Does Augmented Reality Augment Learning? | Part 2 of 2 on Augmented Reality

A couple weeks ago I posted How to Augment Your Reality with AR – a look at AR in the Royal Ontario Museum’s temporary exhibit Ultimate Dinosaurs and a discussion with Ken Reddick from Meld Media about how it was created.

In this earlier post I established that AR is really cool – bringing dinosaurs to life is the just about as cool as it gets – but now I want to know if it helps visitors learn about the objects it augments.

I am aware that you already know the answer:

Yes AR helps augment learning when it’s created with learning in mind, and no it does not when it is used for its own sake (because it’s a shiny new piece of technology).

Yes you are very smart for knowing the answer. You’ve heard this with every new piece of technology that comes along – it is effective if it’s used strategically. But what does that really mean? Let’s dig a bit deeper. When is AR used in museums purely for its cool factor and when is it used to educate? What’s the difference and does it really matter?

The Cool Factor

The ROM’s Augmented Reality Ultimate Dinosaurs Poster

My example from the last AR post is actually good one to use to distinguish the cool factor vs. augmenting learning. I would say that the cool factor are the posters plastered all over Toronto where the dinosaur featured jumps out of the poster fully formed and awesome thanks to the AR app. This is cool. Not really educational, but cool.  The AR Dino Viewer, which is used to see what dinosaur bones look like with flesh, augments learning. It takes the object, the dinosaur bones, and adds a layer of information. Visitors learn about what a dinosaur would look like to scale and can even click on different body parts to get additional information about them.

But there is another distinction here. One was created as an advertisement and the other was created as a piece of the exhibition. Both are important, we need to get the visitor to come to the exhibit to experience the educational AR, but one should not be confused for the other and the distinction should be clear in both the creation and use.

Another cool factor example is the AR in the Laguna Beach 7° exhibit A Moment in Time. The exhibit featured photographs of people that, when the AR app was used, would start moving. Dancers caught mid-pose start to twirl, a girl captured swimming underwater begins to swim away and so on. This is really cool but what do we learn from it?

I should mention here, as a side note, that you could consider a third category of AR – art. This is where AR is applied to art by the artist him or herself as an extension of the piece of art. The AR in A Moment in Time could be considered an example of this.

Augmenting Learning

What goes beyond the cool factor of AR to become educational? Augmenting learning occurs when AR helps the visitor gain a deeper understanding of the object it is applied to, or conversely helps users understand the museum object being applied to the outside world (al la The Museum of London’s StreetMuseum which overlays historic images of London from the museum onto the user’s view of the modern day street they are physically standing in).

AR used in this manner solves a problem for educators – there has never been enough space in an exhibition to put all of the contextual informational and educational resources that museum educators would like to. AR allows this information to be applied and does not take up much real estate in the exhibition (just a marker to launch the AR app). It is the addition of this contextual information that helps the visitor gain a deeper understanding of the object that makes the AR educational.

Does it Really Matter if AR is Cool or Educational?

Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. What are your museum’s goals in creating AR? Do you want to capture a younger audience? Promote social interaction? Raise the museum’s profile? Because the purely cool types of AR can do this. Just read Cherry Thian’s paper Augmented Reality – What Reality Can We Learn From It? The paper documents a visitor study exploring the use of AR in the Asian Civilisations Museum’s temporary exhibition Terracotta Warriors: The First Emperor and His Legacy and shows how these goals were achieved.

If your goal is to promote learning then AR is a great tool to provide additional contextual content. Just don’t confuse the cool factor with the ability to augment learning about the object.

Is AR Appropriate for All Objects?

AR makes a lot of sense for objects like dinosaurs. Heck, it’s not too much of a leap from what is already being done with dinosaur displays – we (museums) use plaster casts of bones, in order to create an articulated skeleton to give an idea of the size and scale of the dinosaur. So the ROM is just taking it one step further and adding flesh to those bones using AR.

