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Who Wants More Reality?

August 26, 2010 By Dr. Pamela Rutledge 2 Comments
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Kids with augmented reality planets

Kids with augmented reality planets

Previously published on Psychology Today.com “Positively Media”
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Sometimes when new technology is introduced, you get a glimpse of the future. The iPad was like that for me. Now Samsung is introducing the Galaxy Tab (tablet) on September 2. This time, the glimpse of the future comes from their marketing pitch not their product. The top item the Galaxy Tab offers those who want “more”? Augmented reality.

Samsung’s Galaxy is an interesting and slick entrant in the tablet field. Size-wise, it’s halfway between the size of a cell phone and an iPad with a screen big enough to see things without squinting. (I’ve heard the iPad called an iPhone for old people.) Personally, I really didn’t expect to like the iPad as much as I do, but I carry it everywhere. It’s pretty hard to be an Apple-killer these days, but Samsung got a couple of things right that Apple missed in the first generation: the camera/video function.

It is those added features that drive the sales pitch of the Galaxy Tab teaser promo video. However, the promo is more revealing about the changing media technology landscape than the attributes of the tablet. When the video asks the consumer “Need More?” It offers up augmented reality ahead of video calls and full web browsing.


Augmented reality bridges the Internet with the real world as a functional reality. It takes the information you can find on the Internet—from directions and prices to history—and superimposes it onto reality.

NFL uses augmented reality to mark the down lines

Terminator vision: Augmented Reality

Terminator vision is augmented reality

If you’ve seen the digital down lines on a football field, or Terminator vision, then you’ve seen applications of augmented reality. Augmented reality not only merges the information from the Internet with the real world, but it allows you to access information when and where you need it. And it does this for you while you are out in the real world. All this magic comes from easy to use, free software and a camera-equipped mobile phone with Internet access. Get restaurant reviews or comparison shop just by pointing your phone. Identify a plant, see what a London street corner looked like in 1890, find out when a building was built of if there is an office for rent. This is a tiny tip of the iceberg of how we will be able to think about communications in the not-so-distant future.

Augmented Reality: Local Directory Service

Augmented reality is better than a local director service

Augmented reality will be as disruptive a technology as Web 2.0 because it takes user-control of information and personal experience with technology to a whole new level. It makes information geographically and time relevant while access is totally geographically and time irrelevant.

By layering text, audio, video and images over reality, augmented reality enhances our understanding of how things work. It’s like getting to be a perpetual 2 year old, asking ‘what’s that?’ For some cool examples of using augmented reality like a time machine: see London’s Street Museum and History Pin.

Unlike other types of technology, augmented reality transforms the environment into an immersive learning ecology (even if you aren’t trying to learn something.) Creating an immersive environment has many advantages. In embodied cognition terms, we have many ways of manipulating the environment to help us think. Augmented reality allows us to off-load cognitive work onto the environment in all new ways. That leaves all kinds of brain ergs available for something more useful: synthesizing information, problem solving, reasoning, and planning. At a time when people are worrying about information overload, augmented reality is the ultimate filter. It will not show you the price of a latte in Tallahassee if you are in NYC. You are in charge. Your information is targeted, self-selected and self-relevant. Augmented reality is working through what

I think of as the “shiny penny” stage, full of exciting new-kid-on-the-block bells and whistles. Unless finding the closest Starbucks is a critical issue for you, it hasn’t been used much in prosocial or substantive ways, but that will come soon. (See, for example, Imagined Communities. ) The potential for environmental exploration and learning is extraordinary. Physical objects are often used in education: they convey meaning, relationships, provide opportunities for collaboration, and focus attention.

Vito Technology’s Star Walk

Vito Technology’s Star Walk

Augmented reality is powerful because it extends our ability to use the power of technology in our own environment. We can use it in a way that is not separate from the interpersonal communication space unlike many other technologies.Augmented reality is not separate from place. It is place. Place matters because it turns out that that most real-world thinking actually occurs in the real world. Not only that, but it happens in specific and complex environments with practical goals that relies on the interaction with, feedback from, and manipulation of real stuff.

