This would be great, particularly if you embedded it in science or art or
history classes.
You had students go to a museum, perhaps, and
they had mobile devices that they could use.
And how they would experience a museum differently
than if they didn't have that kind of data.
You could have them go on physical scavenger hunts in a particular place.
Let's say your students are virtual students and
they take a vacation or a trip some where.
You could have them use that and experience and document that trip or
vacation while experiencing some of it for augmented reality.
There's all sorts of interesting things that you can do with it,
should you have the technology, and the apps available.
The apps are generally free, it's just a matter of making sure your students
have devices like a tablet or phone that they could use those apps on.
Now, if you want to take it one step further,
you could get into the wearable tech space.
I was hoping that by the time this course would run there would be some really good
examples out there of K-12 teachers using wearable tech,
and they really haven't been yet unfortunately.
I think there is some pockets of experimentation, but
because it's expensive and hard to get
those actual technologies in the hands of your students, it hasn't been used yet.
Although I do think it's coming, and if
any of you have used wearable tech in your classes, please share in our discussions.
I would love to hear how you were using it.
But anyway, wearable tech takes this augmented reality and spins it up so
that you can completely interact with that environment.
Your not just seeing it in a different lens, it's not, you know, just 3-D in your
environment and giving you more data, but it's actually allowing play in that
environment, interact in that environment physically, and it gathers all that data.
It is device specific, so you're thinking about things like Google Glass,
the Apple watch is promised to be great wearable tech, Keyglove, Autographer where
you can manipulate what you're doing with your hands or what you're writing or
taking notes, even like, a GoPro could be considered a wearable tech.
If you're going to mount your video camera when you're experiencing something,
that could be considered wearable tech.
So all of these are devices specific, but
they do allow you to interact differently with the environment.
And these tools will be great for creating either,
creating technologies in some of the more advance science classes or
technology classes, or situations where you're encouraging a lot of creativity or
maker experiences where you're having students build things, do things hands-on,
or experience environments in a much more fluid and rich way.
Like I said, I'm hopeful that these technologies will become more prevalent,
and the devices and the device makers will get them into the hand of educators, but
I think we're at the very beginning of seeing where augmented reality and
wearable tech could impact K-12 education.
So as part of this module, I would love to have you think about how you might
use either augmented reality or wearable technology in your virtual teaching.
Or how you might think about requesting some of those devices,
perhaps write a grant, perhaps reach out to local manufacturers and
see if they'd be interested in donating some of those technologies, and
what might a lesson look like.