But what about art? Some purists may argue that nothing should get in-between the original authentic object and the viewer to spoil their transcendent experience; these purists would surely object to the use of AR for art. I disagree. When used effectively, AR can act as a bridge between an artwork and the viewer for those who want it. For those who don’t it’s invisible! So it does not disrupt anything.

What do you think? Are there any specific objects, or types of objects, where AR would not be appropriate?

Selection of AR Reading

• Margriet Schavemaker broke down the different ways AR is used in a blog post – Is Augmented Reality the Ultimate Museum App? – for the AAM back in 2011.
• Cue the Magician: Augmented Reality at the British Museum is Shelley Mannion’s slideshare from the Museums and Mobile 5 online conference a few days ago.
• The Smithsonian’s Augmented Reality Livens up Museums blog post written by Randy Rieland looks at a few examples of AR in museums and lists some envelope pushing AR outside of museums
• Cherry Thian, from the Asian Civilizations Museum in Singapore, wrote Augmented Reality – What Reality Can We Learn From It? It is a visitor study about the use of AR in the temporary exhibition Terracotta Warriors: The First Emperor and His Legacy.

A Community of Learners for Museum Professionals?

Written by Erin Branham. 

Ed Rodley’s got me thinking again.  In his latest post he says:

At least part of the reason [digital media specialists in museums haven’t been able to teach themselves museum practice and theory] is that museums tend to be very closed about their practice. And moving from that “Should I share this” mindset, to a more open, “Is there a reason not to share this?” mindset is another one of those “tech” issues that really isn’t a technology issue when you scratch the surface. And it’s not an issue of “us” being more accommodating to “them”. Being more transparent should be a personal imperative, because it’s a great way to improve one’s own work. We all need to adopt a more open mindset towards our own learning.

 As a museum educator and lifelong advocate of lifelong learning, I heartily applaud the sentiment in that last line.  Because of that, and because I’m becoming more and more fascinated by the possibilities of communities of learners, I posted Ed’s insightful thoughts in his Digital skills and staff development post to our internal yammer feed, along with the gist of Matt Popke’s comment which inspired the follow up quote above. A (very techie) colleague quickly spoke up and pointed out that it’s not quite as simple as techie versus non-techie and sharing information across that divide.  This really, REALLY got me thinking.

From Silos to Sharing

I’m not sure museum professionals actually have been particularly closed about their practice – they’ve just been talking about it in books and journals as opposed to online.  There are mountains of easily accessible (if a bit pricey for the most part) books on every aspect of museum practice and theory available. Museum practice is only slowly trickling into the digital sharing environment because museums have been slow to embrace digital, and thus most museum professionals simply aren’t familiar with the platforms and habits of sharing their practice via digital means.  For example, I have been combing the web for months now looking for blogs that deal with museum education practice and I can count the ones I’ve found on both hands.  In comparison to the thousands of museum educators there are in the US alone, that’s not a lot.  But we’re simply not in the habit of writing – or reading for that matter – blogs about our professional practice and theory.  I’m not sure that curators, registrars, conservators, museum administrators, etc, etc are either.

What I’m sure is true is that museums, being conglomerates of people doing very disparate jobs, tend to have numerous departments which operate as adjacent silos. I know a good deal about the day to day tasks of curators, preparators and registrars because I have worked in small to medium museums and thus had the opportunity to literally corner these people in their offices and make them tell me what they do.  In larger institutions, you often can’t even find the offices of colleagues outside your immediate field of work, much less trap their occupants in them while you pepper them with questions.  Now that I work in one of those large museums, I understand much better how easy it can be to go an entire career with the daily tasks of your fellow employees being pretty mysterious.

Should We Create a Community of Learners Among Museum Professionals?

