I was really interested to read about the latest Google Map Android developments last week. Basically they have made it very easy to create indoor maps within Google Maps. You simply up-load your floor plan and then locate the floor plan within the Google Maps Satellite imagery.
It is surprising easy to do as long as you have a good floor plan! I’m sure it won’t be long until you can also add directions within this feature. That of course leads to all sorts of possibilities to help search for things around buildings and to help you get to places within large open spaces. This of course includes schools and learning spaces.
Possibilities include:
Mapping the inside of your school - scope for transition activities, new students or visitors to the school (eg: to attend sport fixture)
Parents night app - to help parents find there way around
Your school timetable as a map (linked to the calendar functionality and other features of your device)
More about indoor maps in this YouTube Video below or visit the Google Floor Plans Page:
Now if your really interested in what can be done with Maps then you need to make sure that you watch this 8min TED Talk (February 2010) from Blaise Aguera y Arcas on Microsoft augmented-reality maps. The second half still blows my mind!
I first came across James Alliban a number of years ago while doing some research into Augmented Reality (AR) and how it might be beneficial to education. If your interested in AR then you will already know one of James's first AR development – its been viewed thousands of times on the Internet. It’s the AR Business card – I’ve embedded the video below.
During his presentation James gave a whirlwind tour of some of the current and possible future developments in augmented reality and possible links to education.
I still think AR has a massive place in schools – I commented on this during my 2010 BETT round up. But what we lack at the moment is good pedagogy to support and develop learning through the use of this type of technology.
If you have not seen the Eye Pet before have a look at the Trailer for the Play Station 3 below:
I think one of the reasons that the Eye Pet has been so successful is that it creates suspended disbelief with children and that allows you to develop quality learning tasks around the augmented reality.
Related to this, I really liked the idea of one of the videos that James showed which I feel could also develop the notion of suspended disbelief but in a more complicated science environment. The AR is also being used to do something that you can’t normally do due to safety reasons but I also think the immersive nature of the simulation adds value.
Basically you have an AR source of radiation and an AR Geiger counter. You can measure the levels of radiation using the Geiger counter.
But you can also try to contain the radiation with a variety of AR materials including lead and tin foil. Depending on what you use as your containment field will effect the reading on your Geiger counter.
As well as all the normal sales stuff Nintendo also reminded us that this year is 25th Anniversary of Super Mario and a commemorative game is on the way. They also announced that Donkey Kong will be making its return in the new year and that in the not to distant future the wii motion plus will be built into standard wii controls forming the wii remote +.
A big part of the presentation was given over to the Nintendo 3DS – a 3D version of the popular handheld gaming device that was first announced at E3 earlier in the year.
I’ve embedded a YouTube video of the new 3DS features below. I don’t have a clue what it says because it is in Japanese… but I already want one (it’s a huge step up from the DSi).
I love the social aspect of the new 3DS, particularly how it can connect with other devices in the near by area even when it is standby mode. It is also interesting that some games even play themselves with other people around you – even while they are still in your bag (see the Street Fighter example in the video).
The video also shows the Nintendo 3DS being used to take real photos and then having a Mii automatically generated. This new feature is called ‘Mii Studio’ and enables players to easily make Miis from Nintendo 3DS pictures. Mii Studio also generates a QR code which allows Miis to be easily shared between friends using the 3DS camera.
A number of games are being developed for the 3DS to coincide with launch day. The video below shows the ones that were showcased at the Nintendo 2010 Conference.
As you can see from the video above there are a few titles that will be of interest to education – in particular 3D Nintendogs and 3D Professor Layton. The 3D cameras on the 3DS also screams Augmented Reality (AR) and rumors are some AR games will come pre installed on the 3DS.
One other interesting development is that is that in Japan Nintendo will be doing a test run of offering 3D television programming from Nihon Terebi and Fuji TV through the Nintendo 3DS. I think this development will be worth watching as the company starts to develop the device as a platform (how long until the phone is built in?).
