In this series, Nicky Hockly explains aspects of technology which some people may be embarrassed to confess that they don’t really understand. In this article, she explores Augmented Reality.
1 What is Augmented Reality?
Augmented Reality (AR) is, well, reality augmented via technology. AR works on mobile devices like smartphones or tablets, and with wearable technology such as Google Glass (see www.google.com/glass/start/ for more on that). It’s where the real and virtual worlds overlap, when virtual information is overlaid on real objects.
2 That sounds very abstract. How does it work in practice?
Imagine you’re on holiday in Australia. You’re standing in front of a famous building – the Sydney Opera House. You’d like to know something about the building, but you’ve left your guidebook in the hotel. No problem. You take out your smartphone, open up one of your AR apps such as Wikitude, which automatically opens the smartphone camera. You hold up your phone to view the Sydney Opera House through the camera, and a text bubble saying ‘Sydney Opera House’ immediately appears superimposed over the image of the building on your screen (assuming your phone has an internet connection at that moment). Clicking on this text will take you to information about the Sydney Opera House on Wikipedia. You can now use your smartphone and the Wikitude app to identify and find out more about other buildings in Sydney as you wander around the city. The app is using GPS data to figure out exactly where you are – your ‘geolocation’ (geographical location). The app then displays data and links superimposed on your phone screen based on that location. And voilà – reality has been augmented (or enhanced) via your mobile device.
3 So is AR just for tourists? Or are there other ways to use it?
Well, the Sydney Opera House and Wikitude app example is just one use of AR, based in this case on geolocation. There are AR apps that work purely on image recognition. For example, an app called Leafsnap, developed by Columbia University, can help you identify what plant species leaves come from. Open Leafsnap, take a photo of your mystery leaf through your device’s camera, and wait while the app compares the image with its database of leaf images and then gives you information about your particular leaf. Google Goggles is another app that works with image recognition via your device’s camera. The app can ‘read’ text, such as a book cover with a title, and provide you with links to more information about it; it can recognise famous paintings or buildings; and it can read barcodes, so that you can quickly find further information about products while shopping, for example, or do a price comparison online with other vendors.
Another form of AR uses printed pictures or geometric shapes as ‘markers’ to overlay information in the form of text, images, sound or even 3D animations. Take a look at www.poweredbystring.com/showcase, which demonstrates an AR app called String to see how this works with video. There has been some application of AR markers in education in printed textbooks: for example, markers in a science book can launch 3D animations of the earth’s structure, which appear to hover over the page when viewed via a camera. See a video demo of this at http://youtu.be/1RuZY1NfJ3k.
4 This all sounds very futuristic. What has AR got to do with language teaching?
AR clearly wasn’t developed specifically for language teachers. But, as with any technology that can link us to the internet and bring in information from the outside world, or even allow us to create digital information, AR can be used with students in the language classroom. Remember that the students will need smart devices connected to the internet to be able to use AR apps. They could use their own devices in a BYOD scenario (See ETp Issue 89), or use class sets of devices provided by the school, with at least one device per pair of students. You can have your students using AR inside the classroom, or out and about.
5 What kinds of AR activities could I do with students?
Here are a few ideas for activities using AR:
- Take your students to the school library. Ask them each to choose three to five books and to use an AR image recognition app such as Google Goggles to read online reviews of the books. Based on the reviews, the students each choose one book to take home and read.
- Take your students on a tour around your town to visit three or four famous landmarks. In each place, ask them to use an AR geolocation app such as Wikitude to find out three important things about the landmark. The students take notes about what they find out and share what they learnt about each place/ landmark in a subsequent class, and/or write up their findings as articles for a class ‘tourist guidebook’ to your town.
- Create your own AR markers using an app like Junaio, and print them out. Your markers can link to an image, a text clue or question, a short audio file or a video that you create. You can create a multimedia quiz reviewing a recent coursebook topic, using these markers. Then get the students to create one or two of their own AR markers in Junaio to produce multimedia review quizzes for their classmates, or to create markers with book covers and to record book reviews.
Don’t be afraid to encourage your students to get creative with their own AR markers and content, once they see how it works. This is what Web 2.0 has brought us: the ability not just to be passive consumers of internet content made by others, but active producers of our own online content – in this case, in AR formats, and in English.
Nicky Hockly is Director of Pedagogy of The Consultants-E, an online teacher training and development consultancy. Her most recent book is Digital Literacies, published by Pearson. She has published an e-book, Webinars: A Cookbook for Educators ( the-round.com), and is currently working on a book on mobile and handheld learning.
