Tag: augmented reality kids

Augmented reality application provides kids with DinoDig experience

| April 22, 2013

augmented reality appVirginia Tech art groups are working together to provide children with a unique Earth Day experience.

For Earth Day, a number of art groups at Virginia Tech have collaborated to use augmented reality to offer children a unique and fascinating experience for learning about creatures from pre-historic times.

The DinoDig involved a form of technology enhanced scavenger hunt experience.

The children visiting Virginia Tech over the weekend were able to use an augmented reality application that used location based technology to provide kids with a scavenger hunt that was enhanced by smartphones and tablets. This occurred before the “Dinosaur Petting Zoo” that was also held.

The augmented reality app allowed the kids to play the role of a paleontologist on a dig site.

The Virginia Tech app was selected to allow for the creation of the DinoDig based on FreshAiR. It was created by an associate professor from Redford, as well as his team. It uses augmented reality to allow the user to interact with the environment directly around him or her. It makes use if the device camera feature as a form of lens.

By hovering it over various objects at the site, the augmented reality technology allows the user to view more information about them. The app works because an AR map of the site had already been created. This allowed the geolocation technology to tell the DinoDig app exactly where the user was located and what he or she was viewing.

The app gave the scavenger hunt participants the ability to take part in a high tech experience that provided the chance to learn a great deal. They discovered facts related to dinosaurs when the camera features were held over the displays.

In order to complete the augmented reality scavenger hunt, the children were required to walk less than a mile over a period of approximately thirty minutes. The purpose was to give the kids a new way to experience their surroundings in order to capture their attention and their imaginations. Furthermore, each stop featured an additional interactive element, which consisted of a challenge of some form, or a trivia question. This allowed the child to earn virtual clues and dinosaur bones for the location.

Augmented reality for Toronto kids makes geography interesting

| February 24, 2013

Toronto Augmented RealityA startup company is helping to make learning more exciting and fun for children.

A Toronto, Canada, startup is using augmented reality technology to help to overcome the tedium and boredom that is often associated with geography classes and make the subject more exciting for children.

The strategy uses maps in a unique and interactive way to help Canadian children to learn about the world.

The augmented reality program is called Fun Maps for Kids, and it applies interactivity to digitized maps in order to help to make them more interesting to child learners. This startup was created by a family in Toronto who had returned from a trip with their son – three years old – which took them around the globe.

Worldwide travel helped to inspire the development of this augmented reality learning tool.

The founders of the company are Martin Pietrazak and Natasza Cieplik, who created it in 2012. Their initial purpose had been to help to teach their son about different places around the world. However, the idea soon proved to be too interesting for them to keep within the family, so they expanded it to be able to provide this augmented reality learning experience to other children, as well.

Though it is based on print maps, they offer students a great deal more than the traditional atlas. Instead, the creators made sure that their maps would have an interactive feature that would bring them to life for students. They used the patented Layar app in order to take advantage of its ability to add digital content to printed pages using augmented reality.

This experience starts off with nothing more than a map that is mounted on the wall, which is a common sight in geography classrooms. However, when the students in those classes use an iPad on which the Layar app has been opened, the map soon provides additional images, animations, and audio clips that can all be accessed through the use of the touch screen.

The company’s website claims that the augmented reality maps offer students a “window to the world” which would not be available to them through traditional printed images and drawings.