UK pricing is still a little bit unclear but it will be the most expensive DS console yet and around the £200 mark. It also won’t be out for Christmas as originally planned and it looks like it will be hitting the UK high streets around March.
Finally, I love the statement at the end of the presentation that outlines Nintendo’s Strategy in one line
‘Gaming Population Expansion so that anyone regardless of their age, gender and past game play experience can enjoy’
These all look like great developments so good luck to them and roll on March!
Had my first go with the Play Station Move for the
Play Station Three on Friday – there are not a lot of games available yet but I
do think it has potential. The sensor is certainly accurate although it does
look like you are holding a strange sort of torch in your hand!
I also had a go with the Sony Eye Pet (Move Edition)
for the Play Station Three – I need to play the game more to see how much value
the Move Controller adds.
What will be interesting is that now that the Play
Station Move has been released how it compares in terms of accuracy to the
Nintendo Wii Motion Plus Remote and also Microsoft Kinnect when it is released early next
month.
I’m also look forward to the release of Little Big
Planet 2 on the Play Station 3 and see that it is also compatible with the
Playstation Move.
This is the third of eight posts where I discuss some of the things that I talked about at the 2010 Learning and Teaching Scotland Outdoor learning Regional Events I am a huge advocate for allowing children to use mobile phones in the classroom as long as they use them responsibly and that the school / teacher has some sort of technology policy. If your interested in this particular area then you might also be interested in the Times Educational Supplement magazine article that I was heavily quoted in “Mobile Phones Friends or Foe”.
Anyway, as I am a huge advocate for mobile phones in classrooms it should come as no surprise to readers of this website that I am also a huge advocate of mobile phones when it comes to outdoor learning.
I first spoke about some of these ideas at the Royal Geographical Society last November. There are lots of Apps for the iPhone, Windows 7 Phone and Android that are appropriate for use within outdoor learning.
Built in GPS for Google Earth Exports (I use GPS recorder)
Evernote – The ultimate electronic fieldwork notebook!
Mobile blogging Apps – Including Typepad, Blogger and Wordpress
Other fieldwork apps that night be appropriate for children (clinometer, compass etc…)
AudioBoo – Great because people can subscribe to your 'Boos' through iTunes
Speak and Spell – a letter game with a difference
Many of the Apps that I mentioned give children a real chance to send data back from the field and write their fieldwork reports as they go. The strength of both Evernote and AudioBoo is that it also gives us a real opportunity to help geo-locate children’s learning.
The GPS function of the phone should also not be under estimated and you can also buy a geocaching.com App.
Augmented Reality also has a huge amount of potential for its use in Outdoor Learning. I have recently been absolutely blow away by the Museum of London Street Museum App.
This App allows you to go to certain parts of London and the App augments pictures for the 1940s or historical artwork over real-time images of London. I’ve not had a chance to check this out personally yet but the demos look absolutely amazing.
Now I’m not suggesting for a moment that we should use the Street Museum App as part of our normal outdoor learning experience in schools. Although, I think it has huge scope here. Where I think the Street Museum App becomes really valuable is when we start to think about it in the context of children using it by choice themselves to extend their own learning and to make them independent learners because they have develped an interent in landscape and history.
This is a fourth of five posts where I will talk about some technologies that may change how we live, work and play. They are personal opinions and I could very well be wrong. I mention them sometimes in conference presentations and workshops and wanted to describe my thinking more in this series of short posts.
Augmented reality (or at least my understanding of it) is a way that we can lay virtual data or images on top of real images. It has been around for years but again has only recently become more robust and cost effective. I mentioned augmented reality recently in a post about how such technology may allow relatively unskilled people to easily do the jobs of people who currently need to be skilled.
Have a look at the BMW Research Concept Video (YouTube Video below) to see what I mean:
I think that this type of technology may be particularly appealing for some industries as it could be more cost effective but also safer and less of a risk for employees.
