An Earth Day Surprise using a webcam and 3D Augmented Reality

Each morning and afternoon I greet our students at the entrance of our school. I usually ask a Question of the Day using polleverywhere.com, a Google Form, or wallwisher.com. Today I introduced students to an interesting piece of technology called augmented reality and captured their reactions using Camtasia studio's screen capturing software.

The students were amazed. I demoed two examples of augmented reality. In honor of Earth Day on April 22 I chose GE's smart grid augmented reality project.  It features an interactive solar farm or a wind farm which magically appear out of symbol printed on a piece of paper.  I think this would make a great kick off activity for any Earth Day lesson or alternative energy activity.  The second example I chose featured a friendly little green monster that waves and looks around.

What you need to try this out:

• A web cam
• A printer
• A web browser with Adobe Flash