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Photos of of kids and StarWalk iPhone app from Gizmodo

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Online Safety: Educate not Legislate

May 27, 2010 By Dr. Pamela Rutledge 3 Comments
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Previously published in Psychology Today “Positively Media.”

Facebook’s recent privacy control changes have triggered a big response of concern, indignation, and pages of analysis. One thing you have to love about social media, when people are ticked off, you find out pretty fast. Facebook is doing some rhetorical back-pedaling but when people are angry, they demand solutions—often in haste and not often rationally. This has added fuel to the political fire to regulate social networking sites like Facebook. It’s time to take a deep breath and realize that we need a longer view to achieve a solution that is both effective and sustainable. That solution is education, not legislation. We need to redefine media literacy to include understanding how media technologies work and how they are used, not focus on content. We need to elevate media literacy to media citizenship.

Facebook violated a social contract with its users. People are rightfully frustrated when they sign up for something and the rules change. But for Facebook users, this is more than that. The changes to privacy controls violate cultural expectations and cross a psychological boundary, not just the fine print. The sense of betrayal is heightened because of the personal investment, not to mention exposure, people have in an online identity, experience, friends, and community. There is a danger, though, that these emotions will cloud people’s vision about the longer-term and the more fundamental principles at stake. Short-term fixes won’t address longer-term issues.

Whatever the core issues are—and not everyone agrees—the problems are not unique to Facebook. We are all grappling with the implications of a digitally connected world and what this means for a myriad of issues. The solution, however, is not in lawsuits or regulation. Both are a waste of resources and neither will achieve a positive objective: making people safe and effective navigators of the continually evolving digital landscape. The solution is in education.

It’s time we admitted that we are a technology-rich society and redefined media literacy to include understanding how media technologies work, not just what’s in them. We need to elevate media literacy to media citizenship. [Read more...]

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Sneaking in a Little Culture Amidst the Marketing in Las Vegas using Augmented Realty Apps

May 25, 2010 By Dr. Pamela Rutledge Leave a Comment
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AR has lots of benefits, such as portability, interactivity, and personalization. But an under appreciated feature is that it can be a stealth contributor to cultural literacy while it pushes a marketing agenda. By including the arts and other cultural offerings and previews in the line-up of “attractions,” AR has the potential to increase awareness about the fine arts. By including accessible information about artists, musicians, and performances, AR can demystify, humanize, and normalize appreciation for the fine arts into a Main Street rather than Park Avenue experience.

In the world of “money is no object” and “larger than life,” who better to engage the use of augmented reality to show people around town than Las Vegas? The MGM Mirage properties has launched Vegas’ first AR iPhone apps available through, you guessed it, iTunes. This is just a taste of things to come for the hospitality industry sectors willing to make the investment in creativity and innovation. Well-designed AR is the most effective way to bridge the gap between information gathering for specific goals (like vacation planning) and information gathering for entertainment and education that has value independent of goal-specific behavior. The line-up includes “Resort Apps:’ resort-specific apps for Mandalay Bay, MGM Grand and New York-New York, “Entertainment of Las Vegas:” an entertainment app with access to video previews and pertinent information like times and ticket sales at 10 resorts, and “Vegas Reality:” that links the iPhone and GPS services to allow you to interact with attractions on the strip, monitor late-breaking hot spots and trends via Twitter, and higher-brow offerings such as the CityCenter’s public Art Collection including artist bios and information about their work. Vegas Reality encapsulates the real value of AR; it exposes the user to different types of information, including things that might not have been something they’d would know about or consider finding. (Like the art collection. Who knew that Swedish sculptor Claes Oldenburg was on display in Vegas?)

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Augmented Reality: Real Life with Toppings

May 19, 2010 By Dr. Pamela Rutledge Leave a Comment
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Published previously on Positively Media Blog on Psychology Today.

Care to try on a dress, take your picture in a virtual Mardi Gras mask, or figure out what size box you need to ship a package—from your computer? You can with augmented reality (AR). There is a virtual dressing room at Tobi.com* virtual city visits on Hotel.com and a shipping box simulator at USPS. Tissot Watches made headlines this week with a display in London where you can virtually try on out the styles and features of their entire watch line. Pretty fun.

Don’t want to be house bound? You can take AR to the streets and use a smartphone to find a subway stop, locate a nearby restaurant AND read the recent reviews, or get information about a landmark.

