A newly published white paper investigates the pedagogical theory and use cases for deploying mixed reality in the classroom.

It is easy to get excited about the possibilities the Mixed Reality spectrum brings to education. Humans are essentially programmed to learn best through experience, and that is just what immersive technologies enable: we’re not just learning it, we’re living it.

Humans are essentially programmed to learn best through experience, and that is just what immersive technologies enable
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And exploring a few of those possibilities is what I had the chance to do when I collaborated with Microsoft Education to write the Immersive Experiences in Education white paper we’ve published at the ISTE 2019 conference a few weeks ago.

Methodology

Now, I’m very much a technology enthusiast. I’ve been called a futurist, evangelist, influencer, all those really annoying trendy buzzwords… But at heart I am also an educator. I worked in academia, I taught English as a second language, I’ve mentored people and for many years I worked in the EdTech sector, so I speak truthfully when I say I’m forever in awe of teachers and mindful of the importance of education in society.

Mixed Reality technology is amazing but is it really useful to educators? Does it actually influence learning outcomes, and if so, how?
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This is why when Microsoft approached me to collaborate with them in researching and writing this white paper, I wanted to take a step back and ensure that we weren’t just flashing a shiny pretty tech trinket around. The technology is amazing, there’s no doubt about that, but is it really useful to educators? Does it actually influence learning outcomes, and if so, how?

When deploying any technology in the classroom, success depends on engaging educators and building a responsive feedback loop that prioritizes learning outcomes rather than the technology itself
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Through our research and interviews, a picture of the concrete pedagogical benefits of using Mixed Reality in the classroom emerged
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I was keen to ensure that our methodology really reflected this educator-led focus as much as possible, and was happy to find that the team at Microsoft Education very much shared that vision.

The paper cross-referenced pedagogical theory with case studies obtained through personalized email interviews with teachers, students, researchers, and technologists who have successfully deployed such technology within various learning environments and contexts, and the bulk of my time was indeed spent on an extensive literature review and on gathering and processing the data from those testimonials to try and gleam insights that could be useful for educators.

I will let you judge for yourselves whether we’ve succeeded – you can read and download a free copy of the white paper here –  but our guiding principle was very much that when deploying technology in the classroom, success is dependent on engagement with educators, and on building a responsive feedback loop that prioritizes learning outcomes rather than the technology itself.

The paper cross-referenced pedagogical theory with case studies of teachers, students, researchers, and technologists who have deployed such technology
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Through our research and interviews, an overall picture of the concrete pedagogical benefits of using Mixed Reality in the classroom did start to emerge, and although further research is certainly needed and I wouldn’t dream to claim that this is the definitive document on the subject, it manages, in my humble opinion, to tease out some really important findings and a lot of interesting questions. I, for one, always think the most successful research is the one where you end up with a lot more questions than when you started, which is why I hope to hear lots of questions from the community (you can always send a tweet my way @alicebonasio or connect on LinkedIn). Below are some of our key research findings:

Immersive digital simulations allow learners to absorb knowledge within a realistic context through experiential learning

Our research indicated that the most effective educational experiences often involve mastering tasks within context of personally relevant, realistic situations. Situated learning in well-designed digital environments actually leads to the replication of those behaviours in the real world.

The key differentiator in using Mixed Reality is that it seems to dramatically increase the rate of transfer – in other words, our ability to apply and adapt learning to different real-world situations.It Mixed Reality facilitates transfer by simulating realistic scenarios within specific pedagogical contests. It literally can bring a curriculum to life for students. This means we not only can create more effective learning experiences, but also expand the range of available experiences, since we can simulate scenarios that would be too difficult, too expensive, or too dangerous for students to experience in real life.

Mixed Reality helps to prevent Cognitive overload.

This second finding probably comes as no surprise to most educators, in that trying to visualize and assimilate large amounts of complex information is HARD. It can literally trigger a bottleneck within the limited working memory of the brain, and we soon become tired of it. Attention and interest lags, and it becomes harder to engage students in the subject.

Our research indicates that the most effective educational experiences involve mastering tasks within personally relevant, realistic context
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Mixed Reality, however, can help reduce this cognitive load by allowing learners to directly visualize, manipulate, and interact with complex structures, so that the brain is not so busy trying to visualize the data, but instead engaged in understanding, assimilating, recalling, and applying it.

