Imagine you turn on a news podcast unpacking a complicated geopolitical story. You’re making dinner as you listen but glance up at a once-blank wall now covered with a graphical map. You hear the perspective of each interest group as you select various regions. Icons document trade and diplomatic relationships as you hear about them. You hardly register the light pressure of earphones and simple glasses, but it’s clear you’re not simply listening to a laptop.
Podcasting is an excellent tool for individual knowledge-construction and knowledge-sharing within a community of learners (this was the focus of my A1 project earlier this year). As I’ve learned more about 5G networks and data visualization using augmented reality, I realized the strengths of podcasting and AR are highly complementary. Together, they could evolve oral storytelling/knowledge-sharing as dramatically as telephones and radios did in the past.
Join me in this fantasy by listening to my podcast OER entitled, Who’s ready for the AR-Podcast?
Podcast Script
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I’m Lyndsay Barrett, a journalist and educator, fascinated by the way communities share knowledge. This standalone podcast episode presents what I see as an exciting overlap of two educational technology tools: podcasting and augmented reality. Podcasting will – eventually – never be the same.
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I was recently listening to the VR/AR Association’s podcast, Everything VR and AR, hosted by Tyler Gates and Sophia Moshasha. Their March 4, 2021 episode detailed fascinating ways AR is helping people visualize information.
They interviewed Jason Marsh, founder and CEO of Flow Immersive, which works with clients to present complicated data in meaningful ways through AR.
In the episode, Marsh explained how the brain maintains a model a person’s environment. It stores information about what you’ve seen even when you’re not looking at it. As you turn your head, your brain analyzes and stores and re-analyzes what you see.
That added processing in the brain creates new opportunities for knowledge construction and inspiration for unexpected connections and new perspectives.
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In the Everything VR and AR podcast, Marsh describes a “text sculpture” Flow Immersive made out of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The sculpture presents the entire text in 3-dimensional space. A person navigating the sculpture can seemingly fly through lines, scenes and acts, presenting all of that information in way different from a book or a play – it’s kind of a union of both. Marsh says an actor who explored the piece, who knew Hamlet inside and out, said that is what it looked like in their brain on stage, as they acted out the play.
Unintentionally, Flow Immersive, took the actor’s specialized construction of knowledge and made it visible to other people. Now that is a fascinating way to learn.
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Podcasting shares AR’s knowledge construction strength, and this is why I think the two are destined to be intertwined.
Podcasting is essentially oral storytelling and our brains are wired for oral storytelling.
Audio gives the brain a lot to work with. There’s language to interpret and emotional cues to pick up on. There’s space for the imagination to work its magic. The brain processes information obtained by listening the same way it does with information obtained by reading, which Deniz et al demonstrated in a 2019 study.
Video, on the other hand, takes over a lot of that valuable creative space. While people tend to feel more engaged by video they process the information more passively than they do reading or listening, which was found by Deniz et al (2019) and Richardson et al (2020). It’s more work to process audio-only information, but we get a lot out of that work. Just like we get a lot out of processing complicated data presented by AR, as Jason Marsh pointed out. We can do more with it.
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If knowledge construction is the first strength podcasting and AR share. The next is collaboration. The value of speech in collaboration and knowledge building is obvious.
AR has a similar value because it overlays meaning on an environment that learners, teachers, storytellers, listeners, can all see together.
Leinonen et al explored this using the phrase “mirror worlds” in a study of children’s play in an AR-enhanced sandbox published in 2021.
Both Leinonen et al and Yilmaz and Goktas (2017) have found AR improves individual and collaborative storytelling in children, both in the quality and duration of the stories told. Lukosch et al (2015) found AR impactful in collaborations such as workplace training, crime scene investigation, and design tasks. The same study found a lack of connection between people when one was able to see AR data and another was not. This supports the idea that sharing the same space, either virtual, real, or both, is significant to knowledge sharing and collaboration.
So an exciting opportunity exists here for AR to embed podcasts more deeply in a listener’s context.
It can take the podcaster’s story world, fictional or real, and overlay it on the listener’s environment, wherever they are. The listener can then construct knowledge and potentially interact with the information.
The AR-Podcast would take advantage of the brain’s knowledge construction power without taking it over. It would enhance the affordances of mobile technology to optimize context-aware and learner-centred learning experiences. The storyteller and the listener would share a more collaborative knowledge-building space then they do with audio-only podcasts right now.
I do see a risk, in both education and entertainment, in AR-podcasts catering to the appeal of having meaning constructed for us, more similar to video. But that won’t always be case. And richer learning experiences will come from balanced AR-podcasts that connect to a listener’s context, not take it over.