AR is interactive, instantaneous, very cool, and coming your way soon. By superimposing digital information (text, pictures, audio, or visuals) onto what we currently think of as ‘real life,’ AR merges 3-D environments in real time.

Think of AR as a halfway house between virtual reality and plain old reality. Virtual reality provides a complete synthetic environment, like in the virtual world of Second Life or built-out areas of Google earth, like this example of Virtual Rome.

AR, on the other hand, adds to reality, like toppings on ice cream. In AR, virtual and real objects coexist in the same space. If you are a football fan, you’re already an old hand at this. The down lines and field markers that move with the plays are done with AR.

Don’t dismiss the recent emergence of Augmented Reality applications as marketing gimmicks or Hollywood fad. AR doesn’t just sell magazines, toys, and restaurant meals.

Virtual information is visible on a camera phone

Combining real and virtual objects can enhance our experience of the real world. Providing information overlays on real life facilitates all kinds of things—even things more important than shopping, like medical research and training, brain-behavior relationships, astronaut training, and even, dare I say it, education. Recent examples are a fourth-grade class in San Diego that used AR to learn about botany and the Getty Museum’s exhibit that lets you virtually explore 17th Century Augsberg Cabinet without paying for gas and parking.

AR also has great potential for therapeutic applications like treating phobias, PTSD, and anxiety. (Check out the AR cockroaches used to treat bug phobias, which is kind of creepy, but looks pretty effective.

The real revolution is just beginning. AR technology will continue to become simultaneously more sophisticated, accessible and inexpensive. Since Ivan Sutherland’s first augmented reality system in 1968, researchers have tried to figure out how to make AR more portable and practical. Where once you had to essentially wear a computer on your head, the AR experience is now fits in your back pocket. Thanks in part to the availability of open source mobile platforms, developers have created a flood of fun and/or useful apps for mobile devices like iPhones and Droids as well as computers. Check out AR browsers like Layar http://www.layar.com/ to see how it works.

Ivan Sunderland, 1969, First Augmented Reality System

The simple tool of a camera and Internet-equipped phone or computer opens the door to a wealth of information that can be triggered directly in the environment, whether it’s operating instructions and nutritional contents to the location of books in a library. Many AR applications use an icon or “glif” attached to the real environment to trigger a digital file. The Hitlab video shows some great examples, too. Another fun one is GE’s Smart Grid. With the addition of GPS technologies, AR can provide navigation tools, such as hiking maps, identifying landmarks, and local flora and fauna. It’s a science or history teacher’s dream.

Hitlab Overview of AR

But these uses are just the start and barely touch the surface of the potential of AR applications to provide socially useful, relevant, and meaningful content.

I see AR as having tremendous social potential. As the financial and technical hurdles to produce content continues to drop, the ability of people to make and distribute content will move off YouTube and out into the world—the whole world. As a cultural bridge, AR can not only link past structures and history with present, but allows communities to have a voice and share experiences, narratives, music, and art with neighbors and visitors everywhere. As an educational aid, AR can help close the digital divide by making more learning materials, information and resources available to all learners. AR can also provide on-demand scaffolding experiences to support and reinforce active learning, self-efficacy, and create a collaborative learning environment. AR can also increase knowledge transfer, retention and the motivation to learn because not only does it place content in context, it is fun! This is why in Imagined Communities programs, we integrate AR into a design-based and interactive learning platform.

AR brings whole new meaning to “media literacy.” The ability to use information technologies improves individual well-being because access to information supports empowerment and autonomy(BCS, 2010) . These attributes spur economic growth and civic engagement. Bringing digital content into a real environment can support personal agency and increase accountability, especially compared to the anonymity of the web. There will most certainly be issues to work out, as with all new technologies. But AR will change many things profoundly and, I believe, for the better.

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BCS. (2010). The Information Divide: Can IT Make You ‘Happier’? (pp. 1-16): Chartered Institute for IT.

*The Tobi.com virtual dressing room is based on AR technology called Fashionista developed by Zugara http://www.zugara.com/.

