The professor's view of the Augmented Lecture Feedback System. One student is on their phone! Expel them! (via British Journal of Educational Technology)
Education in the coming decades will make use of an augmented reality. A reality that includes head-mounted displays and books with many more dimensions than those on flat pages. At the university level, a project at the Carlos The 3rd University in Madrid performed by collaborating professors and researchers is using AR to improve the real-time communication between professors and students in the classroom. In the elementary level, new AR books are using apps, tablets and smartphones to draw kids into regular, good-old textbooks.
The school’s Interactive Systems Group is conducting research into the use of AR in the classrooms at UC3M. The team has devised a system architecture that allows students to communicate with the teacher in real time through a classroom server creating a network of AR devices called the Augmented Lecture Feedback System (ALFS). To see when students communicate, the professor wears an AR headset, which shows him how students are responding to his lecture.
By pre-programming the students sitting scheme, the professor uses an AR display to see signals over student’s heads along with prepared lecture notes and other useful graphics. Student signals or cues are sent through the student’s cell phones and can tell the teacher to slow down, ask questions, and let the professor know they understand or don’t understand, etc. The teacher can also ask the class questions and see who answers them correctly. His display includes a pie chart of the class’s performance based on, presumably, any thinkable criteria. In small groups the program is able to recognize student’s faces using previously uploaded pictures.
ALFS integrates a Microsoft Kinect to see the students. The professor can also use gestures to control presentation slides.
In part, the system is intended to help all students communicate more effectively with the professor. Only the professor can see student’s requests and responses. However, the project is part of a much larger endeavor labeled the Information Technologies for Planning and Training in Emergencies or TIPEx program, an emergency response system. ALFSs like the one being developed at UC3M is ideal for noting immediate levels and progress in understanding and organization, as is necessary during an emergency.
The system uses apps on the student’s smartphone to do the communication. In a demo video, it appears the students are using iOS and Android phones. The team wants to eventually modify displays like Google Glass to be used with this system.
Using a tablet to interact with some of the Carlton published books. As one kid described the AR books, they look "wicked." (via Carlton)
But before kids reach the university level it is likely they will encounter Augmented Reality in other forms. AR Books are currently being printed by Carlton Publishing that use sharp-contrast, strategically printed markers on pages of books that can be detected with the cameras of smartphones and tablets and trigger specific responses in conjunction with related apps. The system is fast, robust and only requires recognition of 10% of the markers to respond instantly.
A book called iDinosaur brings the T-Rex out of the pages of the book through the high definition display of iOS or Android devices. A pack of Velociraptors virtually flies over the book and can be seen from different perspectives by moving the handheld device around it.
Another book, called iSolar System, lets anyone explore our solar system. From individual planets to Martian moons and asteroids, the book includes details on exploration projects that lie ahead of the human race. Using pinch gestures, swipes and movements of the devices, the reader can inspect the surface of the Itokawa asteroid in a model composed of pictures taken by NASA.
In another spread, a simulation of the Curiosity rover’s onboard camera can be virtually controlled and used to search for interesting rocks on the surface of Mars. Another of the 11 AR pages conducts a flyover, from the perspective of a survey plane flying just a few hundred miles above the surface of Mars.
The publishing company believes that future AR books will also integrate a device’s GPS and other available sensory into different features. Of course, these books are full of text, diagrams that will catch the interests of space lovers regardless of the AR capabilities. But the AR of these books will catch the attention of everyone.
AR in schools and books is a great way to improve and inspire at all levels of education. The AR Books by Carlton Publishing are available online. An article detailing ALFS was written by Tellmo Zarraonandia and Ignacio Aedo of UC3M. It was published in The British Journal of Educational Technology.
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