Augmented Reality tools and techniques for developing interactive materials for mobile-learning

Combining mobile technologies with Augmented Reality (AR) has recently enabled the ubiquity of AR technologies in our everyday life. Many schools are implementing 1:1 iPad or Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) programs and in this way smartphones and tablets are being increasingly used by students to improve learning. There are many augmented reality (AR) applications available that can be used to create educational contents for these mobile devices. This paper surveys the most popular augmented reality applications and we select AR eco-systems to be used in daily teaching activities which are user friendly, do not require programming skills and are free. Different augmented reality technologies are explored in this paper to create teaching activities with animations, 3D models and other information to be shown on top of interactive documents. It is presented the creation of a novel augmented reality book that was developed with teachers and students. Several examples are also presented that are used in educational activities, from kindergarten to elementary and secondary schools, to improve reading, comprehension and learning of music. It is also presented the application of augmented reality to help students of the first year of mechanical engineering to better understand the drawing of orthographic views. These examples illustrate several approaches that were presented to students of Science Education at the Algarve University that will be future teachers. Key–Words: e-learning, m-learning, augmented reality.