Sunderland photo from Doppler, C. (n.d.). History of Mobile Augmented Reality. 2010. Retrieved May 23, 2010   https://www.icg.tugraz.at/~daniel/HistoryOfMobileAR/

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Want to Keep Your Job? Get More Education

November 9, 2009 By Dr. Pamela Rutledge Leave a Comment
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Education and online learningA version of this  article ran on PsychologyToday.com in my blog “Positively Media.”

A recent survey by the Career College Association reported that 9 out of 10 Americans think college is important for career opportunities and 67% believe that education is the key to competitiveness in the global economy. Turns out education can also be the key to keeping your job in an economic downturn. Recent employment numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that not only do people with more education earn more, but in tough times like these, education provides a buffer against unemployment. The unemployment rate for people with a bachelor’s degree or higher as of October 2009 was 4.6%. However, compare that to the percent of people out of work with less than a high school diploma– 14%. When it comes to unemployment, 10% is a lot. The desire for more employment options is also fueling a spike in enrollment of adults returning to school.

Unemployment by Education Level

The good news is that technology can help. First, it allows you to build a persuasive argument to inspire your kids.  You can find employment and earning potential numbers at the click of a mouse (including charts) at the Bureau of Labor Statistics website so you can show your kids at the dinner table why it’s so important to get an education. (Make sure you translate the numbers into a currency your kids will understand, like clothes or cars.)

More importantly, however, communications technologies make education available to people–both young and old–for whom it was previously out of reach. Traditional higher education programs can be prohibitive for a number of reasons: cost, geography, admission requirements, or home and family demands. Also, according to a report by Howell, Williams, and Lindsay Thirty-two Trends Affecting Distance Education: An Informed Foundation for Strategic Planning , the current higher education infrastructure isn’t equipped to handle the number of college-bound students coming down the pipeline, not to mention the swelling number of nontraditional students looking to further their education and career options. In 2001, 42% of all students were over age 25.  Adult learners are the fastest growing segment of the higher education population.

Brick and mortar institutions can’t offer the flexibility to facilitate the needs of many, particularly adult learners, so it’s exciting to see different solutions using distance learning models springing up. For example, the Big Bend Community College has established satellite “Community Knowledge Centers” to provide broadband access to their programs.  The military is instituting a virtual school program to help the kids in military families stay on track through frequent relocations. The Conterra Telecom Services is connecting eight high schools in the Navajo Nation to the Northeast Arizona Technological Institute of Vocational Education.  Where the average distance between high schools is 101 miles and 78% of student have to travel over unpaved roads to school, providing high speed Internet access can make a huge difference.

With the technology we have today, there is no reason why quality education cannot be available to anyone who wants it. In a perfect world, everyone would have a chance to stroll leisurely past ivy-covered halls carrying a swell book bag on their way to a lecture by a Nobel laureate. But it’s not. Only about 25% of the population is able to attend a four-year college. Distance education is a powerful way to help expand access and options to the rest.

Contrary to widely-held beliefs, distance-learning is not a sorry second best.  It is possible to have very meaningful relationships and learning experiences in asynchronous environments. I know. I’ve been on both sides of the equaiton. Just like in face-to-face courses, much of the success of an online course is due to the energy the teacher and students invest. But it is the convenience and flexibility in scheduling of the distance learning format that allows most students to continue their education. While there are potential downsides, of course, the disadvantages are vastly outweighed by the alternative–no education.

The U.S. could learn from places like India’s Indira Ghandhi National Open University. It provides educational opportunities through distance and open education targeting disadvantaged populations. There are kids working as busboys working in Kuwait studying to be engineers, thanks to this system. We should take notice of both the opportunity and the motivation and energy of so many who are working to take advantage of it.

The world is becoming a smaller place, thanks to technology. This means that competition for jobs, not just goods, is in a global market. The disparity in unemployment across education levels is an example of this trend. If you haven’t seen the viral video “Did You Know” on YouTube, watch it to get an idea of the magnitude of this global shift.

Unemployment numbers underscore the importance of an education in slow economic times.  But in the global economy, we not only need to get an education, we need to keep learning.

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Richardson, J., & Swan, K. (2003). Examining Social Presence in Online Courses in Relation to Student’s perceived learning and Satisfaction. JALN, 7 (1), 68-88.

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