I’m going to leave you with one last example. Take a look out your window.
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Imagine what the view was like 100 years ago?
What about 10 years ago?
How could AR enhance your imagined view without taking it over?
It’s in that space that augmented reality has the potential to transform podcasting.
Thanks for listening.
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References
Deniz, F., Nunez-Elizalde, A., Huth, A., & Gallant, J. (2019) The representation of semantic information across human cerebral cortex during listening versus reading is invariant to stimulus modality. The Journal of Neuroscience, 39(39), 7722-7736. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0675-19.2019
Gates, T. & Moshasha, S. (Host). (2021, March 04) Everything VR and AR [Audio podcast] VR/AR Association. https://www.thevrara.com/podcast
Leinonen, T., Brinck, J., Vartiainen, H., & Sawhney, N. (2021) Augmented reality sandboxes: Children’s play and storytelling with mirror worlds. Digital Creativity, 32(1), p. 38-55. https://doi.org/10.1080/14626268.2020.1868535
Lukosch, S., Billinghurst, M., Alem, L., & Kiyokawa, K. (2015). Collaboration in augmented reality. Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 24, p. 515-525. DOI 10.1007/s10606-015-9239-0
Richardson, D., Griffin, N., Zaki, L., Stephenson, A., Yan, J., Curry, T., Noble, R., Hogan, J., Skipper, J., & Devlin, J. (2020). Engagement in video and auido narratives: Contrasting self-report and physiological measures. Scientific Reports, 10, 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-68253
Yilmaz, R. M. & Goktas, Y. (2017). Using augmented reality technology in storytelling activities: Examining elementary students’ narrative skill and creativity. Virtual Reality, 21, p. 75-89. DOI 10.1007/s10055-016-0300-1
About Me
Lyndsay Barrett has worked in communications and journalism for over 10 years. Fascinated with the way people learn and communities share knowledge, Lyndsay decided in 2015 to pursue a certificate in Early Childhood Education from Lethbridge College and subsequently managed programs for children and their families in Saskatchewan and British Columbia. Her eclectic career has taken her all over Canada, including Yellowknife, Yorkton, and Vancouver, providing insight into the varied and dramatic differences between provinces, territories, and communities.
Hey there Lyndsay,
This was so much fun. I have recently discovered the crazy big world of podcasts and founds yours stimulating, engaging, factual, and easy to follow along. The connections you draw between augmented reality and podcasts were well supported, with ample evidence for how they may press into the future. The idea augmented reality can steam into different senses other than vision was a brilliant topic to delve into. I am eager to check out similar podcasts following the future of augmented reality in podcasts. If you have any to share other than those covered in the podcast, I would be grateful for the lead.
So glad to hear you’ve shared my interest, Anton! And thank you for the compliments on my podcast. I had such a great time making it and hope to do more in the future.
It’s a really new and growing area of study. I haven’t found a lot of others that I enjoyed listening to nearly as much because it is all quite new. That said, you may be interested in this study I came across for another project. The researcher conducted a qualitative study of higher education’s predictions on the future of HE post-COVID. She played podcast episodes made during the spring of 2020 as the pandemic was taking shape, to spark the interviewee’s imagination. It’s a really interesting read and raised a lot of questions for me about the imagination-stoking power of audio/spoken word and the meaningful ideas that emerge from that experience.
Eringfeld, S. (2021). Higher education and its post-coronial future: Utopian hopes and dystopian fears at Cambridge University during Covid-19. Studies in Higher Education, 46(1), p. 146-157. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2020.1859681
I’ve started following this topic on LinkedIn and, while it’s not scholarly, it does often offer me a jumping-off point. I’d love to connect and share discoveries: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lyndsay-barrett-she-her-047a4630/?originalSubdomain=ca
Hi Lyndsay!
I really enjoyed your AR Podcast project. This idea really appeals to me for a couple of reasons. One, I’m not a very good listener, and my mind tends to wander unless I’m somehow encouraged to actively listen. Your AR idea fits right in for me: having the option to engage AR components in a podcast would go a long way to focusing my listening. Plus it could be very helpful, when a podcast is explaining a complicated concept, to have AR to help build understanding.
The second reason I love this idea is that I can see great possibilities for elementary school students. At this stage, podcasts are generally aimed at teens and/or adults, as passive listening is not a strong trait of many children! But the addition of AR brings in a hook for the attention of these children. Imagine a podcast presenter – let’s say a geologist – appearing in AR form with their podcast, to a group of students who are out on a field trip studying rocks and minerals. This geologist could show them, as well as telling them what characteristics to look for in the landforms that they are visiting. By seeing that expert, children will be much more engaged by the AR presentation than they would by words alone. This kind of experience could be used in all curriculum areas, to “bring in” experts with engaging presentations. My years of teaching elementary students have shown me how much more attention they give a visiting expert, than the teacher they see every day!
