Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

While these emerging technologies may offer many benefits for students and professors, institutions will need to address ethical and safety concerns.

How can you improve school education with augmented reality lessons? Schools that are using the flipped classroom in Austria, 90 percent want to continue using the pedagogy. A survey on the subject shows that e.g. mathematics and English has improved dramatically by flipping the classroom. Some of the advantages are the expansion of space and time and the opportunity to receive much more personalised teaching and learning opportunities within the classroom.

Augmented Reality (AR) is a technology that superimposes a computer-generated image on a user's view of the real world, thus providing a composite view. What you may not know is that you can implement augmented reality in libraries, archives, and museums for free in less than five minutes.

With AR, I didn’t truly ‘get it’ until I experienced it in its early days – a decade ago. Sadly, I’ve been predicting AR would take off for years, but in 2018 it did. My first experience was on the top of a Boulder Colorado hotel giving a speech on ILL value at a conference. I had this new AR app on my phone and decided to use it over coffee break. Visible from the window was the wonderful mountain view—and I opened the app and pointed my smartphone at it, and lo-and-behold the names of the mountains were overlaid on them as well as a few ski trails and tourist routes. Amazing! You’d think one Rocky looks pretty much the same as any other.

A new application makes it possible for students to explore delicate historical artifacts without ever laying a finger on them.

The Augmented Archives project, started through a partnership between the Washington College Archives and Washington College’s Academic Technology Department, brings artifacts to life “using augmented reality technology to make rare documents, fragile artifacts and curator commentary videos accessible to exhibit visitors.”

“I see this as a great way for us to change the way we are engaging with our artifacts” says Heather Calloway, archivist and special collections librarian at Washington College in a video on the project. “We could take something out and digitize it in various ways.”

This morning I received an email from a reader who was wondering what the terms AR and VR mean. I get that question on a fairly regular basis these days. That's why earlier this year I recorded a video and posted a short slideshow that outlines the differences between augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality.

Things are about to get very interesting. These four disruptive digital technologies aren't mainstream, but they will change the very fabric of learning.

Virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, haptic feedback; the line between these and many other technological realities is becoming blurred and they are beginning to be grouped under one umbrella term: artificial reality. But what is artificial reality and how can it be used effectively in the classroom?

No doubt you’ll have seen countless people walking the streets with their heads down, using their phones to locate their next catch, or congregating together in areas of interest to battle at Pokémon gyms. Perhaps you’re even a top trainer yourself.

As a futures senior innovation developer at Jisc, you might expect that I’d be jumping for joy at seeing augmented reality (AR) make its way into the mainstream. But if I’m honest, I’ve struggled to get excited.

According to Webster's Dictionary, augmented reality is "an enhanced version of reality created by the use of technology to overlay digital information on an image of something being viewed through a device (as a smartphone camera); also :  the technology used to create augmented reality."  Think of it as a type of virtual reality, using the computer to copy your world. You are probably familiar with a tool created by Google which falls into this category: Google Glass. Although augmented reality has existed for a long time, we as teachers are only now grasping how to use it in the classroom.

Augmented reality has a huge potential for us in education. It helps engage students in hands-on and immersive learning experiences and boosts their self-directed learning and "their social and emotional connections to curricular topics".  A few days ago I shared with you a number of AR resources including Apple's guide: Augmented Reality in Education and a review of two powerful AR science apps. In today's post I am sharing more resources to help you make the best of AR in your classroom.

For many of us, augmented reality is primarily associated with gaming and other forms of online entertainment. But it is also increasingly being used in scholarly publishing — in expected and unexpected ways. Springer Nature has been experimenting with this, and anyone who visited their booth at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair (FBF) had the opportunity to experience the results firsthand. In this interview, their Senior Manager of Semantic Data, Markus Kaindl, and Head of Innovation, Martijn Roelandse, answer some of my questions about mixed realities, virtual reality, and augmented reality in scholarly publishing and tell us about some of their work in this area.

When I read Camillia Matuk’s The Learning Affordances of Augmented Reality For Museum Exhibits on Human Health, I knew I wanted to speak with her about AR and learning. Camillia is assistant professor of educational communication and technology at New York University (with a Ph.D. in the learning sciences from Northwestern University, an MSc in biomedical communications from the University of Toronto, and a BSc in biological sciences from the University of Windsor.)

Like your students, educational technology is constantly evolving. The best digital resources–including apps, websites, video, and wearables–make lessons more enriching for students and classroom management easier for teachers. What were 2016’s best educational technologies, and what can you expect to see next year?

K-12 schools are beginning to see the educational value of virtual and augmented reality and are investing in these technologies even though price points are still aimed at higher-end markets.