Augment - A Platform for Sharing 3D Models in Augmented Reality

A couple of weeks ago Heidi Samuelson shared some good ideas for using the augmented reality app Aurasma in math and reading lessons. Another augmented reality tool that you might consider using is called Augment.

Augment is a platform through which you can upload images to have them turned into 3D models that your students can then view through their iPads or Android tablets. The 3D models that are displayed are referred to as "Trackers" on the Augment platform. Watch the video below to see them in action.


This page on the Augment website outlines the process for creating Trackers.

Applications for Education
Augment provides licenses to schools for free. You do have to send them an email with a brief explanation of how you plan to use Augment.

The video above comes from Jonathan Newman who wrote an extensive post about how he uses Augment in his chemistry class.

Extending Digital Portfolios Beyond High School and How to Forward a Domain

Kern Kelley is a technology integrator at Nokomis Regional High School here in Maine. Every week Kern and his students host the Tech Sherpas show on Google+. For years Kern's district has provided graduating students with their own domains to manage for one year after high school. The domains are where the students maintain their digital portfolios. In this week's episode of the Tech Sherpas show Kern explains the thinking behind this decision and the student with him explains forwarding a domain. The video of the show is embedded below.


If you want to skip the video above and just want to learn how to forward a domain, there is not a shortage of tutorials of the process available on YouTube. The process is slightly different depending on the hosting service that you use and the domain registrar that you use so you will want to pick a tutorial that includes the same registrar as the one you used to buy a domain.

Have You Looked at Historypin Lately? - Create a Local History Project

Historypin is probably my favorite service for locating geo-located historical imagery. After writing my post about Views of Venice I explored Historypin for the first time in a few months and enjoyed exploring some of the Historypin channels and tours of geolocated imagery.

Some of the Historypin channels of note for teachers of US History are those of the Library of Congress, The Smithsonian, and Historic New England. A personal favorite of mine, although it doesn't have broad appeal, is the Hagley Museum and Library that my grandfather used to take me to as a child in Delaware. On all of the Historypin channels you will find, at a minimum, galleries of historical images geolocated onto Google Maps. Many of the channels also include a tour that you can flip through to view connected image sets.

Applications for Education
Historypin is largely a crowd-sourced effort. Your students could contribute to an existing Historypin project or create projects of their own. Historypin allows anyone with a Google account to place images within the setting of current Google Maps Streetview imagery. Your students could create a Historypin project of their own by going to your local history society, scanning historical images, and placing them into a map. (Try using the CamScanner app for iOS and Android to scan images without having to use a dedicated scanner).

Views of Venice - Art Added to Street View Imagery of Venice

Keir Clarke, owner of Google Maps Mania, has created a neat mashup of art and Street View imagery. Views of Venice allows you to see artwork depicting scenes of Venice layered over current Street View imagery of Venice. To access the imagery just click on the menu button on Views of Venice to choose a piece of art and see it in its geo-located context.

Applications for Education
Views of Venice reminds me a bit of the concept behind History Pin in which historical imagery is added to Google Maps Street View. Views of Venice only contains fourteen images at this time. It is still a good example of how Google Maps can be used to provide greater context for students when they are learning about art and artifacts. You could have students learn about the geographical and context of art by having them add images to Google Maps placemarks through Google Maps Engine Lite.

30,000+ Images of Art and Artifacts to Download and Re-use for Free

The Museum of New Zealand recently released more than 30,000 images of art and artifacts to download and re-use for free. The images are a mix of public domain images and images labeled with a Creative Commons license. The museum makes it easy to determine how an image is licensed. To determine the licensing of an image simply click on the download button and the next page clearly shows the license for the image.

Finding images in the Museum of New Zealand's gallery isn't the most intuitive process. You can enter a keyword to search, but if you're too specific you might not find what you're looking for. For example, enter "fish" and scroll through the results rather than entering "salmon" or "trout" to find images of fish. The other way to search is to open the advanced search settings in which you can choose a collection to browse through.

Applications for Education
My first thought about this collection was that it could be another place for students to look for images to use in presentations that they create. As I spent more time exploring the collection I realized that there are many images of cultural artifacts and images of archeological artifacts that could be useful as instructional aids in history and art history courses.

H/T to Open Culture.