Tag: AR

AR in the Classroom

A few weeks ago now, I mentioned that I created an AR game for my classes to use to review the differences between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists in my history classroom. I wanted to set the scene for how it was used in my classroom and the results that I saw when we tried it in class:

Context Analysis:

The students in my history classroom had learned about the issues surrounding the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. We had covered the weaknesses of the Articles of the Constitution, the compromises that were made during the Constitutional Convention, and the arguments made by the Federalists and Anti-Federalists over the course of three weeks. As we began to prepare for our test over this time period, I realized that my students needed a different method of review over Federalists vs. Anti-Federalists.

During the teaching of the unit, we had presented the arguments through the analysis of the Federalist papers, a chart outline the major differences, and even matching games. While these were somewhat effective, we needed something that targeted their understanding of the key issues of the debate.

Design Process:

Since we do not have very much time and there are specific things that my students needed to learn, I settled on the Behaviorist Learning Theory. The immediate feedback for being wrong and the feedback for being correct would help us study quickly and efficiently. We will be reinforcing the depth of knowledge on the topic when we transition to looking at the original political parties (which are similar).

For this particular game, I would like the students to not only associate the person with the side of the argument they took as well as all the major arguments. With this in mind, the student initially must choose whether they are a Federalist or an Anti-Federalist. At that point they must correctly identify the arguments of that party, if they do not they must start over and try again.

Link to the Game

Classroom Observations:

First of all, if you are using iPads for Metaverse, ensure that they have a good wifi connection. This seems simple, but I was having issues getting the game to load initially and it all came down to the iPad loosing signal right when the game was trying to load.

Once the game was downloaded and connected to the internet, the operation of the game was great. The students were able to grasp the point and purpose of the game without much clarification. The students spent a few minutes with it each and passed it to the next student. It reinforced whether the students knew the material or not. I used this as an opportunity to remind the students where they could go for more study materials should they need to in the future.

Overall, I believe Metaverse was a good option for this learning objective. The implementation was a bit frustrating at first (as it always is when implementing new technology in the classroom), but ended up providing good formative assessment data quickly.

History and AR

I would like to think that I am a tech savvy teacher. Tech knowledge and history do not always go together, but I think they should. When I talk to people about their history teachers growing up, they either loved them or hated them…often for the same reasons. The stories. Some people gravitated to their sage of a history teacher spinning a yarn about times long ago. While others remember the drudgery of listening to lectures about facts they do not care about.

While history still has its fair share of the “sage on the stage” teachers, technology has allowed us to give students a more tangible way to see history. One thing I have struggled with in history is giving students a way to interact with people or objects in history.

With this as my backdrop, I walked into a training this summer about augmented reality. Most of us have at least heard the term ‘virtual reality’ or VR, which is using technology to completely change the setting of the person wearing it. AR is a bit different, it attempts to add something to our current setting to interact with. The game Pokemon Go would be an example of AR at work. The game superimposes pokemon on top of the video feed of your surrounding.

In the training I attended, they showed us how various AR apps change the environment using our phones. From changing the language we saw in a picture to showing what the next step in an assembly line, AR has the ability to change the way we train the learners we are teaching.

I took what I learned at the training and attempted to put it to work using an app called Metaverse. Using their interface, I created a game to help the students in my class learn the differences in the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists in early United States history. Take a look and let me know what you think?