Education
The educatory process has changed a lot compared to the education that was 10 years ago. Social networks, powerful phones, a huge amount of digital information, all these factors have led to the fact that education competes with the entertainment industry and it is more and more difficult to ignore this. Students no longer want to read boring text and look at static pictures from textbooks. They want interactivity, movements, innovation. Augmented and virtual reality technology can be the next step in the development of the educatory process, satisfying all the needs of the students.
Augmented Reality in Education
Jigspace
One of the most popular augmented reality apps for the educatory process is the Jigspace app. This is an aggregator app that allows you to study the operation of various devices in augmented reality. For example, choosing “Lock” you can see an ordinary lock 3D model and the process of its opening with a key. The lock 3D model is represented in section, so anyone can figure out how the key opens the lock and why each lock needs its own unique key. At the time of writing the article, there are 20 objects in the app, among which you can find the Earth’s core, rockets, satellites, chemical elements, natural phenomena, coffee machines, and much more. An important feature of this app is the fact that everyone can make his own 3D process and use it in the app for his own purposes.
Famous Fossil
This app can help everyone to travel to the era of dinosaurs and see with his or her own eyes the creatures that lived on our planet millions of years ago. The project is only for iOS devices, as it contains high-poly models and ARKit technology developed by Apple. This project shows that you can create almost any event from the past with very high accuracy in augmented reality.
ARLoon Chemistry in Augmented Reality
This app shows chemical elements models, as well as the possibility of combining these elements in augmented reality. This exciting interactive app will help to attract students’ attention, focus their attention and make the educatory process more interesting.
Sky Walk
A wonderful app for astronomy lovers and those who are fond of the space theme. It allows to see the location of stars at any date and time, to see where the sun will be located at any point of time and to study the constellations directly in the sky in augmented reality. Developed on the basis of a huge database, this app can track the user’s location and show the location of space objects in the sky even in the daytime.
SketchAR
A great app for those who want to learn drawing simple pictures. SketchAR is an app that uses augmented reality to transfer the desired image to the surface, allowing the user to outline the highlighted contours. Thus, the app is a new way to copy images and sketches to any surface. Due to its ease of use, this app is used in a very non-standard way – users transfer sketches to T-shirts and other clothes and immediately see how different prints will look on clothes.
Virtual Reality in Education
WRENCH VR
The Wrench virtual reality app will help you to understand the car construction, learn how to diagnose all elements of the car, and even show how the process of assembling and disassembling the engine takes place. High level of graphics, accuracy and compliance with real guidelines, all these features make the app ultimate for anyone who wants to understand the construction of cars and other technical equipment.
Hold the World
Hold the World was designed specifically to draw people’s attention to natural science. The guide is the legendary historian Sir David Attenborough, who conducts a virtual reality tour of the famous London Natural History Museum. Hold the World is a genuine one-on-one interactive learning environment. Your own guide is ready to tell a story about any item that you pay attention to. The Natural History Museum has hundreds of objects, ranging from rare fossils of dinosaur to butterflies and blue whales.
Disaster Preparedness with VR
An interesting example of the use of virtual reality (VR) for education is the topic of public awareness of disaster preparedness. Often, because of our stubbornness or simple laziness, we ignore expert warnings and refuse to prepare for the real consequences of a natural disaster. Studies show that emergency training in virtual reality significantly increases users’ awareness and makes them more prepared for such kind of disaster.
Munich Reinsurance America, Inc. is one of the largest insurance companies in the USA has developed a virtual reality environment to demonstrate to residents of cities with an increased chance of a tornado apparition the destructive power of such a natural disaster. Their goal was to safely, but to the full extent allow the user to feel the power and destruction of a real tornado. Everything starts with from the person sitting in the living room when the channel starts broadcasting breaking tornado news.
As the tornado comes to his region, he sits and watches how it affects his surroundings. He later loses a TV signal and electricity. The audio track is filled with the sounds of wind and storms. The app ends up when he faces a terrible tornado result. His house is destroyed and everything is gone.
Diagnostics and planning
Before the surgery, surgeons should obtain the most accurate image of the anatomical structures of the body part that undergoes the surgery. Researchers at the University of Basel have now developed a technology that uses computed tomography data to create real-time 3D images for use in a virtual environment. This solution allows you to conduct trainings based on the real patient problems, simulate diseases in virtual reality. The project is actively used by students to conduct test surgeries and test their own knowledge.
Conclusion
The active development of augmented and virtual reality technologies gives new opportunities for students, showing the things that was previously considered inaccessible. To be in the Earth’s core, to see the work of complex mechanisms from the inside, to combine oxygen and carbon molecules – this is not a complete list of opportunities that were unavailable in the 20th century. Nevertheless, despite the attractiveness, these technologies just start to develop, since the creation of such solutions requires significant financial investments.
