Last month Greg Kulowiec introduced me to the augmented reality app Aurasma Lite. On Monday I showed the app to a couple of elementary school teachers and they just loved it.

Aurasma Lite is a free app for iPads, iPhones, and most Android devices (it doesn’t work on my Nexus 7, yet). Using Aurasma Lite you can create augmented reality layers, Aurasma calls them “auras,” that pop-up when you scan objects with your phone or tablet. In the demonstration that I gave on Monday I attached to a storybook cover an aura of a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. But I could have attached an aura of other pictures and videos to the storybook.

Aurasma has more than 100 demonstration and tutorial videos on YouTube. I’ve included the first one below.

Applications for Education
To me, apps like Aurasma Lite represent what could be the future of how students interact with books and other physical media. In the near future we could have augmented reality layers attached to many types of physical objects. In that case scanning those objects with an augmented reality app could make a new dimension of information available to students.