Practicum-Scott Zinovoy

What is Aris? That is the question I asked myself upon looking at the list that said what I would be doing for the project. I immediately jumped onto the internet in search of answers, and found some but not as much as I probably would have had I been given a topic like Yelp or FourSquare. This was not necessarily a bad thing, though. It appeared I would be dealing with something that was still in development-still gaining ground. The ARIS website looks like this:


I know the second photo is fairly small, but it essentially says that ARIS is a game where users can create and play GPS/QR Coded games. This still did not mean much to me, but I took from the inclusion of GPS that this had something to do with location. I watched the demo video on the website and learned that ARIS in its simplest form is a tool for experiencing a place on an iPhone or iPod Touch in a way that only a device like that could provide. Simply by walking around in a location that has a game made for it, one can find out the history of that location, watch video of famous occurrences in that location, and listen to scholars explain the significance of where he or she is standing. Now it seems like a cool idea, but I have a hard time seeing its practical usage. I will have to delve much deeper into ARIS to discover more.