Test scores among students using immersive technologies improved by as much as 22%

Now, those two findings we looked at are crucial in improving learning outcomes such as test scores, increased performance of skills-based tasks, abtract reasoning, and critical thinking. It also had positive effects on retention of knowledge.

Most interestingly, however, we found indications that this technology was particularly helpful in improving learning conditions for learners with conditions such as dyslexia, autism, and ADHD.

Mixed Reality can help reduce the cognitive load on the brain by allowing learners to visualize, manipulate, and interact with complex structures
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Here, immersive technologies have been shown to assist previously low-achieving students in overcoming learning challenges to the point where there was no longer any statistical difference in test scores between them and high achieving students.

Mixed Reality 
in the classroom fosters self-directed learning

Teachers reported that using MR in the classroom promoted a more inquiry-based environment that maximized learning opportunities by instilling a greater sense of autonomy, encouraging students to creatively engage with the subject beyond the pedagogical task at hand.

“Students report a greater understanding and appreciation for the development of VR content after engaging in 3D animation and/or game design projects. In particular, students are able to see the connection between the engineering of a virtual world, and the virtual world’s role as an element of digital storytelling.” Paul Turnbull 
President Mid-Pacific Institute

Co-created content fosters a more meaningful connection by generating something in which the student has a personal emotional investment. Extended experiences that immerse students in rich contexts with strong narratives, authentic practices, and links to real-world outcomes are what truly unleash the transformational power of immersive experiences.

Co-created content fosters a more meaningful connection by generating something in which the student has a personal emotional investment
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“We led a lesson with an English class, where students designed a safe and scary space, then were able to experience them both in Virtual Reality. The lesson brought technology in the context of an English lesson by creating a spark for students to translate into their writing exercises.” Cody Karutz
Founder and CEO of Blue Trot

Like all technologies adopted within a pedagogical classroom setting, MR should remain supplementary to in-person academic programming, allowing for human relations and interactions to ultimately guide the social- emotional learning experience.For me, the biggest takeaway from this is that for Mixed Reality to be effectively implemented in the classroom we must ensure that the technology is integrated into pedagogical theory and best practice.

Immersive technologies have been shown to assist previously low-achieving students in overcoming learning challenges
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Tech Trends offers a broad range of Digital Consultancy services to guide companies, individuals and brands in effectively leveraging existing and emerging technologies in their business strategy.

Alice Bonasio is a VR and Digital Transformation Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Report: Immersive Experiences in Education appeared first on Tech Trends.

Virtual Reality Technology doesn’t have to be disruptive, and teachers are already using it to bring lessons to life

You’re on your way to Mars – says my Virtual Reality lesson prompt. This particular VR journey starts with a look around a spacecraft hangar and eventually takes me to the surface of the red planet itself. But I’m actually sitting in the San Francisco offices of Nearpod, an EdTech company that has already introduced millions of K12 students to this type of experience.

Over 3 million kids log into our platform every month, and about 60% of those have accessed VR content, Guido Kovalskys, Co-founder and CEO of Nearpod tells me.

Which is impressive, especially considering they only launched the VR feature just over six months ago.

The Virtual Reality experience doesn’t actually replace a teacher’s traditional lesson plan; it adds visual elements to it at the right moments to increase engagement and drive up comprehension and learning,” he explains. “Research shows that student engagement drives better learning outcomes, but it has to be meaningful engagement, relevant to what you’re learning at that moment. The lessons take longer to put together than the actual VR content, because there’s a lot of pedagogy and planning involved.

Nearpod has introduced millions of K12 students to the Virtual Reality experience
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Those lessons transport students to locations ranging from the Egyptian pyramids to Easter Island caves and the marine biomes of the Great Barrier Reef. In a way, it’s similar to Google Expeditions, but with a much stronger emphasis on lesson plan structure surrounding the content.

An example of how that works in practice: One French teacher recently used the VR feature to create a scavenger hunt when he took his class to a field-trip at a local museum. Students looked for Impressionist works on loan from Paris museums, and whenever they found one, they could look through their VR goggles see that same painting in its original setting in France. The Nearpod platform then let the teacher assign related homework where students wrote in French about their favourite discoveries.