We are still a little way off Augmented Reality glasses – this doesn’t mean that they don’t exist (they do!) they are just a little bit expensive at the moment and normally have to be plugged into a computer to work robustly.
However many people have an augmented reality viewer already in their pocket – their mobile phone (a recurring theme of this mini series!).
Modem smart phones know exactly where they are because they have GPS in them. They know which way they are facing because they have an accelerometer and / or digital compass in them. They also have a camera and large viewing screen so you can easily see the world though them. Finally, as long as you have a 3G signal most modern smart phones are constantly connected to the Internet – making them very powerful mini computers.
There are already lots of augmented reality / layer apps available for the iPhone and for the android platform. The new Android commercial shows some of the possibilities of this technology (YouTube clip below).
The potential is huge. Imagine walking down the high street and you are looking for somewhere to eat, you walk past a restaurant, hold up your phone to the restaurant and the latest customer reviews appear around it. Or, you go on a history field trip to a famous battle field and by holding up your phone you can actually see a re-enactment of the battle take place. Or, what about if you visited and extinct volcano (such as Arthurs Seat in Edinburgh) and you hold up your phone to see the geological information about the volcano or even what it might have looked at millions of years ago.
The potential for augmented reality in gaming is also huge. As part of out work at Learning and Teaching Scotland we have already put Sony Eye Pets for the Play Station 3 into a number of Early Years establishments(more about this in a separate post) and also have Invizimals and second sight for the PSP ready to go out to some partner schools early next session. The interesting thing about all of these games is that they use the ‘real world’ as the backdrop for immersive game play.
I’m convinced that these ‘real world’ augmented games will be the big thing of 2011 – 2012 and devices like the Parrot AR Helicopter will add to this new phase of game play. The Parrot helicopter is a hover helicopter with two cameras on it so that you can see what the helicopter sees. The amazing thing about the Parrot helicopter is that you control it over WiFi with your iPhone (and probably other devices as well).
All of these applications are interesting but the real point of my post is to think about what will happen when you combine augmented reality technology with facial recognition software.
Facial recognition software has been around for years and just like all technologies its got better and cheaper over the last few years as computing power has increased. If you’re a mac user facial recognition has been built into the last few versions of iPhone (that ships with all apple computers).
Google image search also now includes an option to search for just faces and Google Picassa allows you to do the same thing with your own photos that you have up-loaded.
In fact Google has had a real interest in facial recognition for years – this is one of the reasons why they bought Neven Vision back in 2006.
Now lets take all the parts and add them together to think about what will be possible in the not to distant future.
There are lots of people globally up-load pictures of themselves to the Internet, these pictures are often associated and tagged with the persons first and last name.
There are also a number of websites that allow web users to aggregate all of their social content to one place (Google Profile and Facebook are both good examples of this).
There are already websites that can build a profile of you from an email address, depending on what you have published about yourself on-line. If you don’t believe me check out spokeo – it scares me!
Also, in the UK (and probably other parts of the world as well) unless you are ex-directory (which we recommend all teachers are) then your address and phone number (including your mobile phone number) are all stored online.
What is my point? Well, very soon you will be able to run an App on your phone , hold it up to a group of people in a room and facial recognition software will be able to recognize their face (cross checked against images that they have on-line) and augmented around the face on the phone screen will be links to the persons likely on-line presence. This will probably include things like Facebook profile, Slideshare account, Flickr page, newspaper reports, LinkedIN profile etc…
The data displayed might also include links to their home address and / or phone number. The App will be able to make educated guesses about some of these things because it will know where it is (eg: its geo-sensitive). For example, just because there are tens of ‘Ollie Bray’s’ living in the UK there is only one (to my knowledge) living in the Edinburgh / Lothian region of Scotland.
