My AR book
Hi everyone,
Please hop over to http://www.zooburst.com/zb_books-viewer.php?book=zb02_50827c6951e9d and play with my AR book (1 page) on ecology.
Building the page was simple enough but I did not like the fact the height of an image above the book is pegged to the size of the image. A little image editing skills would go a long way with projects like these.
The truth be told I did not read the manual I cannot give a fair assessment here. However after all is said and done tools like these can certainly dimension add another to the teaching and learning experience.
Patason
Posted in: Week 07:
Peggy Lawson 7:34 pm on October 20, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Thanks for sharing Patason – the 1st had experiences are good to see. While it looks very neat, I don’t know whether I’ve moved yet beyond my original impression that – currently, at least – the academica AR experiences I’ve seen are simply novelties and I don’t see them adding much to real advantages for student learning. They are cool, and it’s easy to see how student’s get excited about them, but either I don’t see them as staying engaged once they’ve experienced it a few times and at best I don’t see as how it adds to their gaining more knowledge.
I’ll continue to say that it while I believe AR could have real potential, and probably already does in some areas, as a teacher I dont know if I’d invest a lot of time yet in finding AR applications for my students. However, as an investor I would probably get involved now, on the ground floor – IF I found the right company!
Peggy
Pat A Son 3:07 am on October 21, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Peggy,
I understand ‘where you are coming from’ but in terms of these tools I see them as additional tools in our toolkit that we use to help our charges construct knowledge. We must remember that knowledge is constructed from our experience in an environment and AR can be used to enrich these experience. We must also be mindful that learning is more about the student than the teacher and not every aspect of the learning experience is measurable in a tangible way. These ‘unmeasurables’ may be just as or even more important to the student than the ‘measurables’. On this note it can be safe to say that in many cases students(i k-12 at least) are more interested in enjoying the experience while teachers are more interested in getting results. So it is not surprising that in this age that we live educators are producing researches that shows technology does not affect learning outcome which is a position that is loaded with a ‘measurable bias’. If on the other hand the focus is shifted to learner’s experience then we will see a different story.
In the case of my one page book on food chains one can argue that the same information can be gotten in a traditional or web page. To this I will ask is the experience the same with all three forms media. With theories of multiple intelligences and learning styles we have to say no because what may be a novelty to a teacher maybe that which serves as a vehicle that transports the student from ‘sitting the arena of the lesson’ to taking part to actually ‘taking part in the games’ at the cognitive level.
Patason
cunnian 8:24 pm on October 20, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Peggy,
You raise some good points. There is definitely a novelty and gimmick factors to AR at the moment, but nonetheless I think that there is great potential for increasing the learning of a concept. In particular, I think that Zooburst-like media might make content more accessible to the ever-growing number of struggling readers in our schools and those who are simply very visual learners. Furthermore, this may be the kind of media that could be a real breakthrough for students with more serious learning difficulties. Anyways, I agree that this may not cause some sort of revolution in learning (though, like you, I wouldn’t discount it entirely) it may ultimately find a smaller niche in the school ecosystem.
John