I let metaio Business Development “Guy” Brendan Scully pinch-hit for me on this one. I’ve made a huge mistake.
Greetings fellow augmenteers, this is Business Development Guy Brendan Scully coming to you live from the new metaio San Francisco headquarters here in the heart of the Mission District, ground zero for high-tech tinkering and hipster America at large. And what could be more hip than liking AR before it was cool? I think you guys would fit right in.
Today’s topic: Education! We have two new junaio happenings to report and both involve the merger of augmented reality with education.
Our first example is project SCARLET, an extraordinary group of people who are using junaio to link augmented information to primary texts and resources at University of Manchester. With junaio, students can bring outside information into their study of special collections materials that would otherwise be difficult to access due to the limited availability and delicate nature of the materials (these things can be hundreds of years old!).
Sponsored by the UK government through the JISC, SCARLET addresses a very subtle, but important problem in current methods for studying old books:
“Students must consult rare books, manuscripts and archives within the controlled conditions of library study rooms. The material is isolated from the secondary, supporting materials and the growing mass of related digital assets”.
Figure 1: Making Dante so fun, it's a sin! (I can't read French. Trak?!)
(Trak, please leave my caption above as-is. Also please leave this line as-is)
[I did.]
The fact that special collections librarians will allow an augmenting smartphone into their controlled bookrooms, but ban laptops and computers tells me something about mobile AR usability. PC’s are too dangerous? Too bulky to be around fragile things? I’m sure their reasons have to do with human usability, and we couldn’t agree more.
Check out this great post by Allison Cullingford and the Team SCARLET blog for more info.
In other news:
Aumentame 2012 is coming in 2 days!
On April 28th, 2012, Tarragona will host it’s own event centered around Augmented Reality in Education
“The Association Espiral, Educación y Tecnología together with Rovira i Virgili University, [will hold] on April 28, 2012 the 1st Meeting Espiral-URV under the title “Augmented Reality in the Classroom”, a meeting point in which teachers and professionals will share experiences and projects on the use of this technology in education.”
By organizing this meeting Espiral Association aims to provide a forum for the exchange of experiences, ideas and news, to spread the use of Augmented Reality academic environments, thus becoming an institution pioneer and visionary in this field.
Espiral: http://www.ciberespiral.org
Universidad Rovira i Virgili http://www.urv.cat/en_index.html
Our junaio certified developers Ediam Sistemas will be there speaking on AR in education, be sure to check them out!
[update: Check out Raúl Reinoso's presentation on Education & AR at Slideshare]
Well that about does it junaioverse: work hard, have fun and augment everything.
He made me do this.
-B
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