who is interested to create an Augmented Reality Poster about their favourite book. The next blogpost will supply instructions and details to enable you to take part.