Augmenting a Cereal Box

Someone posted a picture of this Kellogg's cereal box, with the concept of augmenting reality. It has me thinking about technology, reality, augmenting and objects that come to life. It promises that students can use their smart phones to listen to music and decode the notes. It's augmenting reality on an ordinary cereal box. It's adding a technology layer to something mundane. Download the app and "watch the box come to life." It sounds really cool. I love the added layer to something as dull as a cereal box. Magic. When I was a kid, we collected rubber bands from the newspaper each day. We snipped them to different sizes and tied them through the cardboard to make a guitar. I'm not sure how it sounded. I'm pretty sure it annoyed our parents, though we never knew. Add some tupperware containers and wooden spatulas and we had a band. It was augmented reality. The box came to life. Magic. We're collecting paper towel and toilet paper rolls right now. Over the break, we're going to tape them to the glass door and drop a rubber ball to see the pathways. Maybe we'll abandon that and make our own roller coaster. Magic. No downloading needed. The most cutting edge tech we'll use is a sharp pair of scissors - the good kind, the dangerous Fisker ones that they don't get to use at school. I could be wrong, but the discarded remains of our commercial packaging might just come to life. Magic. I get excited about high tech augmented reality, but I also love the low tech kind that can compliment it as well.