Working with augmented reality and Google Glass to create innovative, digital products for both the BHS Fashion and Art Show was amazing. It gave the end user an exciting, interactive experience. And the finished projects were even better than I had hoped.

Combining the physical and digital worlds

For the Art Show, I worked with an app called Aurusma. It is an augmented reality app that allows one to interact with any real life object they want. Collaborating with Mrs. Scheffer, we came up with an idea to bring this year’s Art Show to life. We decided to use Aurasma to allow students whose work was featured in the art show to create video messages. The integration of augmented reality gave viewers of the exhibits the opportunity to learn more about the creator of the work and the artistic techniques that were used. Anyone with the Aurasma app that was following the BHS Art Show account was able to scan pieces of artwork that were labeled with a sticker of the Aurasma logo, and right then and there, like magic, a video of the artist explaining their art would just pop up right on the screen. We collaborated with Mrs. Chang, Mr. Ratkevich, and Mrs. Mistler’s art classes and they completed this project with ease. Here is an example of how to make an Aurasma.

Seeing the runway through Glass

For the Fashion Show, we worked with Google Glass. Google Glass is a hands free, wearable computer with an optical head-mounted display, created by Google. Burlington High School was fortunate enough to get a pair and I’m more than proud to say that my teacher, Mrs. Scheffer has been using them both effectively and educationally. She came up with this amazing idea to incorporate Google Glass with the Fashion Show. She thought it would be cool to see the models’ perspective, and boy was she right! A few days before the show, the models received training on how to use Glass and practiced walking down the runway wearing them. On the actual night of the show, I was running around backstage helping each of the models and made sure that Glass transitioned smoothly from one model to the next. Each model knew what she was doing and after the fashion show, the only thing I had left to do was to transfer the videos from Glass to my computer. On Glass, there is an option to share the videos with your Google Drive, so I shared it to my teacher’s drive. The next day, on Friday, I had all the videos on the computer and was ready to make this video (which has had 183 views by the way!). The process was a little long, but worth it because the final project was a success. To make and edit my movies/videos, I used iMovie on the MAC. And after 3 hours of staying after school, alone in the Help Desk room, on a Friday, it was finally done. Mrs. Scheffer saw it, approved it, loved it, and uploaded it on YouTube right after. I did not come into this project knowing how to do everything. However, I taught myself many of the things that I had to use/create. I learned how to edit movies, how to share things through Google Glass, and also, how to handle the stress of working behind the scenes of a school-wide event. Mrs. Scheffer even told me that I should consider going into event planning as a possible career path. We’ll see…

Here is my finished project: