Let me pose this scenario:

Every day, you walk down the same street. You walk past the buildings, see the crowds and yawn.  But on this day, you decide to use your smartphone and look down on the screen. At that moment, you see animation, tweets from people in the area, and you can respond. Interactivity meets reality. Social meets real time visibility.  Engagement, enlightenment and excitement in an instance.

You wonder to yourself, can this work in the e-learning world?  Specifically, m-learning? Can an app for the smartphone superimpose learning in a location or locations?  Would it be possible to create a 3D environment in a real environment with people interacting? If yes, what would it be called?

Augmented Reality and it is happening as we speak.

Augmented Reality – what is it?

While AR has been around for years, in the past year new apps for smartphones (inc. iPhone and Android) have been hitting the market. Yet, very few people actually know what AR is and its capabilities.

Simply speaking, AR superimposes graphics, audio and other sense enhancements onto real time environments. You can incorporate tags, animation and interactivity.  While the solution was based on the premise of a portable computer and headsets; it is being used with smartphones and gaining traction.

Specifics, please

• Uses GPS and thus geolocation, which is built in the latest smartphones
• 3G needed
• Requires a camera (photo) on your smartphone – again, they all have the capability
• With AR, you click on the AR app and it enables your camera. You simply look at your screen
• Requires a faster graphics chip, again in the latest smartphones
• Works with various smartphones including iPhone 3, any Android, iPhone4, Symbian OS
• Works with tablets, including the iPad and soon to be released Samsung Galaxy. Any tablet that offers apps for download and AR apps are available for download will work
• It can take a toll on battery usage; but then again, doesn’t any cool app?
• Image recognition exists, so that you can use your camera – on your smartphone – focus on a car for example, and information about what the car is, how it works appears on your screen

AR Reality

• Nearly 91 million AR capable smartphones exist in the global market
• Projections indicate 197 million AR capable smartphones to be set in the global market by 2012
• This does not mean that there are 90+ million smartphones you can buy; rather the number of people who will be using smartphones that have the capability/power to handle AR

Awesome Apps that exist today

1. Layer – I use it and frankly it is the best AR app for a smartphone. You can impose the graphics, animation, communicate via Tweets or messages that appear in bubbles on your screen from other people in the area you happen to be walking around, see what it was like in the area in the past (very cool) and play games within it.

2.  WhereMark app allows users to explore Wikipedia (in a Wikitude app style) and local searches, find places to eat and shop with navigational AR references.

 3. Acrossair app displays all the tweets around you in 360 degrees of Augmented Reality view, with the distances and photos of the people tweeting around you.
 

4. Tagwhat app uses network of location tags which can be shared among friends, letting them know where you are heading to, along with your feedback on establishments.
 

5. Wikitude World Browser app displays data and other points of interest by overlaying information on the real-time camera view.

A couple of companies enjoying the AR experience

• National Geographic
• Disney – who tested it out at Epcot center, by giving smartphones to children (at an event), and having them go around the park on a scavenger hunt. The AR app showed them clues at various locations. The AR game used RFID tags to point the children in the right direction.

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by Craig Weiss, E-Learning 24/7 (www.elearninfo.com)