In this first part of our five part series on the impact of technology trends in education, we will take a look at augmented reality. While some are calling it the little brother of virtual reality, augmented reality has the advantage that its use cases are linked to the real world and our surroundings while virtual reality takes the user into entirely digitally created worlds.
The most common uses of augmented reality today are linked to smart phones and tablets as wearables, including Google Glass or Microsoft HoloLens, are just coming out of the concept stage and into the hands of developers, but are still far from going mainstream.
Nonetheless, we will be focusing on both of these devices, Google Glass and Microsoft HoloLens, as they are capable of demonstrating some quite impressive use cases already today. Therefore, let us take a look at some use cases for augmented reality in education across different fields and what it will take to get this technology in the hands, or better in front of the eyes of the mainstream user.
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Museums and Historical Sights
Museums and other cultural sights can use augmented reality to add more in-depth and interactive layers of information to their exhibits. An app could explain details of a painting or greek vase directly on the object itself, or it could add an overlay with the names of the gods and titans to a roman frieze.
Augmented reality apps can also open a virtual window to the past, showing the Colosseum or the Pyramids the way they looked like when they were build, or imagine witnessing the battle of Waterloo as it happened.
Skin and Bones - Mobile Augmented Reality App for the National Museum of Natural History’s Hall of Bones
Engineering and Technology
Augmented reality has exciting use cases in the fields of engineering and technology. Through apps students could for instance learn how engines work, what the different parts are, how they interact and so on. Apps could also assist the learner when building a computer or robot by explaining the different parts, how they connect etc.
World’s first beacon based Augmented Reality Museum App
Microsoft HoloLens: Partner Spotlight with Volvo Cars
Medicine and Healthcare
A nice example of augmented reality in K-12 is Curiscope which created a t-shirt that lets students look into their bodies using a smartphone or tablet. Similar apps with additional content could be used for medical students.
Curiscope's VirtualiTee: Wearable tech you learn with
Microsoft HoloLens: Partner Spotlight with Case Western Reserve University
Language Learning
I already mentioned Word Lens in the introductory post as an early example of augmented reality impacting the need of learning foreign languages. With the app that is now part of Google Translate you can translate any written text. The translation is being displayed on the smartphone’s screen instead of the original text, even mimicking the font type and color - at times more or less accurate.
Introducing Word Lens
Google Glass application, named Outro, is for learning language
Real time speech translation for Google Glass
Immersive Online Learning
Online learning is still lacking the personal contact of a group of people sitting together in a classroom or lecture hall. With augmented reality video calls could take place in a room with each participant seeing the others sitting around a table as holograms.
Microsoft HoloLens: Skype
What it takes to go Mainstream
Using a phone or tablet is surely not the best way to experience augmented reality which is also the reason that we haven’t seen much of it so far. The experience makes most sense when it blends seamlessly into our field of sight which means that we need devices that are either close to or right on our eyeballs.
Google Glass put the screen on the top right of the user’s field of sight, resulting in lots of cross-eyed first adopters. Microsoft HoloLens puts its augmented reality, or mixed reality as they call it, in front of both eyes through a device that looks like ski goggles. While the device is certainly not as clunky as early VR headsets or even the Oculus Rift, it is hard to imagine someone wearing this on the street, outside of a work setting or at home.
This leaves us with the classic form factor of glasses or contact lenses with the first being easier to get into production as Google Glass has shown. Cramming the needed technology into a contact lens and making it affordable for the mass consumer market will take some more years, eventually resulting in the replacement of our natural eyeballs with bionic ones marking the end of this journey.
Next week we will be going to immerse ourselves into the completely digitally created worlds of virtual reality.