I also love the “campfire story” idea mentioned by others here, for sharing traditional stories. We could have a group of children on the land, being told a story by an AR Indigenous Elder, complete with AR images to help bring the story to life. This could be a much more memorable kind of experience than listening alone.
So, I’m curious what you think about bringing AR podcasts to children. Assuming this idea does become a reality, which I believe it can, will there be enough appeal for people to want to make these kind of podcasts for elementary students? Do you think people can learn the skills needed to build an AR podcast easily enough for it to be feasible?
Wendy, thanks for these insightful examples and questions! I hadn’t considered the AR-Podcast for classroom learning but I can see it would definitely work there too.
In this case, I think organizations such as cultural groups, universities, museums, or any kind of education outreach would be best positioned to create AR-Podcasts. Teachers could then opt to use them with their class. I don’t know that it would be feasible for teachers or schools to create them themselves (though podcasts are definitely doable!), certainly not in the beginning. In this context, the AR-Podcast would likely be a unit or program teachers could bring into their practice.
Hi Lindsay. I loved listening to your podcast. As a fairly new podcast listener, I’m drawn to this medium possibly because it brings back the nostalgia of just listening to stories on the radio, and also because I can multi-task or go for a walk and just enjoy. You have hit upon a great idea with so many possibilities to consider when you combine AR with podcasting. One concern is that with the AR technology added to the listening component, the listener my not have the freedom to construct their own images from the words, but this could also be an advantage. Consider an historical or ecological tour, where the narrator is trying to impart complex ideas or imagery. An AR overlay to the tour environment could provide the needed additions to bring the narrator’s words to life and improve understanding. In a lesson about nutrient cycles in the environment, a student could listen to the podcast while the AR pointed out how the various parts of the cycle are connected.
When you were discussing how the brain forms images while listening similar to what happens when reading, it brought to mind why I don’t usually like seeing the movie versions of my favourite books – I already have such vivid images in my mind about the characters and settings that someone else’s vision is often a disappointment. The exception for me is the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I remember going to the first LOTR movie and being mesmerized that what I was seeing on screen was so close to what I’d imagined when reading the book.
You’ve hit on such an important point here, Lori!
As I’ve mentioned in some of the other comments here, AR-Podcasts could go either way; a subtle enhancement of audio or a hijack of creative mental space. As you mention, AR could improve understand and nudge the brain into a new direction and that will be a really exciting realm to explore!
I do think if AR goes the hijacking route then people will simply pick up a book or turn on a podcast. Sometimes a person just wants that kind of mental engagement, just like sometimes you want to read and not watch the movie!
Great examples! Thanks for sharing.
Hey Lyndsay! This is a great topic and one that I do believe will be developed soon.
As an individual with a very vivid imagination, I must agree the brain does maintain a model of a person’s environment. As I listen to podcasts, I actively create my own mental video, whether in my environment or with closed eyes, to apply what it is I am hearing.
I’m curious to know if this type of podcast will eventually replace childhood books. Students could then physically maneuver the scene to see the various details as the stories are read.
My biggest concern with this new advancement is the development of imagination. If we are always given something to look at when we are listening, will the brain continue to develop the neurons that fire when we use our imagination to build our own understanding? Or will our understanding be stronger because we have an embedded image to associate it with?
Great questions, Elixa!
I have noticed we ask, “Will it replace ____” with new technologies a lot in the course, and it’s a revealing question to ask! In this case, I think that question reveals that nothing will replace the written or spoken word. Even if AR is incorporated into podcasting or books, our need for written and spoken language to communicate and make sense of information will always be around. I realize I probably sound like someone predicting cars are a fad and horse-drawn carriages are forever, but since technology that constructs information for us (like video) hasn’t taken over yet I don’t see it (even AR) taking over in the future. It might shape the way we access written or spoken language (like audiobooks, e-readers, or iPods/podcasts) but it won’t replace the form of communication itself. At least, I haven’t come across a compelling argument as to why new tech on the horizon would now when others haven’t.
Because of that, I think our concerns about imagination or imaginative space will continue to be what they are now. The advice will continue to be to seek out imagination-sparking learning moments that allow your brain to construct meaning, and that pre-constructed, easily consumed media will continue to be attractive and entertaining in a different way.
Great insights! Thanks for posting!
