NZ Interface Magazine | New technology brings children's drawings alive

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New technology brings children's drawings alive

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Technology recently developed at the University of Canterbury’s Human Interface Technology Laboratory New Zealand (HIT Lab NZ) allows coloured-in pictures to come alive in 3D, and could be a new tool to help improve children’s reading skills.

Dr Adrian Clark has designed colAR, an augmented reality computer program that turns children’s coloured-in pictures into 3D animations, allowing the users to see a real-life image of their own artwork.

The project recently received a funding boost after being named one of three Tech Jumpstart competition winners by UC's Research & Innovation unit.

Dr Clark said the concept worked like a virtual pop-up book and had the potential to not only entertain children, but also improve their reading skills.

“This is an on-going project that’s part of our research into how education can be improved by using augmented reality. We are very interested in combining education and technology,” Dr Clark said.

“We have done numerous studies on the effect of adding technology like this to a book and it does improve recall of information in the children who use it because it’s so engaging, and decreases the reading comprehension gap between high and low level readers so children who struggled with reading retain the information that is being portrayed.”

The program has been designed using two pictures of a Kiwi and a yellow-eyed penguin from a book about native birds being used in some schools, Amazing Animals of New Zealand.

Source: Scoop

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