I read an article called, Alien Contact!: Exploring teacher
implementation of an augmented reality curricular unit. This paper reports on findings from a
five-teacher, exploratory case study, critically observing their implementation
of a technology-intensive, augmented reality (AR) mathematics curriculum unit,
along with its paper-based control. The unit itself was intended to promote
multiple proportional-reasoning strategies with urban, public, middle school
students. The researcher used lesson transcripts, observation field notes, and
teacher electronic journals, along with pre-/post-interviews and
pre-observations to examine differences in implementation between the AR and
Control versions of the unit. The author observed less mathematical substance
and more adaptations to structure and quality during the AR implementations. In
addition to uncovering some significant limitations with AR as it is currently
utilized, this study also addresses gaps in the technology literature. Criticism
of technology literature includes the fact that it does not consider the
effects of teacher and curricular factors on technology-based curricular
interventions. By closely examining the implementation of one augmented-reality
based, mathematics curriculum, this research provides insights about how and
why such curricula become transformed in the classroom.
I am narrowing my focus every day by reading research. I know that I want to know more about how AR
has been implemented in the K-12 classroom, particularly the younger students
in lower middle and elementary schools.
Augmented reality is super cool, and has a lot of possible educational implications. Imagine going on a field trip, say to a civil war battlefield, and being able to see annotations of historical points on your iPad. A pretty powerful tool, particularly if you could make it into a scavenger hunt, or some such thing.
ReplyDeleteOn an unrelated note, every time I hear the word "Augmented," I remember the computer game "Deus Ex." Not exactly the best-case scenario for augmentation, but still interesting.