In the 1990s the internet was seen as an oracle for quickly gaining knowledge, a pathway to find information. In the near future, Kevin Kelly suggests in his book The Inevitable – Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future that it will evolve to being a library of experiences that users can connect … Read more
Augmented Reality has established itself over the last few years as an emerging technology without appearing to generate enough momentum to galvanise mainstream adoption, that is until now. I predict this will rapidly change as “Big Data” becomes increasingly prevalent and easy to integrate with developing technologies and hardware. If we look at the themes … Read more
insideAR is one of the biggest AR conferences in Europe showcasing the latest developments in industry, advertising, marketing and education. It was the first time I had been to the conference and I was pleasantly surprised to see how far AR has evolved in the last year, both in terms of software functionality and real … Read more
Over the last few weeks I have been reading many blog posts heralding 2013 as the year that AR becomes the present instead of the future. Unfortunately, from an educational perspective, AR is still written about primarily as a marketing and advertising tool where user experiences can be shallow and fleeting. Location based AR such … Read more
At the workshop led by Team SCARLET on 7th December, the Crafts Study Centre presented a rough demonstration of their AR development so far. The two key principles underpinning this work were (and continue to be): ‘pedagogy before technology’; and focusing on rough working prototypes rather than polished final product (at this stage). Conversations and … Read more
The SCARLET tool-kit is available to enable teachers, technologists and librarians to construct their own tailored AR applications within the context of Special Collections, adapting the University of Exeter’s (From ‘Unlocking the Hidden Curriculum’ project) toolkit. The toolkit includes course content templates for AR, technical recommendations, an overview of the pedagogical and technical process, lessons … Read more
Working on Scarlet+ has so far been a roller coaster of triumphs and tribulations, but I am delighted to be able to declare that I am now working on the app itself. I had a huge breakthrough last week when Matt Ramirez suggested I try creating my trigger image using Firefox instead of Chrome as he had … Read more
One of the greatest worries I had when taking on my role as the project co-ordinator for University of Sussex’s augmented reality (AR) project was the actual building of it. The AR applications I first looked at had such an impressive wow factor that I wondered how I was ever going to learn to construct … Read more
On Monday 1st October, myself and the two technical leads from the University of Creative Arts (Marie-Therese Gramstadt) and University of Sussex (Rose Lock) took part in a technical workshop in Manchester. The main aim was to gain a basic knowledge of how to create Natural Feature Tracking(NFT) channels in AR, linking printed images to … Read more
As part of the evaluation process for the SCARLET Project, I ran a focus group on 16 November 2011 for the students in Dr. Guyda Armstrong’s “Beyond the Text: The Book and Its Body”. During the hour-long session, I asked some fairly open-ended questions about their own individual use of mobile technology, feeding into their … Read more