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Intro
Are you a tech-savvy educator and would like to advocate for augmented reality in your institution? Or perhaps you distrust technology in education and you are looking for a valid argument that could justify its usage?
Here are a few academic, societal/economical, and functional reasons why AR plays an important role in the classroom:
1 The need for students to develop technological skills to thrive both in the workplace as well as in life is what Neil Selwyn, author of Education and technology: key issues and debates, calls ‘external imperatives’.
Trends
Technological trends and their future predictions are also an external imperative.
The chart below is pretty much self-explanatory and shows the projected growth of four major technologies. AR is one of them.
In addition, widespread mobile phone usage is an external imperative that specifically relates to AR.
The graph below shows the increase in mobile cellular subscriptions (World Bank).
2 As well as being functional and relevant, the combination of mobile phones and AR offers some pedagogical advantages. These are what Neil Selwyn calls ‘internal imperatives’.
For example, AR mobile apps offer ubiquity without compromising content quality.
Let’s imagine your class was going on a school trip to the Netherlands where numerous wind turbines can be found. Instead of accessing a mobile app that shows them photos of the turbines before and/or after the trip, the students would be able to visualise the workings of eolic energy through AR, which would offer a more detailed outline of the structure of the turbines.
3 This is what I call the ‘AR paradox’. In contrast to what has been previously mentioned, AR does not just facilitate ubiquity. In fact, AR can be integrated with pedagogies such as place-based learning .
More specifically, the content of location-based AR apps is tied to a specific geographical area. Students can use their mobile phone to gather information in form of data or multimedia content about specific elements of a certain place.
Place-based education aims at involving students in problem solving activities through real world experiences that take place in their own community. Hence the reason why location-based AR provides a valuable scaffolding prompt that can facilitate such activities.
Place based learning
4 AR also empowers students to become content creators rather than just consumers. For example, tools such as CoSpaces and MetaVerse enable students to develop their own AR experiences.
The concept could be extended ever further by involving the students in hands-on activities that consist in using 3D printing to create physical models of what they designed in the AR digital studio.
Expanding on the possibilities that AR offers in terms of integrating the digital and the physical world, I have recently developed a STEAM lesson plan where geometry, art, and music are combined. The highlight of the learning experience is perhaps the part where the students create 3D origami paper models of different shapes they learnt about using the CleverBooks Geometry app.
To conclude
To conclude, AR is flexible and multifunctional. It allows both the integration of existing pedagogies, as well as leaving room for creativity. In addition, its usage is justified by the current technology industry trends.
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by Costanza Casullo – Professional Master of Education student at Trinity College Dublin. Tech-savvy, creative and internationally-minded teacher in the making. I am Italian-born and educated in the UK, play classical guitar and currently writing a thesis on augmented reality in education.
I believe domains of knowledge are all part of a system of interconnections and I try to connect the dots everyday instead of simply collecting them. My aspiration is to become a 21st century teaching and learning evangelist.
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