Augmented reality is closer than you think. Our mobile devices already have common features, such as GPS location and built-in cameras and microphones, that serve as gateways to augmented reality (AR) content and experiences that render physical places, spaces, and objects in novel ways. Although students commonly use mobile devices to consume media, conduct internet searches, and read and send text messages, AR apps extend the reach of those devices by enabling children to view and interact with layered, multimedia content in conjunction with physical spaces and objects (think Snapchat lenses and Pokémon Go). Students’ simultaneous engagement with virtual content and physical artifacts enables place-based and contextualized learning. AR creation software also enables children and teachers to create virtual augmented content (with or without coding), allowing learners to synthesize and represent ideas in new ways. These approaches can be useful in teaching procedural thinking, critical inquiry, and problem-solving while also activating a sense of curiosity about the spaces students routinely inhabit.  

AR content is available from many sources for use in a variety of subjects. For example, NASA offers Spacecraft AR or 3D apps that project interactive models of spacecrafts onto any flat surface. Learners can explore the crafts and their missions into space. On the digital library site OER Commons, technology integrator/librarian Chris Barnabei designed a parabolic challenge that uses the GeoGebra AR app for students to explore how the quadratic equation affects an augmented, projected parabola’s shape. National Geographic designed an AR-enabled cover (via Instagram) with which students can explore the projected climate of 12 cities in 50 years. Then there’s DisruptED, which provides early readers with physical books and an AR app to augment the reading experience by introducing virtual multimedia content within a place-based and object-based (static book) context. Children point a mobile device’s camera over the book, and virtual information in the form of 3D objects is layered on the screen in a way that allows readers to simultaneously see the digitally augmented information and the physical book’s page, text, or pictures.  

Similar to DisruptED, CleverBooks provides workbooks or worksheets from which students can launch AR content using the CleverBooks app. Google Expeditions has AR content, such as dinosaurs, sharks, volcanoes, space shuttles, and more. For the anatomy-minded, Virtuali-Tee enables students to examine augmented circulatory, respiratory, and digestive systems by directing a device’s camera on a T-shirt. History teachers can try San Antonio-based Experience Real History, which uses AR to bring historical sites and events to life. Quiver Education even provides 3D coloring experiences as a form of edutainment. 

While these examples provide teachers with pre-designed AR material, educators can also create their own augmented reality that positions students as active explorers in the learning process. For example, educational researchers created School Scene Investigators (SSI) in which students investigate an augmented mystery called “The Case of the Stolen Score Sheets.” Students collaboratively identify the mystery’s culprit by using an augmented app set within a forensic science narrative that plays out in the physical space of a school. They scan QR codes with a mobile device’s camera to gather augmented clues and evidence to solve the mystery. Thoughtful integration of AR can result in a powerful transformation of the learning environment and enable learning to move beyond the walls of a singular classroom. Although SSI was situated in the school environment, the AR science lesson, “Mystery at the Lake,” collaboratively created by educational researchers and teachers, took place at a local lake near a school. In this example, student investigators equipped with tablets explored a local lake to uncover causes of a decline in the lake’s mallard ducks population. Instead of using QR codes, “Mystery at the Lake” took advantage of GPS location services on the device to present information to students as they walked into target locations, which triggered the reveal of virtual content (text, diagrams, videos) on screens through the tablet’s camera. Such location-based AR technologies allow students to test place-based hypotheses about the environment by viewing location-sensitive information.  

Understandably, many teachers may not have time to collaborate or independently create these ambitious, custom AR learning experiences. Yet, educators and students can become AR content creators. For example, Spanish language learners have created AR storybooks for beginning language learners. Middle schoolers have created an AR campus map of their school campus. Learners and teachers can use the AR application Metaverse to build AR games, scavenger hunts, and memes. Zappar offers tools to create both simple and complex AR. Like other AR tools, Zappar displays virtual information after someone scans an object or enters a location-sensitive AR space. Apple’s new AR technologies, such as lidar (light detection and ranging) scanning, with 5G are on the horizon to support real-time, precise, and collaborative uses of AR. For now, students can also use tools like ARIS, the tool used to create SSI, to design AR games that include storylines and the ability to embed player decision-making.  

Educators must use their instructional, learning, or curricular needs in the classroom to guide the appropriate adoption of these technologies, whether they choose pre-developed AR, teacher-developed AR, and/or student-developed AR. As mobile platforms grow in sophistication, AR technologies will continue to enable teachers to design innovations that engage students and ultimately shift the ways in which students see, interact, and learn in the world around them.  

Augmented Reality Best Practices 

• Consider how AR positions learners as either a consumer or creator and what learning goal(s) they are working toward. 
• Weigh the technical advantages of a given AR application against real-life classroom constraints or technology access. 
• Evaluate technical software, hardware, and connectivity requirements. 
• Design AR-integrated lessons in equitable ways, such as ensuring culturally relevant content, offering AR experiences to all subgroups of students (not just gifted), and considering language, physical, socio-emotional, and cognitive barriers to participation. 
• Limit GPS-based AR to outdoor locations. 
• Pre-plan classroom management strategies using pairs and trios to support collaborative learning. 

Augmented Reality Beginner Resources 

• Follow the #AR and #ARVRinEDU hashtags on Twitter 
• Add this Pinterest board http://bit.ly/pinterest_ar 
• Visit Ann Marie Carrier’s AR Tools and Resources at edutech4u.com/vr-ar-resources 
• Explore Kathy Schrock’s Guide to AR at schrockguide.net/arvr.html 

Joan E. Hughes (@techedges), Ph.D., and Jason Rosenblum, Ph.D., are faculty in the Learning Technologies program at UT Austin’s College of Education, where Daeun Hong recently earned her master’s of arts.