Bring schools to life with Aurasma app

The Magic of Bringing Information to life.

I’m assuming you’ve seen at least one of the eight Harry Potter films. In the films, one everyday magical experience is that photos are always moving as if they were video screens, even though they are ‘printed’ on paper. Newspaper photos act out the news event as film too, whilst you walk down the road reading. It seems so magical and yet, like so many things these days , there’s an app for that!

The Aurasma App (free) allows you to create what’s known as Augmented Reality (Real life with extra info added)

Here’s a great intro into the world of Augmented Reality.

And here’s Aurasma’s own demo video of it in action:

Before I take you though how to make your own, let’s look at the potential uses for learning.

Lets start with possible posters on the walls around your school or classroom that come to life and

1. welcome visitors and introduce the school.
2. animate mathematical problems being solved.
3. explain how to use school equipment (useful in my technology or science classrooms)
4. bring famous people from history to life with students acting out their most famous moments or words.
5. explain famous paintings on demand
6. introduce apps with demos of students using them.

What about the school newsletters? Every photo could be the first frame of a video and showcase performances and sporting moments.

What about worksheets or project introduction sheets that come to life and guide the students through the process.

The possibilities are endless! The idea that all those posters that have been unnoticed on classroom walls for decades could now offer a real interactive experience on demand is really exciting!

Getting started with your first “Auras”

Below is a step-by-step guide but here are the essentials:

1. Record a video using the iPad’s Camera or animation app like iMotionHD.
2. Pause the video on the first frame to grab a screenshot of it for the poster
3. Make a poster using your screenshot and add words, titles and the Aurasma logo to indicate it being interactive but also to make the poster’s layout unique enough to be recognised by the app.
4. Run through the process in the guide below of adding the video to Aurasma and taking a photo of your finished poster as the ‘trigger’ image.
5. When finished, name your aura and add it to a class / school channel within you free Aurasma account. This will make it public for the students to subscribe to in their Aurasma apps and so interact with all the posters in the class / school.

I will have a fun 2014 with this app. Here’s the guide: (PNG links to PDF)

And thanks to Serena Davies (@serenadavies1), here’s the info in Welsh!….