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Augmented Reality technology has been just over the horizon for a while. It was even shown on the Gadget Show a while back so it must now be creeping into mainstream.  It’s been interesting to watch it develop and it would be great to see where it will lead educationally.  There have been  AR applications for various hardware out for a while but imagine the richness of an information source that reads your location and gives corresponding information on your handset about your surroundings. This article outlines some of the ins and outs of presenting data and information through AR.  As one developer says, it’s ‘…just like building a website.  You have your data source and you’re just trying to parse and present it in a meaningful way…’. The possibilities for businesses are huge if this takes off; conversely, the possibilities for mischief, misuse and hijacking of such a system for personal or commercial gain might also raise huge problems.  This could be a good lesson starting point for a discussion on the amounts and types of data that such a system could display on a handheld, where it could be gathered from, who would have access to and compile that data, and where there is a potential for the introducation of bias.

A rich source of AR content can be found at ARSights, where a huge number of 3D models have been built and placed on a Google Earth layer.  The models have been built in Sketchup and can be viewed in 3D by using a webcam and the printed marker page.

I’m looking forward to my 3D AR Top Trumps cards arriving soon.  3D Bugs or Ben 10 Alien Force in 3D cannot fail to be awesome.  Just for my children, you understand…

Image grabbed from GE Tour, copyright Google

How many people can remember what they were doing the week before their sixth birthday?  For me, it’s easy to remember – like the rest of the world I was wildly excited about the Apollo 11 moon landing.  I think I was allowed to stay up late to watch it, and tonight I have been reliving the event via Twitter, as tweets come in from @APP11_Eagle, @APP11_Spacecraft and @APP11_Capcom.

Now, Google Earth 5 has a guided tour of the landing with a 3D tour showing the path that the Eagle lander took, even the first aborted landing where Neil Armstrong decided to take manual control over the computer to land the Eagle himself, avoiding an unsuitable landing site.

The 3D tour is fascinating, accessed via the button allowing you to access the stars, Moon and Mars.  In the layers section, select the tour you want.  A machinima video follows, pulling in photo, video and text to make this an information-rich resource.

Particularly poignant (for me) is a tour of the Apollo 17 landing, narrated by Jack Schmidt.  The tour pulls in resources as before, with additional links to other resources including some to the Apollo 17 mission logs and picture library.

The Apollo missions and those that led up to them were triumphs of technology, science and engineering but mostly a triumph of human collaboration.  As we left the moon in December 1972 for what we thought would be the last time, I distinctly remember lifting my Airfix Lunar Lander off from the top of the television synchronised with the LEM blasting off from the surface.  I knew even then that these were going to be exciting times to live in.  I’ve not been disappointed.

In his Shropshire ICT conference keynote speech Russell Prue mentioned the i-GotU GPS device for tagging photos using GPS.  After a colleague purchased one for under £20 from Maplin I thought that I should give it go.  So at Easter I set the matchbox sized device to log my position every 15 minutes and simply left it in my rucksack as I went off on my travels.  The image shows the tracks that the device logged overlayed onto Google Earth and also photos that I then tagged.   Superb value for £20 although there is a more powerful version 2 that is now out but that is still less than £50.  One of the key questions is would it be better to spend a little more and buy a Garmin device?

A few weeks ago Steljes asked for the locations of all our schools so that they can plan the roll out of SMART Notebook 10 training (see details in post coming soon).  Rather than just giving them the post codes I decided to put them in Google Earth, I then uploaded this to Google Maps.

If you are in a Shropshire school you can access this map and the Google Earth kmz file from here.

None Shropshire schools can view the Google Map.

Please leave a comment with any suggestions for additional data I could add to the pins.

Lifehacker blog have just posted an article about using Google Sketchup, we have promoted the use of sketchup in DT lessons for a few years now.  Have a read of the article if you would like to see a practical example of using sketchup.

Sketchup for Education

Both Lifehacker and Teaching Mr Belshaw give details of the flight simulator that you can find in the latest version of Google Earth (4.2).  The flight simulator controls can be found here.

The latest search term I have found for Google is ‘time’, this allows you to find the time in ‘major‘ cities and towns.

After reading Wesley Fryer’s post on ‘Classroom Blog World Tour‘ and reading through the Google Earth Tutorial, I decided to have a go.  You can download my ‘Shropshire Secondary Schools‘ file and let me know what you think.

What tours do you think we could use in schools?  Maybe we could plot the route the Olympic Torch will take when it comes to England in 2012….

We’ve already pointed to a number of Google developments and acquisitions including the recent assimilation of Writely which has great potential in any collaborative writing. Well here’s the perfect complement in terms of collaborative spreadsheet work. I know some of us have had “Numbler” accounts but the Google machine seems unstoppable and more importantly appears to be striving for coherent and comprehensive coverage with Google Spreadsheets as one of the latest additions from Google Labs. Why not take a sneak peek – Great potential for cross school data handling projects at any level – topically we could be collecting interesting weather data from every school!

Google notebook is an extension for IE or Firefox web browsers.

Clip and collect information as you browse the web.

• Clip useful information.
  You can add clippings of text, images and links from web pages to your Google Notebook without ever leaving your browser window.
• Organize your notes.
  You can create multiple notebooks, divide them into sections, and drag-and-drop your notes to stay organized.
• Get access from anywhere.
  You can access your Google Notebooks from any computer by using your Google Accounts login.
• Publish your notebook.
  You can share your Google Notebook with the world by making it public.

Further details can be found on the overview page. I see this as an effective tool for students carrying out research on the internet.  All notes have the url they were taken from recorded underneath the note, you can edit the notes and even type in your own notes which will be related to the page you are viewing.  Here is an example of a public notebook that I made searching for information about Whitchurch, Shropshire.