My Initial Idea

I plan, if it is possible, to work in collaboration with the Peninsula Medical School to create an Augmented Reality device to assist in the teaching of medical situations to students, the device will work in a similar way to the Layar device, which shows an Augmented Reality on a screen but will be of the human body or dummy, the device will show information, an under the skin view, possibly diseased and non diseased views and instructions on what to do in specific cases, which could be tailored by the teacher.
I feel this interactive teaching along with traditional methods would be more beneficial to students.

My device will be a lot more simple than Layar but I still feel it will work very well.
I would probably use an iPhone if I could find a program that was viable.
The tables below are from a report by Carnegie Mellon University, in May, 1996, the report, lists different technologies and their impacts on medical equipment, I would have to consider this if I were making a piece of equipment for medical purposes.

The full report can be found here.




My other plan is a lot more simple, it is to create an interactive teaching resource, I am thinking of making it for children at a primary school age, I hope to get in contact with a local school have the kids test out products (after getting a CRB check etc) and work with their feedback, I feel this method of development has worked for me best in the past but I will go with an simple idea to begin with.

I feel possibly an interactive application related to space, or geography would work best as they have the potential to be highly interactive. As yet I am still working on what sort of device to use as iPhones won't be widely available in a primary school, if I can get my hands on a Head Mounted display that would probably be the best idea.



There is already an augmented reality device aimed at kids, the Avatar iTag, the child is given a tag which when put under a webcam turns into a 3D animated character, the user downloads the character and when they touch a specific place on the tag card it starts an animation.
This sort of technology could work for education but I feel it is more designed for the initial 'wow' effect so would need another element to keep children interested, possibly some sort of points system or virtual prizes.



I have found a tutorial, to design a program which does essentially the same thing, having watched the tutorial I believe it could be quite hard to achive as I have no expirence with FlashKit and the tutorial is quite advanced.
Augmented Reality Tutorial





I feel that a device like the eyetoy would probably be best in terms of usably and also being realistic for me to create. I will probably make a game which also educates the user, possibly in a similar style to the Poseidon: God of the Seas game, developed by Christian Cook, Gavin Jones and Paul Bird. The game user has to spell words in order to complete the game, this gives education a more fun side (fundication!).

Poseidon: God of the Sea

Below is a mock up of how it could work, its very simple and I'd want to include challenge rounds, possibly if the user reaches 1000 points they unlock a secret game.