Education and Google Buzz…A Match?

It seems, Google has thrown down the gauntlet…Google Buzz is a incredibly powerful attempt to take a piece of Facebook’s market share in social networking. Google Buzz is powerful because if you have a Gmail account you are already a member. Within minutes of logging in to my Gmail account I had followers and I was following a number of people. This is how “friending” and “following” on Google Buzz works. Google has filtered users’ Gmail inboxes and Google Talk IM contacts and used algorithms to determine the users that they communicate with most frequently. Users can then share Buzz posts with the world (and Google search), or they can share privately through their existing Gmail groups or custom-made groups in Buzz. Here are a few a videos that explain the tool in more detail:

When I logged in for the first time with buzz activated, I could not believe my father was instantly among the people I was following. I liked that, no more sending him links… he is not a “first adopter” like me, and if Google can get him to interact with the social stream I am impressed. I’m not sure liked the asymmetric follower/friend model, though, because there were a few people that appeared on my list that I did not want knowing my business… or my whereabouts, so this feature made me a bit uncomfortable.

Augmented Reality and Education

Five Dutch content providers participated in the development of worlds first AR (Augmented Reality) browser. There are a variety of developers working in this area currently and it is the new buzz word in tech circles. Augmented Reality is technology that allow the user to point AR equipped devices at objects to see an additional layer of information about the object. We have seen this in the heads-up displays in the helmet view screens of high tech characters like Robo-cop or Iron Man for years. Now portable, processor and GPS equipped, smart phone devices, like those on the Andriod OS, will allow us to experience this first hand.

Of course, the first versions will focus on consumerism. They will allow you to point your phone to spot real estate for sale and enable easier shopping. But, It is easy to understand the educational extensions of this technology. Imagine a lesson where you can take your students on a tour of a old town and when they point their phones on different areas of the town info from a famous book or books written on the area appears for them to read. Imagine taking a tour of New York and being able to point you phone at each building to see the year it was built, architect, building style, materials, or even sections of the blueprints. As an instructional technologist I see it as a ground breaking utilization of GPS and I can go on and on with the ideas.

Here is press release and video of one of the first successful AR projects to launch:
AMSTERDAM, Tuesday June 16th, 2009. Mobile innovation company SPRXmobile launches Layar, worlds first mobile Augmented Reality browser, which displays real time digital information on top of reality (of) in the camera screen of the mobile phone. While looking through the phones camera lens, a user can see houses for sale, popular bars and shops, jobs, healthcare providers and ATMs. The first country to launch Layar is The Netherlands. Launching partners are local market leaders ING (bank), funda (realty website), Hyves (social network), Tempo-team (temp agency) and Zekur.nl (healthcare provider).

How it works
Layar is derived from location based services and works on mobile phones that include a camera, GPS and a compass. Layar is first avaliable for handsets with the Android operating system (the G1 and HTC Magic). It works as follows: Starting up the Layar application automatically activates the camera. The embedded GPS automatically knows the location of the phone and the compass determines in which direction the phone is facing. Each partner provides a set of location coordinates with relevant information which forms a digital layer. By tapping the side of the screen the user easily switches between layers. This makes Layar a new type of browser which combines digital and reality, which offers an augmented view of the world.