I’m feeling very energized by my colleague’s challenge to think about how we all (tech and no-tech staff alike) need to continually educate ourselves for the rapidly changing environment of the 21^st century museum. To that end, I’ve been reading a lot about learning in the digital age, particularly the thoughts of John Seely Brown, who has done some wonderful things to capture the collective intelligence of communities of learners – like finding ways to gather the “war stories” of professionals in a shared online space so that they could build their collective knowledge. Brown and others acknowledge though, that it wasn’t the technology which created success, it was the culture. Tom Ruddy, Xerox’s director of knowledge management for worldwide customer service, remarked about their strategy, “We concentrated on understanding what would make people want to share solutions and take their personal time to enter stuff into the system.”

Figuring out how to do that across the entire museum field is a fairly daunting task, not least because communities of learners must reach a tipping point in order to be successful.  There’s a good chance many museum professionals just don’t consider it that important to understand what exactly goes on in other departments, nor do they find it compelling to add to their workload in order to tell others what they do all day. But I do think that perhaps one solution to the siloing of museum work is some sort of online roundtable with the simple goal of sharing the daily concerns, tasks and frustrations of people doing the many different jobs contained within a museum.

It has always been our intention that edgital operate as a portal through which people engaged in the educational and interpretive function of museums might find resources and each other, and hopefully, share war stories so that we can all become a community of learners supporting each other’s professional development.  We write and share online in the hopes that anyone working anywhere in a museum who is interested in how technology is and can be used to enhance informal education is able to become a part of our community of learning. To this end, I’m going to be adding numerous links to our pages over the next week or two so that if you’ve found us, you’ve found all of them too.  If you have a great resource, please let us know.

In the meanwhile – what do you think would be an effective solution to the information sharing problem across professional disciplines in museums? If, say, a wiki-based museopedia was set up, could people be persuaded to take time to share information about their jobs, from routine daily tasks to big theoretical concerns? Would such a thing be useful? Would you contribute to such a space if it existed?

 

How to Augment Your Reality with AR | Part 1 of 2 on Augmented Reality

Imagine if you will a life-size Tyrannosaurus Rex standing in front of you snapping his sharp, sharp teeth in your direction. No, scientists have not succeeded in using DNA extracted from a mosquito in fossilized amber to create dinosaurs. This is curatorial knowledge and technical expertise making a science fiction movie into an educational reality. Your ipad can act as a window through which you can see what a dinosaur skeleton would look like with flesh. Doesn’t it sound awesome?! Let me tell you from firsthand experience, it is. And so is its potential for all sorts of museums – including yours.

Want to see what I’m talking about? Watch this video.

What is Augmented Reality and How Do You Do It?

Helen Papagiannis gave a talk at TedxDubai 2011where she defines Augmented Reality nicely.

“We can think of it in terms of virtual reality. In virtual reality we’re closed off from our physical world. We’re completely immersed in a computer generated environment. Now in Augmented Reality we have the opportunity to still be in our physical surroundings in our actual space and now hold up an augmented reality device, such as a Smartphone or an iPad, and be able to see different information layered on top of our reality. So how does this work? Well the augmented reality device will have a software on it and the software when it recognizes a symbol, an object or an image will then place additional content.”

If you are like me you are now asking how can I create this!? To find out I spoke with Ken Reddick, Creative Director at Meld Media – the company that worked with the ROM to create the Augmented Reality (AR) as well as a number of other really cool digital creations for their temporary exhibition Ultimate Dionsaurs: Giants from Gondwana.

Ken told me that there are two options in creating AR. You can create a Custom AR application or you can go with a user platform such as Junaio or Layar. The user platforms are easy and quick to use but you can do more if you decide to create a custom AR experience (which of course will be more expensive).

Hardware, Software and Logistics

Ken created two custom AR experiences for the ROM. The first is for the ROM’s ad campaign to promote the Ultimate Dinosaurs exhibit and is a true AR experience. Ken and his team also created an AR-like experience called the Dino Viewer.

ROM’s Augmented Reality Ultimate Dinosaurs Poster

Around Toronto and within the exhibit there are posters that are part of the ad campaign promoting the exhibit. Visitors can download the ROM’s Ultimate Dinosaur App and use it to activate the AR. Users point their iPhone at the marker (the black square that forms the border of the poster) which causes the dinosaur to jump out of the poster on their iPhone screen.

