"Augmented reality is a technology that superimposes a computer -
generated image on a user's view of the real world, thus providing a composite view." K-12 Lesson Application Scenario Ms. Haraway's third grade class has been studying various kinds of trees and their leaves in science. They looked at pictures of the leaves and trees while doing the lesson, but Ms. Haraway wanted them to have a more authentic experience. She planned a field trip for the students where they would do a nature walk at a local state park to observe trees. 1:1 iPad integration had recently been added to their classroom, and her school had also talked about implementing augmented reality. This was a perfect opportunity to utilize both. The students would each carry an iPad on the nature walk. As they progressed along the walk, they could use the camera and an augmented reality program to scan a tree or other item in nature to find out more about it. The technology being used for the lesson is an app called Leaf ++, which can be downloaded on the students' iPads. This app allows users to identify plants by their leaves, and then generates information about the identified plant. It also includes details about the anatomy of each plant scanned, and it's life cycle. Source: http://leaf.artisopensource.net/
Pros and Cons
Social Pro - Increases Student Engagement Teachers often find it difficult to maintain productive engagement within the classroom. With the virtual reality technology present in education, engagement should increase, as most of the students will feel tempted to talk about their experiences with virtual reality. Emotional Pro - Promotes Self-Confidence Students who have previously lacked confidence in education or struggled to become involved gain confidence through the use of augmented reality. This can be extremely beneficial as emotional rewards are a huge and invaluable incentive for students, which can encourage studying even more. Physical Pro - Visual Aid Augmented reality gives users the opportunity to receive visual assistance in real-time while preforming a certain action. Cognitive Pro - Constructivism As a cognitive tool or pedagogical approach, AR aligns well with situated and constructivist learning theory as it positions the learner within a real- world physical and social context, while guiding, scaffolding and facilitating participatory and metacognitive learning processes such as authentic inquiry, active observation, peer coaching, reciprocal teaching and legitimate peripheral participation with multiple modes of representation. Con - Cognitive Overload The most frequently reported limitation of AR in its current state of development is student cognitive overload. Across studies, researchers report that students are often overwhelmed with the complexity of the activities, the scientific inquiry process and navigation.
Augmented reality is being implemented in medical schools across the world. In Dr. Snow's class, her students are using augmented reality to enhance their learning of the human body. One way they are doing so is will visualizing human anatomical structure with AR. They do this with what is called the magic mirror ('Miracle'). How does this work? According to the resource, 'the trainee stands in front of a TV screen that has a camera and the Kinect attached to it. The camera image of the trainee is flipped horizontally and shown on the TV screen, mimicking a mirror function (Fig. 2). Part of an anonymous CT dataset is augmented to the users body and shown on the TV screen. This creates the illusion that the trainee can look inside his body. A gesture-based user interface allows real time manipulation of the visualization of the CT data. The trainee can scroll through the dataset in sagittal, transverse and coronal slice mode, by using different hand gestures.' Another is by visualizing 3D lung dynamics with AR. They have developed a system that allows real-time visualization of 3D lung dynamics superimposed directly on a manikin or on a patient in the operating room. In that visualization they combine a generic functional lung model with patient-specific data extracted from high-resolution computed tomography (HRCT). This results in a dynamic, real-time visualization of virtual lungs that is overlaid onto the patients body. They also train laparoscopy skills with AR. Augmented Reality provides students with the opportunity to learn laparoscopy skills without performing on an actual human. Although they are not performing on actual body, the AR makes the experience as realistic as possible.