Augmented Reality supporting Education: the future of learning.
How Augmented Reality and Education could be put together? We’re going to show you right now.
By 2025, 2 millions of the global population will be made of the so called Alpha Generation, aka iGeneration. We’re talking about Millennials’ children, young boys and girls born entirely in the 21st century.
Alpha Generation uses smartphone, tablets and any other device in a natural way. They’re born among apps and technological tools of any sort, they can’t imagine a life without them. Generations change and so does the mind and its processes. Education – which is an inherent need of individuals and society – has to upgrade itself continuously.
New generations’ mind is set to acquire skills through experience, touching the world with its senses. We learn by doing things and experimenting: this is why old educational tools – once enough to convey academic notions – aren’t adequate anymore.
The world of educational institutions is called to respond to new needs, renewing and adapting itself to new educational demands, deeply changed from the ones of the past.
AUGMENTED REALITY AND EDUCATION: LEARNING AS A COMPLEX PROCESS
Learning consists in the acquisition and adjustment of notions, skills and abilities in different fields. It isn’t, though, neither an univocal process, nor an easy project to realize.
We’re talking, as a matter of fact, about different types of learning, according to the way the process is made.
It can be linguistical, when the preferred way to learn consists of written words; spatial/visual, when are mostly used images, photos and observation ; auditory, when it is focused on listening; physical/kinesthetic when we learn through our body and its movements; logical/mathematical, when logic and reasoning are involved; social/interpersonal, when it uses the presence of a group and a context made of different people; intrapersonal, when a person prefers to be alone and independent, to better store information.
Augmented Reality is inserted perfectly in such a complex context, managing to find answers to questions about every area of the learning process. That’s the strength of Augmented Reality in education.
AUGMENTED REALITY IN EDUCATION: A NEW KIND OF LEARNING?
Educational needs are drastically changed compared to some time ago, they don’t always find a match in traditional methods. Today they demand an answer, because we can’t no more neglect any area of the learning process.
Augmented Reality is an effective and coherent response to fill the gap between standard systems and the new needs of Education.
Today, more than ever, we need to focus our attention on the crucial aspects of education: it’s fundamental to aim at the stimulation of critical thinking development in the young minds, and at the development, also, of optimal problem solving strategies that could offer the possibility to analyze situations from various points of view, as the modern world’s structure demands.
AUGMENTED REALITY AND EDUCATION: POSSIBLE BENEFITS IN THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM
Against this background of complex learning processes and evermore deep educational demands, Augmented Reality in education is capable of stimulate the crucial points in the transmission of notions that are important for today’s kids.
- In-depth Comprehension. Gaining notions and store them in our mind isn’t enough anymore. The world has to be explored, it has to be experienced first hand and tested. Augmented Reality in education, provides, indeed, this possibility
- Memory Skills. (LINK), states that when kids learn through AR integrated educational systems, they can store information better and they can recall them more easily.
- Collaboration and Cooperation In the scholastic environment, the use of AR tools, promotes the creation of a cooperative context and stimulates collaboration among students.
- Motivation When kids learn through AR, they gain benefits also from a ludic point of view: learning something in a stimulating environment is way more exciting and entertaining. Learning is maximized when is assisted by fun and interest. Students, in this way, improve their motivation to learn, because they are prone to repeat the rewarding experience.
- Special Educational Needs According to a survey conducted by MIUR (MIUR DGCASIS – Ufficio Statistica e Studi – Rilevazioni sulle scuole) during the academic year 2016/2017, the number of students with Specific Learning Disabilities that are attending italian schools is estimated to be 254.600 units ca., more or less 2.9% of all students. Augmented Reality is a perfect tool to accomodate the needs of kids with Special Educational Needs (SEN).
AUGMENTED REALITY IN EDUCATION: FORECASTS FOR THE FUTURE
Augmented Reality has the potential to become a standard tool in the educational system. To be considered an essential instrument inside the scholastic field, from Elementary School to University.
Using Augmented Reality in education we can move from a so called “listening teaching” to a more active and engaging method, when kids, classes and teachers actually participate together to the learning process. In this way we won’t be just observers anymore, we’ll be actors. This is what it’s called “augmented learning”, which aims to the independence of kids and to the stimulation of their creative and communicative skills.
AR MARKET AND THE COMMITMENT IN EDUCATION
In the educational field, among all the possible uses of Augmented Reality we can find several products: books, encyclopedias, technical and didactic books etc…
AR Market proposals for kids and teens cover a broad range of solutions:
- AR MARKET App has many AR educational contents, to combine, in a strategic and original way, learning and playground.
- Publisher, based on the publishing of products that link together learning, education and fun, for kids and adults.
- Art and Events, virtual enrichment through AR of works by various independent artists
Educational needs have changed and the tools used just a few years ago are becoming outdated, this is why AR Market philosophy is focused on a continuous process of transformation. Augmented Reality in education is a precious resource: old habits and old tools don’t have to be wasted, but they have to be transformed in new shapes more suitable to nowadays needs and times.
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