A Little AR Fun with Aurasma

     I am really excited about some of the new technology that is just around the corner, but I am also a little impatient. After watching a promo of the upcoming GoogleGlass...

     I wondered if there is anything that can approach that type of augmentation of reality, and I have found that there kind of is.

     While not nearly as sophisticated as the Glass promotion, it is certainly worthy of high praise, and it eliminates the potential humorous abuses uncovered in the Google Glass parody that I am not linking to, but you can find on YouTube and it's pretty funny.

     I think that augmented reality is a fun and engaging way to breathe life into printed media, and will be great for advertisements, and especially welcomed in education. AR can bring print to life, and now that smart phones are common and have pretty good computing specs, it has evolved into a tool for mass appeal. I tried two free services. One is called LAYAR, and the other is Aurasma. After playing around with both, I decided on Aurasma. It has a few more features that I can grow into, and they gave me a partnership and an upgraded account at no charge. I am planning on using my students to develop content as a way to differentiate by interest, and engage them in higher thinking and abstraction. I will keep you posted.

The Aurasma App is a free download for iPhones, and Android

Once installed, play around with the menu at the bottom. That's the best way to figure it out. It's very user friendly, and you can make a great Aura in minutes. In order to streamline things, Aurasma has channels that creators make. Ours is Fox Chapel Astronomy/Geoscience. You can search, using the looking glass, for us. Just type Fox Chapel and you'll find us, and our Auras that we create. If you want to test out a few, just follow us, then scan the images using Aurasma

TPSVote Update

I guess the word is getting around. I have seen a huge upswing in the amount of downloads, and use of the app. It's nice that there are several instructors that are embracing the use of phone technology, though there is always a risk of student abuse. TPS voting, as introduced to me by Ed Prather has been incredibly effective in my classes. It requires that everyone participates, while eliminating the fear of embarrassment that some students have of giving a wrong answer publicly, since only I know their answer. Other great benefits are the non-verbal cues you can give a struggling student when they get the correct answer. A quick thumbs-up, or a nod can go a long way without giving away the answer to other students.

Last night I modified it to send an sms code to Polleverywhere, and this allows you to collect data for future use. Polleverywhere is a paid service, but it does offer free use, and has educator perks that are worth looking into. I am looking into a free service called V5V5, but I have had 0 success with it so far. I'll keep you posted

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