Workshops

Over the period of the project the project team participated in 34 presentations, workshops, exhibitions and panels to present AR to the community and to engage with them. There were around 1600 participants in those events, and these participants have taken the message of AR to even more people through an unknown numbers of other workshops, presentations and other events.

AR Studio Workshops are built around Design Thinking and Inquiry Learning.

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Prototype Exemplars

For an idea of the types of ideas that result from our workshops, the following exemplars were presented in the final stage of the design challenge workshop at ARcamp 2.0 in 2013. There were presentations from five groups.

The workshops had an element of competitive fun. Each team was asked to present their final idea to the room in a 3 minute ‘Elevator Pitch’. Afterward everyone voted for the best idea in a blind vote, and the winners were awarded confectionery prizes.

Game of Unknowns

Game of [Un]Knowns is an open platform to enable a variety of different learning experiences. It allows students to share their knowledge with other students who don’t have it, and to leave their knowledge on objects or points of interest for other students to find.

PARabola

PARabola is an application for high school algebra. In high school most students have major difficulties in dealing with algebraic material, which leads to these students repeating units at university.

PARabola is designed to help teach quadratics: what the different parameters do in an equation. Using the form: y=a(x-h)2 +k, there are three different parameters: a, h and k. Using the example of an arch like the one on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the app incorporates 3D images of the bridge, and many of the famous arches of bridges around the world.

The equation is the marker that, when scanned by the student, triggers a 3D image of Sydney Harbour Bridge, with sliders for them to play around with the a, h and k axes of a parabola. They adjust the sliders until the parabola matches the arch of the bridge. When that is done, they can select from a table of different bridges from around the world.

As an optional activity, they can print the 3D model of the bridge in some sort of origami type of paper and construct the model with paper.

Reader RadAR

Designed for primary students, Reader RadAR is an application designed to help students find library books that they might like to read. When a student enters a library and asks, “What’s a good book to read?”, of course a librarian doesn’t know because each person has different tastes. With Reader RadAR, what the student will do instead is go to the section that they’re looking for, for example a fiction or fantasy book, and when they look at the shelf through the Reader RadAR app they will see that some books are highlighted. These highlighted books are recommendations specifically tailored to them, based on things like suggestions from teachers, friends, or other students; or some relationship with a book or books that they have read before. If they want to have more information about a book to decide whether they want to read it or not, when they touch it or pull it out, additional information, triggered by the book cover, will appear around the book: things like reviews from their friends; ratings; what subjects this book relates to (if they are trying to find a book for applicable to a particular subject: English, for example); other books that are related to this one and where they are in the library.

An avatar, possibly based on a character from the book, could deliver the information to the student. The book cover is the anchor in the real world to the digital information about the book that is relevant to the particular student looking at it.

If the student doesn’t like the people who read the book, or they don’t like the book itself, they can put it back, possibly choosing another one to pull out and have a look at. If the student decides to borrow a particular book, they can borrow it using the same interface that let them look at all the different reviews and other information. Borrowing the book updates their profile in the system, and they can rate the book so the system knows what they like and don’t like as the basis for other recommendations in the future.

SynAPPs

SynAPPs is intended to help students to learn about physiology and head trauma. Initially, students are given a 3D printed model of different sections of the brain. They then have to work together to assemble a complete model of the brain from the different sections. Each section is augmented to give them clues on the construction and how to put it together. Students can also tag areas and collaborate, using a social networking environment built in to the app where they can talk about different parts of the brain.

Once the final model is put together, it is then augmented as well, through which the students have multiple options to explore it. They can learn how parts of the brain work; they can look at case studies related to injuries to that part of the brain, linked to journal articles for more detail; they can watch an animation showing the impact of a blow to the head and the trauma that it causes; or select a ‘Choose your own adventure’ option where they presented with various scenarios and have to make decisions on how they are going to deal with the head trauma in a particular situation. Options for social collaboration through classroom interaction are also built in.

pARty App

A tongue-in-cheek use of AR to enhance the student experience, the pARty App mentors a student’s life for them. The architecture underlying pARty App is Google Maps with augmented layers.

At the official layer, the student is alerted to important events in their life, such as assignment timetables and the location of exams.

After the exam, the student — feeling exhausted and needing a party — says to the device, “Where are the parties?” The map reveals the number of parties that are happening in the area: Davo’s party, Shazza’s party, Johnno’s party and so on.

To preview the party before going, the user can find out what the vibe is like by tapping into video and audio streams and listen and watch what it’s like. They can also monitor Flickr, Twitter and Facebook, because everyone is using the appropriate tags and information is aggregated in the app.

When the user makes their decision about which party to attend, the app plots a path that takes them to the party via both food and bottle shop and the mobile drug dealer, without crossing the path of security.