Augmented reality fully interactive Christmas story resource review by Becky Lawrence

Augmented reality fully interactive Christmas story resource review by Becky Lawrence, Youth and Kids worker St Mark’s MK

If you’ve not yet come across Missional Generation, you need to check their stuff out.  They are innovative resource specialists and their offering contains Virtual Reality (VR) Christian resources as well as Augmented Reality (AR) ones too.  If you’ve not come across VR or AR before, VR is an all emcompassing virtual reality world (filmed or a digital creation) that you can ‘visit’, interact with and view from a first person perspective usually through a VR headset using a compatible smartphone as the screen and a special holder that mounts to your head or other dedicated hardware.   AR are special 2d printed images that come to life and animate when interacted with using your phone. It allows you to interact with objects, environments or watch characters interact on the table or in life- size around you. AR has the power to inform in a deeper way than conversation and just reading texts.

These resources are great for children and young people to engage with especially as it uses technology they know and understand often much more than we do.  Missional Generation also gives us the chance to use this AR and VR technology in christian resources that perhaps we don’t have the experience, know how or expertise to create ourselves from scratch.

Missional Generation have created an AR resource for the lead up to Christmas (advent) that helps children and young people explore and learn more about the christmas story of Jesus coming to earth as a baby.  There are 6 AR games accessible via an app, all themed around a gingerbread house, as the young people play each of the 6 games a video is unlocked which shows a bit more of the christmas story.   As part of the pack comes a devotional book which contains excerpts from the gospels telling the Christmas story, games and other insights, a great thing about it is the booklet was written for young people by a young person called Michaela.

Young people work their way through the booklet, play their way through the AR games on the app and also accompanying this Augmented Reality resource is a cardboard ‘build it yourself’ gingerbread house.  People of all ages can colour in, cut out and assemble the pieces to build their own gingerbread scene and house.  Each card makes up either the side, roof or front and back of the house. There are also trees, candy canes and marshmallows to colour in. Follow the instructions on each of the cards to know where to cut, where to glue and how to assemble your house.