Hi Lyndsay,
First off, great work on your project. I really enjoyed the format, pace, and style of your podcast. As an avid podcast listener, I think this is an intriguing speculation and something that I will look out for in an every changing and evolving media-driven world.
My one question that I have is whether or not adding AR functionality to podcasts would take away from what makes podcasts such a unique media experience. When I am listening to podcasts, what I appreciate the most is the ability to passively listen to someone speak and story tell. I find that my mind is engaged in a different way when I listen to podcasts, leaning on visualization and imagination to construct visual meaning while solely focusing on just listening. There is something magical about this experience, and I do not know whether or not this change would benefit the podcasting world. In a society where we are constantly bombarded by visuals, podcasting is an escape back to traditional oral storytelling that requires us to re-learn what it means to actually listen and listen to learn. I fear that if this technology ever came to fruition that it would take over the podcasting world solely because of the desires and temptations of an overly visual society. What are your thoughts on this, and how this addition to the podcasting world would shape the culture of podcasting?
Hi Kelvin,
I’m glad you enjoyed the podcast and really glad you raised these questions! They’ve been driving my explorations on the topic and the whole thing was initially inspired by hearing the term “Video Podcast” and cringing.
I don’t think we will always consume AR with our podcasts even if it’s always available. That’s because of what you mention above, that imaginative, knowledge-constructing place in our brains wants to be exercised! I do think successful podcasts will likely offer optional AR, but still be accessible sound-only., I think the AR-podcast will be most useful for sharing complicated information, such as big data visualization, where our brains do need a little help (but you’re the A2 expert on that!). I am also really interested in Toby Beck’s suggestion below, that listeners could interact with the AR information and see each other’s interactions. That really expands the oral storytelling campfire beyond its current boundaries! Listeners could build on each others’ ideas and observations as well as the podcaster’s.
You’re right to mention the “desires and temptations of an overly visual society” could push AR to take over podcasting, but, at the same time, the same was said about video and it hasn’t happened. I think people look for different things in accessing those media: information with pre-constructed meaning and information with meaning they can construct themselves. Richardson et al. (2020), which is listed in my references above, found people report a higher level of engagement with video but showed a stronger physiological reponse to audio, and suspected, “This may be because listening to a story, rather than watching a video, is a more active process of co‑creation, and that this imaginative process in the listener’s mind is detectable on the skin at their wrist” (p. 1).
I think, without a doubt, some AR-Podcast material will be flashy and leave no room for construction. But I also think some could go another direction and support the brain in constructing knowledge without taking it over. It’ll be up to the producers to decide what type of experience they’d like to create. I think the debate about AR-Podcast quality will be similar to our conversations now about how fast/flashy/loud some movies are versus others.
Thanks for the great questions! Let me know if your vision for podcasting is heading in another direction. I’d love to hear it!
Thank you for your detailed response Lyndsay. I like the idea you mentioned from Toby about “expanding the oral storeytelling campfire beyond its current boundaries.”
I do believe that your speculation is definitely a plausible scenerio for the future of podcasting. I guess when it comes to the world of podcasts, which is near and dear to my being, my stance would be of a traditionalist that doesn’t necessarily want change. Like with so many things that we love and cherish, the fear of change is real. Even the sheer popularity of podcasts nowadays is enough to make me worry about its future, and that innovation will continue to push the boundaries of the podcasting world and change it beyond any recognition. I just want to hold onto the qualities of podcasting that distringuished it from other forms of media.
Hi Lindsay,
I enjoyed your podcast. I can totally picture a good chunk of my students taking a liking to your future technology prediction.
I couldn’t agree more with the technology being appropriate when our brain needs a little more help. Someone just told me how there will be more business for trades people and skilled laborers due to the high amount of home renos going wrong during covid. If there was a podcast on this topic, I know my students would enjoy it. However, I don’t think they would picture all of it due to their lack of experience. So I am pretty sure they would love it if it was supported with visuals of the poorly done renos. At least this was what can to my mind.
As mentioned by others, there is also a place where we want our imagination to paint the picture, and nothing else. Although not a podcast, I love listening to (as do many people) The Vinyl Cafe that was hosted by the late Stewart Mclean on CBC radio. I have an image in my mind of all those characters and I would be crushed to have it altered in any way from AR.
Really enjoyed your podcast. Great work
Great examples, Michael!
