Augmented Reality (AR) refers to the use of technology to add to an individuals perception of reality, as opposed to virtual reality (VR) which places the individual in a wholly different, simulated environment. Augmented reality can be as simple as having an animated character appear on your phone screen when using the camera so it appears to be dancing on some nearby surface to specially built glasses that guide individuals through tasks using overlaid three dimensional images. There has been ebbs and flows in AR and VR popularity as technology and content attempt to live up to the hype, promises, and expectation. I believe we are at approaching a peak in AR technology and applications that may see it finally sustain.
Motion Controllers use a person’s own movements to control a digital environment. How is this different from a keyboard or a mouse? Motion controllers use optical and motion sensors, primarily, to detect an individuals movements and gestures without the need for the user to directly interact with the device. For example, an optical sensor mounted in something similar to glasses can track a person’s eye movements and blinks to control a cursor on a screen without the need to use hands. Motion sensors are put into some game controllers that allow the user to control their avatar using gestures like a realistic serve in a video tennis game. The end goal of these motion controllers is to allow the individual to interact with their digital environment in a natural and intuitive way.
Brought together, these two mobile technologies have the potential to transform education with Augmented Learning. Educational design elements like active learning will take on new dimensions and environment. Whether in the classroom or out in the world, teachers will be able to guide their student’s observations and learning without the students being distracted by the need to look at a screen in order to interact. Polls or trivia style quiz questions can float in the air as students walk through a museum either in person or remotely if they are not able to attend in person. Students, past and present, can leave annotations on objects that future students can expand and learn from all while staying in the moment and maintaining engagement with the learning at hand. The same technology would allow remote students to “ride along” with students on field trips allowing for greater access to these experiences.
So, one would ask themselves, Why is this not happening today? The answer is that it is happening but not nearly at a practical scale. Below I have provided some links to applications of AR and motion controllers in use today and some of the projections for the future. For AR to become a game changing tool in education, the technology needs to be more affordable or ubiquitous. Even with mobile phone technology, there is the false belief that mobile phones are so ubiquitous as to prove to be no barrier to equitable educational use. Another barrier, related to the first, is the lack of content and software to enable these rich interactions. What is needed is a true break through use that will drive people to what to be early adopters, paying in both price and complexity in order to drive the cost of these devices down and make them attractive platforms to industry. When Apple combined music, picture taking, and mobile phone technology into one device, only then did the large screen phone break out of the niche it had held, quickly destroying the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) and MP3 player market in about a decade.
Further Reading:
Current uses:
Military – https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/news/features/2019-features/three-technologies-transforming-military-training-in-2020.html
Game Development – https://www.xsens.com/vr-ar-mr-solution
Medicine – https://www.wsj.com/articles/augmented-reality-used-in-knee-replacement-surgery-in-a-u-s-first-11611277959
Niche – https://www.marxentlabs.com/products/augmented-reality-furniture-apps/
Vision of how they could be used:
Tedx Talk from now defunct Meta, ahead of it’s time – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AjxGqzqQ54
Google and Apple working on another round of “glasses”
https://www.macrumors.com/roundup/apple-glasses
https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-vr-headset-could-be-the-road-to-glasses-latest-rumors-and-reports/
https://www.wareable.com/ar/the-best-smartglasses-google-glass-and-the-rest
The industry surrounding Augmented Reality is definitely growing, but I think there will still be massive developments surrounding AR technology on mobile devices over the next few years. The biggest problem I have found around this in education is that many students receive used phones which are older and do not support newer technologies. In my classes over the past 4 years, only 25% of students had a phone that would function with applications like Google Expeditions or other AR applications.
There will always be large costs when it comes to technology. Especially with the pandemic, school districts have been suffering with cost cuts and budget constraints to provide COVID materials. All of the ADST and technology budgets have been cut this year, and possible for a few years to come. Will this pandemic completely restrain us from jumping into this new technology? How long will it be before we start transitioning out of a traditional learning environment and engage students in remote learning using technologies like these to do their bulk of the teaching?
I completely agree Elixa! As I mentioned in my post, there is a definite gap between what administrations and the public believe about the ubiquity of quality mobile devices and reality, especially in the K-12 environment. Boards of education would need to buy into these technologies to the point where there would be enough loan-able device in a school to ensure equity and for them to not be a scarce resource. What AR/VR needs is a “killer application”, one that will drive global demand to the point where manufacturers will start to compete more for the market and drive prices down (or at least create a spread of models at price points across the spectrum).