Augmented reality: a game changer for schools?
With increasing talk of augmented reality finding a home in education, Nick Coulter, Head of Visual Arts at Australian International School (AIS) in Singapore, shares insight into the real-life benefits of using augmented reality in school.
With today’s children growing up in technology-rich environments, many schools have begun to move towards interactive environments designed to better inspire and engage students. The push for one-to-one laptop environments was a significant step forward, but student work and e-docs remain fairly inaccessible to others on laptops and iPads. To enable further sharing and collaboration, QR codes can be used to access digital content, but these are aesthetically unimpressive, particularly for an Art department.
Real-life benefits of AR in school
The introduction of augmented reality (AR) has marked a significant shift. Art students, as an example, can now showcase significant amounts of content in digital form to enhance visitor experience at exhibitions without requiring huge display spaces, rows of computers or unsightly QR codes.
Using Aurasma, an online, web-based interface that makes it simple to integrate AR, visitors can scan something that feels all together more relevant, such as a painting or small physical representation of the content, to see students’ video reflections on the body of work or an entire portfolio via a handheld device.
With just one noticeboard, we used Aurasma to display an entire Year 8 exhibition. By posting just one still image for each student, we reduced the need for a whole display space and each student was able to showcase as much work as they wanted, in as many different formats.
Other school-based applications
Language lessons provide another example of how this technology can be used in schools. A teacher can put a foreign language word on the wall for students to scan on a mobile device to reveal its translation or even hear it pronounced correctly through audio.
For parent communications, AR can be integrated with school newsletters. Still photos are used as triggers for videos and as it is a live system, we can update the content on the Aurasma platform at any time so it remains completely current.