What we do is essentially help teachers quickly create learning experiences for their students in class, using their own devices or the school-supplied gear. Being cross-platform eliminates the need for special hardware, so a teacher can control a lesson directly from their iPhone, and integrate into apps such as Google for Education if they want. Says Kovalsky.

Every single day 55 million kids in the US go to school, and the core of what they do is spend time with teachers in the classroom, that’s not changing any time soon. So we looked at ways of enhancing that experience. In a classroom where you have one instructor and lots of students, how do you make learning as personal as possible without losing the social aspect? We started by creating a type of interactive PowerPoint that let teachers share content not to the projector, but to student’s individual devices. That way, a teacher can control their lesson from their smartphone, and students can interact with that content live in their hands, responding, adding their own notes, etc.

To bring immersive VR into that equation, they studied what the minimum viable experience was that could be produced at a relatively low cost:

Our challenge was how to bring the best aspects of VR to the classroom without having to invest $600 per student plus $1000 for a computer that has to be attached to the device. That’s not going to be realistic for most schools, so we looked at what was already being used today – smartphones, Chromebooks, and tablets, and worked on making those more immersive using tools like 360 video.

Nearpod are targeting a market worth at least 12 billion dollars by the latest estimates. They operate on a freemium model that combines selling licences to schools and charging a few dollars for individual lesson plans, but a lot of the content is freely available.

The pedigree of investors betting in that vision is more impressive than the actual amount it raised – $9.2 million so far. These include the Emerson Collective (founded by Steve Jobs’ widow Laurene Powell Jobs), Salesforce CEO  Marc Benioff, and Zynga, which also hosts Nearpod in its impressive San Francisco building. One of those investors, Ben Wirz from the Knight foundation, says that what makes the company’s proposition so exciting is how it brings best practices from consumer mobile media into the classroom. Now they’re applying the same bottom-up strategy to VR.

Our challenge was how to bring the best aspects of VR to the classroom without having to invest $600 per student
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Although Kovalskys agrees that VR is about to hit the mass market in areas such as gaming, he sees K12 education taking another 5-7 years to implement it meaningfully across the board.

Schools are naturally very conservative, and the system makes it difficult to scale up until the research behind it is proven. We get concerns such as ‘will this make our kids dizzy,’ does it amount to just more screen time,’ and ‘is it just Silicon Valley pushing this?’ We’re still trying to prove to some people that mobile devices can be more than a distraction in the classroom, so it’s a long-term project.

He has no fears about the technology catching up with demand, however, as he’s already seeing a dramatic rise in accessibility in the year since they started offering VR lessons: “Six months ago you needed about an hour of editing to stitch together every minute of 360 video you shot, but that’s no longer the case now. The hardware has also become a lot more affordable. We started out with Cardboard but now have our own gear, which is similar to what Samsung offers and provides a fantastic user experience.”

Kovalskys sees those experiences as the ultimate antidote to lesson boredom:

We’re going from kids looking at 2×4 pictures of corals to literally being immersed into a coral reef that reacts to their movements, but it goes beyond just visual immersion. The fact that students can control what they look at gives a personalized feel of exploration to their experience. We’ve seen the sense of wonder, excitement and energy that it generates in them, and the possibilities of what that can achieve are virtually limitless.

This article was originally published in EdTech Digest

We’ve seen the sense of wonder, excitement and energy that VR generates in students
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Find out how to leverage VR/AR/MR in your enterprise with Tech Trends Virtual Reality Consultancy services

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post  Exploring the New Frontiers of Classroom Virtual Reality appeared first on Tech Trends.

Teachers are increasingly embracing technology in the classroom, and one platform is helping them do this.

“When you hear that the average textbook in an under-funded school in the US dates back to 1989 and still refers to the USSR, it really drives home the importance of teacher-created resources in the classroom,” Says Tom Glover, Communications Director at TES Global.

Founded in 1910, TES can hardly lay claim to being the new kids on the education block, but they are nevertheless taking the lead in some important innovations in that space. They are home to the world’s largest online community of teachers, with 8 million registered users, who collectively downloaded over 200 million classroom resources in 2015.