At the end of the exhibit there are three HUGE dinosaur skeletons on display – the Tyrannasurus Rex, the aptly named Gigantosaurus and the Carnotaurus. Each dinosaur has three iPads installed in front of them – the Dino Viewers. These iPads point towards the skeleton and when activated with touch show the dinosaurs as they would look with flesh. The team animated the dinosaurs in consultation with the curators to create accurate portrayals.

The iPads can be moved (swiveled on their stand) to scan different parts of the skeleton. Visitors can touch the dinosaur on the screen to learn more about it. When touched the body part will start moving to show you how it would have looked in action and a text bubble pops up with educational information about that body part.

Ken told me they decided to install the iPads because it meant they could create a more realistic looking dinosaur. This is because with installed devices, Meld Media could make higher resolution dinosaurs knowing that the iPad 3 (the latest iPad hardware) could handle it. If they had created the Dino Viewer for people to use on their own devices, Ken and his team would have had to create lower resolution dinosaurs so they could be viewed on the lowest common denominator – the slowest device (the iPhone 3GS).

Tyrannosaurus Rex with three Dino Viewers installed in front of skeleton

Meld Media created the AR and AR-type experience using a number of different elements. The AR from the ad campaign was created using tracking and animation. String is used for tracking – it allows the image marker to be recognized and then launches the AR. The 3D dinosaur animation, which in this case is the AR that is launched, is created using a gaming development application called Unity.

Unity was also used for the Dino Viewer (once again to create the 3D dinosaur animation) but String was not – it is the reason why the Dino Viewer is not strictly an AR experience. The image marker works for the two dimensional poster but when creating AR on top of a 3D object (the dinosaur skeleton) using a marker would be a bit more of a challenge (imagine markers all over the dinosaur skeleton or wallpaper on the wall behind the skeleton – not ideal). So instead, Ken used the gyroscope and compass on the iPad and created a spherical image. A gyroscope is a device used to measure and maintain orientation; this in conjunction with a compass allows the iPad to know where the dinosaur should be.

The background of the museum space on the Dino Viewer, which really makes it seem that the dinosaur has emerged from the computer generated environment and into our physical one, is made by taking pictures from the exact viewpoint of where the iPad is installed. The pictures are taken and then stitched together to create a spherical image. This places the 3D animation into the same space as the viewer. But we aren’t actually looking at a live view of the real world using this image sphere, just the illusion of it, another reason why the Dino Viewer is not a true AR experience, rather an AR-like experience.

Close-up of the Dino Viewer in action

A new tracking library software has emerged since the creation of the Dino Viewer called Vuforia which works across platforms meaning you don’t have to decide iOS or Android but can create one AR experience that will work on all devices and operating systems.

Cool AR Applications

There’s some really cool stuff happening with AR in other fields that Ken pointed me to. This Word Lens AR would allow museum visitors who speak different languages from those used in a museums interpretive text panel to be able to read them! The Ikea Catalogue is already awesome but look at how much cooler it becomes with AR. One of the features of this is that the app gives you x-ray vision to see inside furniture. Can you imagine that applied to a museum object? Think of the possibilities! How about using AR to remove objects? Check out this video to see how it works. This could take a game where objects disappear from the museum to a whole new level! Okay I know that there are a lot of exclamation points but I’m really excited about what AR could do to make museums more engaging!

If you want to know more Helen Papagiannis writes about AR in her blog Augmented Stories.

To see more ROM videos about their exhibit visit the ROM’s Dino Channel.

Stay tuned for part two of my Augmented Reality series – Does Augmented Reality Augment Learning?

 

First steps to embracing digital literacy for museum educators

Written by Erin Branham. 

