By carlo trentadue on September 12, 2019
Elements 4D is an app that has the capability to illustrate various chemical elements and the reactions they have using Augmented Reality. This is an app that is designed to inspire and engage students about science and chemistry in an interactive way. Truthfully, I’m not a science teacher, nor a science mind, however, I can see some significant value in this particular tool. Of course, one of the glaring obstacles that accompany the utilization of apps within the classroom are the device and equity issues. Schools require devices to run these lessons – Are these devices provided by the school? Or are they brought by the student themselves? How do we ensure equity among our students, and how do we deal with discipline issues if the device doesn’t belong to us?
Image source: https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/454652524855290508/?lp=true
I’ve attached a series of resources for your exploration. The following is a video tutorial of how Elements 4D may look in your classroom.
I was drawn to this post from Carlo as I have used Elements 4D in my Science classroom a few years ago. As seen in the image and video, elements 4D provides cubes that can be read by their app to augment into an element. The cubes can also be combined to create various compounds. Elements 4D was a great tool to use in the classroom as most high school students have cell phones and were able to download the free app to visualize the cubes. As Carlo mentioned, “this is an app that is designed to inspire and engage students about science and chemistry in an interactive way” and he is very right! Carlo brings up some great questions in his post and I would like to extend some of those questions to focus on how do we get more apps such as Elements 4D? This app was great for a lesson or two to help kids explore elements and further compounds, and it was able to engage students at the time, but that is as few as it got. I would love more apps like this to increase student engagement in Science. Does anyone have other AR apps they would like more of?