“The whole art of teaching is the only art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.” – Anatole France
Students can experience new cultures, history, and understand the world in better ways with virtual reality, augmented reality, and wearables. Teachers are using these technologies to send learners on virtual field trips or getting students to keep track of their steps, cardio, and health with fitness bands. These technologies help engage learners by providing sensory learning and sparking curiosity and imagination. For your next classes, go beyond getting students to read and learn only from worksheets and books. Integrate virtual reality, augmented reality, or wearables to create meaningful learning experiments for students. Below is a slide presentation (free to download) followed by bookmarks filled with activities and resources.
Get your copy of The 30 Goals for Teachers and Learning to Go.
Ideas and Resources
- Yes, you can afford a few wearables or Google Cardboards in your class.
- Set up stations or a cart that is part of a rotation. Example- reading station then a map exploration station of the place you read about then the Google Cardboard station where you visit the location in virtual reality.
- Crowdfunding– Many sites will allow you to raise funds for a project by asking people around the world for small donations. Try raisingfunds via Donors Choose, Adopt a Classroom, Go Fund Me, Pledge Cents, Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Useed, Class Wish and Digital Wish.
- Grants– You can apply for grants like this teacher did to get her Fitbits. Try WeAreTeachers, GrantGopher, or NaNoWrimo.
- Pilot programs– Often big companies like MicroSoft or Verizon will want to run pilot programs worldwide and provide your school with tons of their devices.
- With Google Cardboard you can get students to travel to different countries or sites and introduce them to various cultures using virtual reality.
- The Google Cardboard app for iOS and Android has different virtual reality adventures to explore nature and the world.
- Get resources, help and ideas in the Google Cardboard Teacher Community.
- The NY Times has two virtual reality nature and environment experiences.
- Teachers can download the free Google Expeditions Android app and take their students on virtual reality field trips around the world.
- Your students will enjoy the Google Spotlight virtual reality YouTube stories.
- Explore museums with virtual reality or Google cardboard. Learn more in this article.
- Get students moving with augmented reality.
- Apps like AR Soccer require students to work in pairs to kick a virtual ball. Check for other AR sports students can play in class on your mobile device.
- The most popular free AR game right now is PokemonGo (iOS/Android). Soon PokemonGo will have a wristband that will vibrate when a Pokemon is nearby.
- Ingress is another free iOS/Android AR game.
- Students can learn by coloring and bringing characters to life with Quiver.
- Students can create their own augmented reality experiences with Layar, Aurasma, and Blippar.
- For more ideas, check out this awesome AR chart of resources and activities on the Engage Their Minds blog.
- If your budget can afford it, get students moving with Apple Watches or other wearable technologies like Kapture, the Narrative Clip, the Fitbit, Jawbone, Xiaomi, or the Myo.
- Check out this list of educational apps for the Apple Watch.
- Check out this awesome Pinterest board of Apple Watches.
- Check out this post with ideas on how to use the fitbit for learning.
- Check out these hashtags to find more resources- #AR, #GoogleCardboard, #virtualreality, #VR, #AugmentedReality, #Wearables, #WearableTech, and #AppleWatch.
Bookmarks
Augmented Reality, by shellyterrell
VR, by shellyterrell
Wearables, by shellyterrell
If you enjoyed these ideas, you may want to get your copy of The 30 Goals for Teachers or my $5.99 ebook, Learning to Go, which has digital/mobile activities for any device and editable/printable handouts and rubrics.
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