Augmented Reality Opens Up New, Immersive Worlds for Learning Children

Augmented Reality Opens Up New, Immersive Worlds for Learning Children

• Nov 9, 2020

Which would you rather pick — an hour spent reading off slides presented in a class about the animal kingdom, or an hour spent watching the jungle come to life, with tigers lurking and the cool wind against your face?

We don’t know about you, but that second option sounds super enticing. And it’s possible, with Augmented Reality.

Although AR is a wide and deep field with many explorations, it can overarchingly be described as an interactive experience where the real physical world is enhanced through digital visual, auditory and sensory elements delivered by technology. Put simply, AR is the way you can physically touch the stones of Petra from the comfort of your living room, or dive into the depths of an ocean during a lesson at your desk. It sounds magical, but AR is slowly yet steadily making inroads in every industry known to us, including education.

Wouldn’t it be more interesting to see the ocean floor unfold in front of your eyes, and see all the species being taught about, instead of reading about them through a textbook or on slides? This is the premise of using AR in education — to make learning fun, engaging and more accessible by making abstract concepts tangible.

AR helps build a repository of visual resources that students can use to supplement their classes. This helps cater to the visual style of learners, who don’t do as well with rote learning or auditory teaching alone. By creating an experience around a lesson, children are better immersed and can better remember what they’ve been taught to the last detail.

AR models are more dynamic and three-dimensional, so they offer up a variety of perspectives that textbook images cannot rival. AR allows children to view an object, animal or image form all angles, observe its actions and reactions, and zoom in to details or out to the larger picture. This hyper-engagement with the object makes for a more enriching learning experience. For instance, imagine the AR visual of a heart beating. With every contraction and expansion, the student knows exactly what is going on during the process, and has a more thorough grasp of the concept that a textbook image and description can never guarantee unless the child has a very vivid imagination.

AR is doubly helpful when it comes to helping students visualise abstract concepts. Common enough complaints that float through every education system in the world is that the textbook is boring, doesn’t explain enough, explains too much, and doesn’t break down the concept. AR can step in on all these fronts, to create comparisons and images out of otherwise abstract concepts, giving children a more solid visual to hold onto during the learning process.

The final word

The induction of AR into the education industry is a giant leap forward, towards marrying both learning and technology instead of viewing the two as opposites or using one as the means to an end. With AR, technology moves into the realm of every topic that a student could ever be interested in, whether that’s biology or history, art or science.