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Building Your Own
Remember when people started building web sites? It seemed so complicated: you had to learn html, and maybe a complicated WYSIWYG program, understand how web pages worked, etc. Teachers started learning how to make web pages so they could use them with their students, and the web pages, by today's standards, were quite primitive. I remember taking a graduate level course for teachers on how to build web pages. If AR is going to truly make it into the classroom, then it would seem that teachers, who are not necessarily techsperts
will need to be able to create their own AR experiences for their students. So, will this be possible? We're almost there now:
http://www.hitl.washington.edu/artoolkit/
Or, maybe we are there now?
http://blog.zooburst.com/ (Very cool!)
AR Enhancing Learning in K-12
I remember visiting the Saratoga Battlefield as a child. I'm not sure what I expected to see, but I remember standing in the large open green space thinking "is that all there is." Perhaps it is because I had read about it in our sixth grade textbook, and much had been made about the battle. I can tell you almost nothing about it now, except that feeling I described above.
What if my experience had been different? What if I could've walked the field with a handheld device and seen an overlay of what the field might've looked like on the fateful day it made history for. What if I could've interviewed, or asked questions of, the people who were on the battlefield that day--heard them talk about how they felt, what they were thinking? Would I have walked away with a different understanding? This is the kind of experience augmented reality can bring to education.
ARGH: Augmented RealityGames on Handhelds
This is the name of a project at the University of Wisconsin's Local Games Lab, which" makes and researches games that are set in real-life neighborhoods and ecological habitats." (Local Games Lab, 2007) The ARGH project, funded by a Star School grant, is a three year project designed to develop and test the results of augmented reality games for middle school instruction. The games require students to "think like scientists, historians, and other professionals" as they work together to solve problems. Like HARP students use handheld devices, as they explore a "real" environment, to gather information needed to solve the game. Like HARP the digital information can be "virtual interviews, photos, videos, data, and other material that adds to or 'augments' reality."(Ramaswami, 2009)
Currently the research is being done with middle school language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies classes in the greater Milwaukee and Madison areas. Teachers are paid a stipend to participate (which is voluntary), and receive continuing education credit as well.
The games include titles like:
MadCity Mystery (students need to solve the cause of death in what first appears to be a drowning accident--a man falls in local lake and dies. Students discover that their are a number of toxins in the environment and they must determine if these toxins contributed to the death).
South Shore Beach (students are called to investigate a series of illnesses that seem to be related to the beach)
The final outcomes of the project have not yet been determined or published, but you can read more about the project here: http://lgl.gameslearningsociety.org/argh.php
and: http://wistechnology.com/articles/2416/
Local Games Lab. (2007). Local games lab: argh. Retrieved from http://lgl.gameslearningsociety.org/argh.php
Ramaswami, R. (Sept. 1, 2009). The best of both Worlds. Campus Technology, 24-31.