During my teaching experiences, I have often contemplated the potential benefits of providing students with live demonstrations to complement my explanations. While videos and infographics can effectively convey concepts such as dinosaurs’ enormity or planetary orbits’ mechanics, a live demonstration’s impact would undoubtedly impress and enhance student motivation and engagement. However, logistical and temporal constraints make it impractical for me to transport students to prehistoric eras or directly observe planets in orbit, here is the opportunity to integrate Augmented Reality in the Classroom.
Throughout the history of education, technology has played a pivotal role in facilitating instructional design. Tools like projectors with sound and video capabilities, interactive whiteboards, personal computers, and tablets have been incorporated into classrooms. Various software applications, including wikis, PowerPoint, and Word, have also been integrated to assist students in their academic pursuits.
As an emerging technology, Augmented Reality (AR) can merge digitally created elements with real-world environments using a smartphone’s camera, and AR is increasingly influential in education (Ghobadi, 2023). To incorporate AR into educational settings, it is necessary to develop the content to be showcased. For example, a 3D artist could design a digital representation of the solar system or a lifelike dinosaur using 3D generation software. After creating the 3D model, software is installed on a mobile device equipped with a gyroscope, such as a smartphone, tablet, or headset. The gyroscope enables the device to recognize its movements within the surrounding space. The digitally designed object can be projected into the real world using the device’s camera.
Having had the opportunity to integrate Augmented Reality into the classroom multiple times, I began contemplating the issues and challenges educators face when learning and incorporating this technology. This question encompasses several facets. Technological aspects, political issues, technological obstacles, human performance, additional workload (Romano et al., 2020), collaboration among teachers (Tzima et al., 2019), and many other problems are part of my research results.
Years ago, I studied for a Master’s in Learning and Emerging Technologies, and my thesis was dedicated to incorporating augmented reality in the classroom. I would appreciate hearing your perspective on this matter and whether you have any personal experiences with AR in the classroom.
References:
Ghobadi, M., Shirowzhan, S., Ghiai, M. M., Mohammad Ebrahimzadeh, F., & Tahmasebinia, F. (2022). Augmented reality applications in education and examining key factors affecting the users’ behaviors. Education Sciences, 13(1), 10. MDPI AG. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/educsci13010010
Romano, M., Díaz, P., & Aedo, I. (2020). Empowering Teachers to Create Augmented Reality Experiences: The effects on the educational experience. Interactive Learning Environments, , 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2020.1851727
Tzima, S., Styliaras, G., & Bassounas, A. (2019). Augmented Reality Applications in Education: Teachers point of view. Education Sciences, 9(2), 99. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci9020099
