Augmented Reality: Accelerating STEAM Education in Your Classroom

Virtual rocket launches, journey through ecosystems, even travelling through the human body. Augmented reality is an amazing way to get students engaged and interactive in a science classroom. Augmented Reality (AR) content can be accessed by scanning or viewing a trigger image with a mobile device that creates a subsequent action. This action can be a video, another image, 3D Animations, Games, QR code, or whatever you want it to be. For example, I use virtual hip-replacement animations or heart transplant virtual tours with my students. We have a BYOD (bring your own device) program and for those who do not have a device I have ipads & laptops in which they can use URL's.

Augmented Reality is an example of a technology that can make any classroom an exciting learning experience. Aurasma Studio is a great tool to use to transform any lesson into an engaging and relevant event. What in the past had seemed like Science-Fiction is now a part of our reality. Children are finding Pokémon with their phones, visiting exotic places with their 3-D viewers, and completing virtual lab experiments with the click of a button. There are practical examples for Augmented Reality being used more frequently by teachers as the ability to combine digital content and information becomes the norm by using triggers (Aurasma) to overlay images and locations. This opens up a whole new world of learning opportunities as it places control in the hands of students-they are the drivers of their education and the owners of their learning.

I use QR codes all the time. put them up around the room or in the hallways to get students up and moving. I link the QR codes to practice quizzes, Brain Pop video's, even virtual labs. Students enjoy having the ability to be active learners. Last week, I added a podcast to a QR code and students listened to a test review in groups and practiced their higher order thinking skills by using verbs to make connections between Respiratory, Circulatory Systems. Students also enjoy creating their own augmented reality by making stop motion videos and overlaying them with real world videos of the animals in their habitat and articles about their critters. It is an awesome way for them to make larger connections and construct their own platforms to share with other students to enhance the learning community resources.