Learning Apps & Tools | News
Kindergarten Augmented Reality Tool Gets Performance Boost
Logical Choice Technologies has released an update to Letters Alive, an augmented reality education app for kindergarten and preschool.
Letters Alive is a reading curriculum for preschool and kindergarten (and grades 1 through 5 for remediation and ESL) that consists of augmented reality-infused animal cards, augmented reality-infused word cards, software, teacher resources, and student activity sheets.
Augmented reality refers to technologies that add layers of video, images, text, and audio on top of images captured through a digital video camera. In Letters Alive, that augmented reality is delivered in concert with specially coded cards similar to flash cards that work with a document camera, audio system, and projector to create an interactive learning experience for students.
When the animal cards are combined with a computer, they display an animated multidimensional animal on screen that moves, makes sounds, and answers questions. Those animal cards also have the ability to interact with the word cards, and multiple word cards can be combined to create sentences and ask questions of the animated characters on the screen, which those characters can then answer. Buttons printed on the animal cards are used to switch between animal and letter modes, state the name of the animal, create animal noises, or state the phonics associated with the first letter of the animal's name.
The new version, Letters Alive 2.0, includes "significant" improvements to performance, including loading times, according to Logical Choice.
Other improvements and new features include:
- Enhancements to navigation when selecting devices;
- Faster recognition of word cards;
- New keyboard shortcuts; and
- Assessments.
Letters Alive also includes teacher resources, such as video tutorials, a quick start teachers guide, a reference guide for units, a curriculum map, and a school year's worth lesson plans geared towards word recognition, sentence building, phonemic awareness, phonological awareness, writing, and vocabulary.
The lesson plans align with Common Core State Standards. Student activity sheets focus on story comprehension, coloring, handwriting, sight words, letter sounds, and word families.
Letters Alive 2.0 is available now. It requires a computer in the classroom; a USB-based document camera; an audio system; and a projector or interactive whiteboard. Additional details and upgrade information can be found on Logical Choice's site.