Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 25 seconds
I have been following articles about Pokemon Go and thought it might be interesting to have my students next semester read up on Augmented reality games and find positive and critical articles (some are so critical I am scared of trying it myself) about Pokemon GO specifically (by October there will probably be too many!)
Something Ana Salter wrote on Prof Hacker about doing it for new students in college had me imagining a game like this at freshman orientation as a treasure/scavenger hunt! Or one for new international students that would entail doing things at Egyptian landmarks and monuments.
I can ask my students as a whole class to develop it! Different groups working on different sections of campus/Cairo or something. I am just thinking how to make the tech work safely…hmm… I don’t want them to get into trouble or make themselves or others vulnerable. I guess something can be done via Twitter rather than GPS… But it wouldn’t be the same?
I could make them just do a prototype but it would be so much cooler if they could implement it, right?
Any ideas or thoughts?
Some articles besides Ana’s linked above:
- First one I read (shared by Lee Skallerup Bessette): “Warning: Pokemon GO is a Death Sentence if you are a Black Man.”
- The Secret Sauce Behind Pokemon GO
There was another that was too dismissive of the critiques that it pissed me off. Am sure my students can find more articles come October. Thank you Rebecca for an interesting Egyptian reference on it – discussing the (non)fatwa can be great for class discussions.
Maha,
there’s a group at UW(isconsin) Madison who helped make ARIS http://arisgames.org/ it’s an opensource geolocation/ mobile tool. If you wanted to demonstrate some of the educational use of a slightly similar idea but without pokemon 😉 [I’ve not tried building something with this but have seen it used. ]
Thank u so much for the link, John!
I love the idea of creating something like that as an orientation game for new students… although really, how is it different from geo-caching? Maybe new students need some geo-caches …
Looking up geo-caching…
Thanks John I was going to suggest Aris. There is also layar https://www.layar.com which had been around a long time. I recall some people doing stuff with it at UBC.
Also maybe some stuff at NYU AR lab http://mobilearlab.bxmc.poly.edu
You might do some low tech things like putting QR codes in public places that could be connected to some kind of clue or scavenger hunt that points them to next location.
Or maybe with google street view, have them find a place that they see there, and reproduce the image with a photo of themselves in it (eg try to recreate the image)
Wowww thanks for all that, Alan!
Oh one more- with geocaching there’s the idea of creating or moving objects called tracks led– check out Travel Bug https://www.geocaching.com/track/
And here yet one- use everyday tech to broadcast discoverable beacons https://medium.com/@urish/exploring-the-physical-web-without-buying-beacons-efae51e36c2e#.xiwumry1g