The volume comprises a collation of my articles from this blog. As in the first volume, my intent is to provoke deeper thinking across a range of e-learning related themes in the workplace, including:
• social business
• informal learning
• mobile learning
• microblogging
• data analysis
• digital influence
• customer service
• augmented reality
• the role of L&D
• smartfailing
• storytelling
• critical theory
• ecological psychology
• online assessment
• government 2.0
• human nature
In a world in which everyone loves to bang on about emerging technology, relatively few ever do anything about it. The PhM, however, has the guts to give it a go.
I love history, I love augmented reality, and I own an iPhone – so a combination of all three proved irresistible.
Unfortunately, though, I was a little bit disappointed.
Here’s why…
1. The title is meh
Exciting initiatives should have a catchy yet self-evident title to attract users like bears to a honey pot. However, Augmented Reality browsing of Powerhouse Museum around Sydney is boring and clunky.
I’d prefer something like Pocket Time Machine: An augmented reality tour of Old Sydney. A bit cheesy, I know, but a lot more interesting.
2. The app focuses on south CBD and the inner west
As the first European settlement on the continent – with a rich indigenous history – Sydney is teeming with sites of historical significance. However the app conspicuously misses the most obvious ones (eg Sydney Harbour Bridge, Sydney Opera House and the AMP Building).
Of course you have to start somewhere and the PhM website does promise a new version, but it refers to contemporary photography and gamification. I’d rather they expand their range into The Rocks and Circular Quay.
3. The app barely augments reality
Since the app is built on the Layar platform, it connects to Google Maps. Select the “i” icon at the relevant location and a photo pops up from the museum’s collection showing you what it looked like 100 years ago. This functionality is excellent, and frankly it could stand alone.
The augmented reality component comprises those floating “i” icons, which you’re supposed to select as you hold your device in front of you. Plainly speaking, they’re annoying:
There are too many of them – which is confusing;
They are difficult to select – which is frustrating; and,
They have a tendency to get in the way – which defeats the purpose!
In short, the augmented reality component is redundant.
All is not lost
Of course, there is an alternative to abandoning augmented reality.
I suggest PhM follows the lead of the Museum of London and leverages the technology more fully. How? By laying the old photos over the real background.
This is what edtech is all about: transforming the educational experience.
Put a map on a smartphone? A crumpled tourist map is just as good; Plug in some photos? Nice touch, but those can be printed too; Lay century-old photos over the modern world in real time? Now that’s novel.
Even better, why not complement the visual with narration to provide a richer multimedia experience?
Who dares wins
As you would have gathered earlier, it is not my intention to pick on PhM. On the contrary, I salute them for having a red-hot go at something new.
Having taken the first step, they have earned the right to sit back and evaluate their app, with a view to making it even better the next time around.
While it might not be as flash as the xkcd enthusiasts might demand from this emerging technology, it remains practical and – gasp! – useful in the workplace.
And in one way at least, it is similar to this other famous example:
In both cases, artificial imagery is layered over the real world.
In the BMW example, the real world is on the other side of his glasses. In the Layar example, the real world is on the other side of his (or her?) smartphone.
I tried a similar thing at home when my local newspaper promoted Night At The Museum 2. I put the paper up to my webcam, and like magic a dinosaur skeleton came to life, a giant squid flailed its tentacles, and an aeroplane buzzed around my head.
But are these two latter examples really augmented reality?
By projecting both the digital imagery and the real background onto a computer screen, I would argue they are not actually augmenting reality. Instead, they are augmenting a representation of reality.
It’s just like adding cartoons to a movie set like they did in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, using CGI like they did in Star Wars, or even scribbling a moustache and devil horns onto someone’s photo.
In all these examples, the background isn’t real. It’s film, or light, or paper. In other words, a copy of reality.
Rewind
This insight was genius – at least in my own mind – until I realised that a smartphone doesn’t actually show reality on the other side of itself as do goggles or the viewfinder of an old camera. Instead, the device digitises the image and represents it as pixels on the screen, like a modern camera.
With that in mind, the Layar example is closer to the GE example than it is to the BMW example. Damn!
This was bugging me, and after a period of reflection I think I’ve identified why.
New criteria
To me, the exciting emergent form of augmented reality has the following characteristics…
1. It adopts the user’s personal POV.
When a webcam captures reality and projects it onto a computer screen, it’s not real in the sense that you don’t look at the background in that way (unless you constantly carry a mirror around with you).
A smartphone similarly projects the background onto its screen, but because you are mobile and pointing the device in front of you, it is for all intents and purposes real.
2. It is live.
We don’t live our lives by watching a recording of it. We live it here and now.
Reality is in real-time.
The two types
In light of the above criteria, I recognise two types of augmented reality:
Type I Augmented Reality (AR1), whereby the artificial imagery is layered over the background from the personal POV in real-time;
and
Type II Augmented Reality (AR2), whereby the artificial imagery is layered over the background from an impersonal POV or not in real-time.
• social business
I tried a similar thing at home when my local newspaper promoted Night At The Museum 2. I put the paper up to my webcam, and like magic a dinosaur skeleton came to life, a giant squid flailed its tentacles, and an aeroplane buzzed around my head.