Nina Simon made me cheer this week. As she points out, there is a possible revolution afoot in education. Nina spotlights the teaching videos of Vi Hart, and she draws a contrast between Vi’s videos and those of the rest of Khan Academy, where Vi’s videos have found a home. The difference she says is that Vi’s videos are “idiosyncratic, explorative, and a bit subversive” – all of which she (and I) considers to be a very good thing – while the bulk of Khan Academy’s material is much more within the “K-12 and college framework”. Khan Academy is not alone out there, either – iTunesU, YouTube EDU, NEOK12, TedEd (and that’s just the shortlist) – solidly taught, freely available educational videos are proliferating at an enormous rate across the web. But, they tend to be of a traditional tone, for the most part – addressing curriculum standards devised by the formal educational system and teaching lessons in discrete packets of neatly categorized knowledge. On the other hand, Vi Hart, and SmartHistory creators Beth Harris and Steven Zucker, also now with Khan Academy, Nina says, “are connecting you with knowledge and inspiration in more creative ways… the way the best museums do.”

As Mairin’s last post here on edgital addressed, Gretchen Jennings recently asked museum educators to contemplate what she calls an “over-identification with formal education” and followed up with a charge to examine the ratio of how much time we spend developing truly museum-based (informal) education theory and practice to how much time we spend developing programs and lessons designed to support and enhance the classroom-based (formal) educational experience.

Both Nina and Gretchen are pointing up a key issue for museums at this moment, and it is Harris and Zucker who capture it neatly in Nina’s Q&A with them: “We are finally leaving behind the 18th century model of education where groups of students are expected to learn at a standard pace. Every day we read about ways that teaching, learning and accreditation are being unbundled. New institutions and new, more personal modes of teaching and learning are being investigated.” Right now, informal, free choice learning is at the very least becoming popular and at most may be redefining our society’s educational paradigm. Yet, while educators engaging with digital media and the web are forging ahead with this process, museums are lagging behind. Why should this be when this sort of education is our specialty?

Perhaps Gretchen is right, and we’ve lost touch with our specialty in favor of the various pressures that have pushed us to be “formal education enablers”, as she says. But I tend to think the problem is larger than that. The primary issue is that education within the physical space of the museum has inherent limits. First, you can only do it with people who have entered the space, and that is automatically a fraction of the people in your community. This fact drove the outreach boom in the 90s-00s, which has died in the face of the economic meltdown. Secondly, learning is but a piece of what most museum visitors are after when they physically come to the museum, as revealed by John Falk’s research in Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience. As educators, we may not like this information, but we must learn to work with it.

However, new avenues are opening up around us that we have only to embrace – though we need to do it quickly. Our major barrier is our own ignorance. Ed Rodley’s wonderful post Digital skills and staff development thoroughly explores the issues surrounding what we must do – and why we can’t simply wait for the next generation to do it for us. As Ed says, this is not to be seen as “an “additional duty”, engagement and outreach [must be] core competencies.” This should not be terribly difficult because engagement and outreach are already the core competencies of museum educators – we just have to learn to do it in a slightly different way. However, for a bunch of non-tech people faced with so much digital knowledge, so many new skills to absorb, where do you start?

Here’s a few concrete suggestions:

• read blogs: Ed’s, and Suse Cairns’, and Seb Chan’s, and Koven Smith’s. They’ll provide you with an overview of digital issues in museums.
• build an understanding that social media is not a bullhorn that you use to broadcast what you’re doing. It is a town commons that someone in your museum needs to be facilitating on a daily basis in order to cultivate an engaged community to whom your museum actively listens. That means taking the time to track down and amplify members of your audience who are saying interesting things that other members of your audience might want to hear. Try reading Chris Brogan’s Social Media 101 – it’s short, concise and clear.
• start watching videos at Khan Academy and TedEd and think about how your museum could be delivering that idiosyncratic, explorative content based on your collection that Nina talks about. Submit lessons to TedEd, use YouTube.
• consider the many readily available platforms you could be collaborating with, such as Wikipedia.
• start your own twitter feed dedicated to museum education, or your museum’s content – because when it comes to social media the only way to really learn is by doing.

Try these out and let us know how it goes, or tell us about your adventures in becoming digitally literate.