Fun with Augmented Reality

colAR Mix

Over the summer, I came across this amazing post by Erin Klein that introduced me to the colAR app. In short, this incredible app turns a coloring book page into an interactive augmented realty experience! I immediately downloaded it and had my son Blake give it a try.  Needless to say, my 2-year-old now wishes every coloring book would come to life like this one!  Here is a quick video of my son Blake (with assistance from my wife Michaela) using the colAR app to augment his favorite coloring pages.

(View on YouTube)


Aurasma

I was also introduced to the Aurasma augmented reality app this summer at the Games in Education Symposium in NY.  Unfortunately, I was presenting during the Aurasma session, so I did not really get a chance to experiment with the app at this conference.

About a week ago, I started listening to the new Edreach podcast called the Two Guys Show with Brad Waid and Drew Minock.  They referenced Aurasma on several occasions as one of the go-to augmented reality apps out there, so I decided to play around with it a bit in school.  I then decided that it could be fun to create an aura of my daughter Lydia poking her head out from behind a couch and seeing how my son Blake would react.  Well, here is the video and I think he found it awesome.  It is clear, however, that Dad thinks this is much cooler than either of them, and Liddy is already realizing how nuts her Dad is.  Here is the video:

(View on YouTube)


I can't wait to explore AR further this year, particularly that ways that I can incorporate it into our gamified flipped-mastery courses. More to come soon!