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Press Release
First ever Augmented Reality education resources to be accredited officially by STEM.org
Dublin, Ireland (July 4, 2018) – CleverBooks AR for Education combines two of today’s most important trends in education: Immersive technologies, like Augmented Reality, and a focus on STEM subjects. Now, the innovative, curriculum-based AR resources for everyone have received their official STEM approval.
Critical thinking and creativity are two of the skills the current student generation lacks, which leads to an absence of their combination: Creative problem solving. The outcome? The internet now serves as the main tool for kids to solve problems, with a blog post or YouTube tutorial available on literally everything. This leaves our generation to worry whether the kids will be able to solve global problems of the future, such as global warming.
Technology
Although kids use technology all day long, there simply is a lack of educative digital content that provides them with “quality” screen time and has academic relevance. Also, many teachers lack the required resources to use today’s more complex technologies, which results in a generation gap between teachers and their students, as students become increasingly bored by their teachers’ methods.
Individual research shows that only one technology can solve this problem: Augmented Reality. AR motivates kids to experience the connections between pieces of information, as real-life situations are augmented by digital content. We explored AR to learn, so it is best for kids to start at the most explorative stage: Primary age. This has been proven to result in increased engagement, excitement and curiosity about school subjects.
Critical Skills
Beside creativity and critical thinking, AR strengthens a range of other skills, as this recent Inc Magazine article points out. The only company globally that uses AR to solve the problem on the large scale is CleverBooks, who are now setting the standards in the adoption of AR in primary education. The use of such AR products increases of up to 100% in knowledge retention, and up to 33% in test scores, while supporting all learning styles.
With CleverBooks, kids explore geometrical shapes in 3D. The gap between 3D geometry and 2D blackboards is one that educators struggled to overcome for years, even more so in Special Needs Education. In Geography classes, students can then travel the world in seconds with their devices and learn about the important features of our continents such as plants and animals through seeing, hearing and interacting.
Moreover, an AR Geography World Map serves as an innovative approach to the classic learning resource for classrooms and decoration for children’s rooms.
Workplace Demands
“The demand for skilled workers in STEM is closely linked to global competitiveness”, as stated by Andrew B. Raupp, Founder and Executive Director of STEM.org. In this field, Augmented Reality is only one of the important trends; a comprehensive overview of 7 topics to catch up on in case you missed them is available here. The article lists what today’s educators cannot miss, if they are not to fall behind and teach children inappropriately regarding their 21st century learning demands.
In the next months, CleverBooks plans to strongly expand their existing software, making it easier for educators to adapt to the needs of individual students on the large scale. Just recently, CleverBooks received the iStudy Award 2018 in “Educational Services in Augmented Reality – UK”. The most recent new initiative for that is a research cooperation with University College Dublin (UCD) from September as part of the Horizon 2020 program.
About CleverBooks AR for Education
CleverBooks is a Dublin-based powerhouse advancing education systems around the world to match the requirements of the digital age and set the standards in the use of Augmented Reality in education. Their focus on an established core curriculum and traditional teaching aids powered by AR makes CleverBooks’ solutions effective and adoptable for every school around the globe.
CleverBooks AR resources are available at a range of major global distributors and at cleverbooks.eu. To receive updates on CleverBooks’ progress, products, free resources and special discounts, click here.
About STEM.org
STEM.org’s mission is to make quality STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education accessible to all. For more than 15 years, STEM.org has been at the forefront of the global, Pre-K – 12th grade STEM education movement. Through an extensive collaborative effort, STEM.org has worked closely with pedagogical researchers, a community of teachers, administrators, and schools. Stem.org established a respected set of benchmarks. The resources and proven best-practices of this community. These resorces have led to the world’s first and most recognized STEM credentialing framework:
- STEM Accreditation™ for Programs
- STEM Certification™ for People
- STEM Approved™ for Products.