Thing 14: Augmented Reality

Since I wrote the Rudai 23 blog post on AR and described my AR project as part of that, this is going to be a brief post. There's no point in repeating myself. 

It has been interesting reading the other participant's reactions to the AR posts. Some were quite critical of the idea of using something like an iPad to locate a book on the shelf when there's an already functioning system in place - i.e. a human being. And they have a point.  I suppose it's interesting to look at what technology is out there, keeping in mind that there are certain contexts where it might work better than others. 

I was delighted to see some participants loved the AR task and even went on to use it in their library programming. When you do something like an AR project in your school library to record book reviews or something like that it might seem like a lot of trouble to go to when you could just ask the pupil to write the book review and stick it on the book. Why go to the bother? 

I feel it's important to demonstrate to children the potential of the technology that's out there. It's also important that they know the process. When you think about the technology that existed when I was a child (ahem, giving away my age now) ;  cassette tapes were the thing. They were analog, it was easy to investigate how they worked and the functionality of the tape player etc, you could physically hold the technology in your hands,  it was all there in front of you. 

It's less obvious to us now how things like touch screen technology works, or how AR works, until we try it for ourselves. I think it's important to be aware of the functions and steps required to create a digital technology in order to understand it better. Until we use it ourselves it's difficult to see it's purpose or realise ways to make it useful.