Now here is the really interesting thing, this fictitious App that I am describing relies on their being a picture of you on the Internet and then linking data to other on-line sources. When I describe this to people the first reaction I often get is, ‘thank goodness there are no pictures of me on-line’. Of course, these reactions are normally from people who don’t actually have a clue if they have pictures of themselves on-line or not. What they mean is that they haven’t put any pictures of themselves on-line but that doesn’t mean that other people haven’t. You see privacy doesn’t really exist anymore (I’ll come back to this in a separate post).
Of course all of this is fictitious at the moment, but all of the peaces are in place so it won’t be long (I think 12 – 24 months maybe less?). In fact MIT already have a working prototype.
So what does this mean for schools and education? A few things I think.
First of all, more than ever, we need to make sure that we educate our children and young people about what they put on-line. This has to include very young children (I’m talking from 3-11 year olds) and most importantly the teachers that care for them. For far to long we have concentrated our efforts surrounding the Internet safety and responsible use agenda on children that are already too old to really have any worthwhile impact. In short, rightly or wrongly we have been far to reactive and now with the technologies like I have described above just around the corner we need to be far more pro-active to ensure our children remain safe and secure.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think we can stop the above. In fact I think there will be a whole generation of Young People who tick the box (or just ignore the box) on their social networking profile and volunteer their data to be given away in the in the way I have described above.
What ever we do we need to make sure that we raise awareness for both children and education professionals.
I’ve been talking a lot about Augmented Reality lately and I find this video from BMW research particularly interesting.
What the video below (You Tube clip) and then have a read of my comments below the clip:
I find the video interesting because if indicates to me that potentially in the not to distant future we may need less skilled people to carry out the same jobs that currently need highly skilled and trained professionals for. This has of course not different to the past and has been in fact a recurring theme throughout history.
The video demonstrates that the car is plugged into the computer. The computer tells the person what is wrong with the car. Then the person puts on a pair of Augmented Reality (AR) glasses and is taken through the steps of how to fix the problem. The steps include safety information and opportunities to practice before the person changes the parts and fits the new ones. Finally the car is plugged back into the computer and the person is told if it has been fixed or not.
AR and other technology turns what potentially used to be a complex task into something that most people could do. Notice I used the word 'person' rather than 'mechanic' thoughout my description of the video.
I was completely blown away when I watched this short 8 minute TED Talk today on their latest evolution of Microsoft Bing Maps which included an Augmented reality demo.
In the words of Bing Maps' Blaise
Aguera y Arcas:
"We see this space, three-dimensional environment as being a canvas on
which all sorts of applications can play out. Maps, directions are really just one of them."
Very impressive stuff - can't wait to check it out in more detail. TED video embedded below:
As always BETT is a great time to see the latest inventions from 2Simple labs! They always have great ideas, they make fantastic products and really know how to throw a good party!
It was great to see the on-line tools suite being shown off. I've seen various beta versions of this over the past 12 months and the finished product looks robust, useful and really user friendly (much like all their products actually!). I already know that this is going to be a huge hit with schools.
The on-line tools comprise of 2Paint, 2Publish, 2Design and Make, 2Publish Extra, 2Go, 2Graph, Logo, 2Count, 2Animate Lite, 2Sequence.
Find out more about them and view some students work over on the on-line tools website.
I also managed to get a copy of 2Create A Superstory - again this is a killer product!
"2Create A Superstory is your complete tool for personalised multimedia story creation. It helps to inspire children’s writing through the use of versatile tools and templates.
The product allows you to:
Incorporate text, drawings, imported images, sound and object animation.
Bring characters to life with the use of lip sync.
Compile simple time lines to map story elements.
Use the magical Augmented Reality template to see your drawings move both on and off screen.
Save your stories as SWF Flash files so they can be shared online and embedded within your Learning Platform."
I was going to write more about 2Create A Superstory but Chris Drage has already done a great job of describing the product in detail over on Merlin John Online.
The use of Augmented Reality is very clever. I love the idea of children being bale to take their animation home on a single piece of paper - very cool.
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