I too am a Vinyl Cafe fan, so I started thinking about how AR might be used with Mclean’s stories. I came up with two ideas. The first is simply an AR representation of the whole library of stories. Prepaps you could explore them chronologically, by who was the central character, or where the story was located (I definitely seek out the Second Narrows stories, myself!). The second option would be to illustrate some aspects of the story. For example, in Dave Cooks the Turkey, the AR could be a simple map of Toronto. We could see Dave and Morely and the kids as dots moving around town on Christmas day, to the hotel, to the food bank, etc. Maybe his neighbour would pop up on the map when Dave sees him at the hotel and we’d enjoy the dramatic irony of watching him move closer to Dave’s home in the end, unbeknownst to Dave. The AR wouldn’t replace the mental images we have of each scene but it would add another layer of humour and meaning. Doing this artfully would be a real skill for producers!
I like the format and idea creating your own podcast to embody the future of mobile learning regarding AR podcasts. Your tone and rhythm in your podcast is fantastic, you sound like a professional podcaster. I assume from your introduction that you are using AR glasses that connect to your device to see AR content that goes with the podcast? If so, do you need a wall/background to see the image projected against it? If so, you would have limited mobility. What if you are outside and don’t have a surface to project against?
Why have AR glasses? Why not have the AR content right on the screen of your mobile device when you are out and about and don’t have a wall to project to? And then when you are in the kitchen, could your phone project AR onto the wall? Holo phones may soon exist. Here is a past A3 project. https://silverholox30.weebly.com/ Also, there is this report from BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45009458
I was a bit confused about the second podcast part of ed tech-nical. Is it part of your project? It didn’t seem like it. Maybe a little intro at the start to put it into context?
I like how you reviewed a podcast that focussed on how the brain creates a model to visualize concepts/information. I also like that you mention some of the affordances of mobility with a context aware tool.
An AR podcast would fit nicely into the mobile affordance of portability if the AR functionality was embedded in the phone. I feel like the need for an external device such as glasses would detract. However, I do see possibility with regards to micro-learning, where you naturally can have bite-sized episodes with bite-sized AR chunks. As you mention, an AR podcast can also be context aware, tailoring content based on your location in the world. It could also be individualized in various ways. It would have some social interaction, in that you are listening to someones podcast. I wonder if there could be an element of seeing others posts who are listening to the AR podcast in real time? Or could you see a map of where other people in the world are who are listening to the podcast in real time or who have listened in the past?
I can see how AR podcasts will be a useful tool for people to learn about various topics in the future!
Hi Toby,
I’m glad you liked the podcast! Honestly, anchor.fm makes podcasting really easy. I definitely recommend it if you’re ever interested in putting one together.
Also thanks for your insight! I was really interested to read that you thought glasses would detract from the experience and a mobile phone would be less intrusive. I think the opposite! In actuality, I wasn’t really concerned with the specific tech we’d use to engage with an AR-Podcast for this project. I don’t really think it matters. My point was more that AR will “level up” oral storytelling into its next generation, like telephone and radio did in the past, in whatever way we are able to access it. It might take shape through glasses, might be through a screen, or it might be through something like Mark Pepe’s Holobar A3 -> https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec523/2021/04/04/a3-holobar-the-next-step-in-ar/
However we access the AR-podcast, it will build on the mobile, open and collaborative education experience currently afforded by podcasting.
That said, the device converstaion is a good one. I know I rarely look at my phone when listening to podcasts. I find part of podcasting’s appeal is screen-free engagement, giving my eyes a break and letting me be more present in my environment. I think glasses and body-movement sensors would allow a person to be out living – walking, hiking, exercising, cooking, building with Legos, talking with fellow watchers/listeners – and still be sharing the collaborative space. I wouldn’t want AR to take away from that, so I envisioned glasses instead of a hand-held smartphone. Though, maybe a holograph projected from a mobile device would be the best iteration? It’s interesting to consider!
Your suggestion about the potential collaboration between people worldwide is also really exciting. Early in my A1 I realized something:
1. I listened to a podcast I liked and mimicked what I considered to be its strengths in format (Word Up in my A1 and 99% Invisible in my A2)
2. I then created something inspired by what they created (my podcast)
3. I published my artifact, potentially inspiring new creations (new podcasts or something entirely different)
That sequence is an example of humanity building on its own ideas through oral storytelling/teaching. AR could tighten up that loop, allowing listeners/learners to build on each other’s ideas more rapidly and intentionally. As is, neither Word Up or 99% Invisible or Everything VR and AR or any of their listeners are likely to know I built something inspired by their ideas. Your suggestion would change that.
You’re right about enjoying a break from screens by listening to a podcast!
Great response Lyndsay! Great ideas and I can see that you have a keen understanding of how AR podcasts can make a difference in people’s lives!
I’m so ready for an AR Podcast! Great project!
Thanks, Michael! I do hope it takes shape in the not too distant future. Once 5G networks are up and running I think this kind of medium won’t be far behind.