The average textbook in an under-funded school in the US dates back to 1989 and still refers to the USSR
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This represents a significant shift, showing how teachers are embracing technology, specially when it comes to sourcing their lesson materials. TES conducted a survey amongst 3,000 teachers in 2015 found that 69% felt that those sort of community-curated resources were more relevant and useful than textbooks.

Teachers are embracing technology, specially when it comes to sourcing their lesson materials
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Global engagement and demand for shared classroom resources is soaring, with the platform currently attracting around a million downloads per day. TES are now launching new services such as a blended teacher training service in the UK which also supports recruitment.

Global engagement and demand for shared classroom resources is soaring
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The plan is to continue growing globally, specially in markets such as the US and Australia, where they already have about 75% of teachers signed up to the platform. As big as they are, however, Glover stresses that there is a lot of room left to grow, as there are around 70 million teachers worldwide that could benefit from access to such platforms.

there are around 70 million teachers worldwide that could benefit from access to platforms such as TES
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Embracing digital technology is therefore crucial in remaining relevant to teachers, and he marvels at how much the landscape has changed since his own time as a student:

 

“The technology I remember most clearly from my school days in the UK was the BBC Micro computer. It was built by Acorn for the BBC and was adopted by most schools in the UK during the 1980s which completely changed Acorn’s fortunes. Educational games like Granny’s Garden stick in the memory, and also Elite which had quite a cult following.”

Education applications for virtual reality will have an extremely positive impact on classroom engagement
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“I think the education applications for virtual reality are hugely exciting and will have an extremely positive impact on engagement of students in the classroom all over the world, creating real and exciting learning experiences. The costs of something like Google Expeditions (A Virtual Reality education initiative running off Google Cardboard) shows that this doesn’t have to be reserved for the rich. Fundamentally though, I think that education in the future and the technology we use, should be teacher-led. They are the real experts in education and we should be led by them.”

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Building a Global Teaching Community appeared first on Tech Trends.

Storytelling can be a powerful engagement tool and medium to teach kids valuable digital and STEAM skills

A Tale Unfolds improves reading and writing through digital filmmaking projects
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“Back In primary school, we used a BBC computer and a roma robot every once in a blue moon. Seriously, that was as technical as it got!” laughs Dominic Traynor, CEO of the intriguingly named company A Tale Unfolds, which claims to radically improve reading and writing by combining traditional literacy teaching with digital filmmaking projects.

“Even in secondary school I don’t remember being really engaged in technology, but everything changed when I was about 16 and we first got the Internet at home. The idea that I could tap into a seemingly infinite amount of knowledge was mindblowing, and suddenly school seemed much less relevant. This is what sparked the wanderlust that dominated my twenties.”

The idea that I could tap into a seemingly infinite amount of knowledge was mindblowing
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Yet what Dominic came to realise – through his own personal experience of being a primary school teacher – was that school was far from irrelevant, and that technology would definitely need to play a part in keeping this new generation of Digital Natives engaged in the classroom.

Technology needs to play a part in keeping this new generation of Digital Natives engaged in the classroom.
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“It became increasingly obvious to me that young kids these days often find that there is a huge cultural difference between their everyday digital lives and the things they do in primary school. In the UK the National Curriculum is the holy book that schools adhere to. It doesn’t specify or recommend any technology, just skills and content. With teachers under increasing performance and time pressure, this encourages them to follow traditional schemes of work that have been around for years since they are tried and tested ways to fulfil the National Curriculum. However, this means that our digital native pupils are more disengaged than ever by an approach that bears no resemblance to the world around them.”

With teachers under increasing performance and time pressure, this encourages them to follow traditional schemes
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Often, that is due to the fact that the teacher, despite being a digital user themselves, does not know how to orchestrate something like a filmmaking project from start to finish combining different digital skills, platforms and apps. A Tale Unfolds works to bring digital skills involving filming, video editing, green screening, animating and audio recording into the literacy classroom in order to demonstrate to pupils that the ‘old school’ act of writing is still fundamental to creating outstanding video projects.”

The 'old school' act of writing is still fundamental to creating outstanding video projects
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Apart from lack of confidence in teaching technology, Dominic recognises the problem that teachers face enormous pressure to deliver academic results in the traditional areas of English and Maths, which can push back initiatives to teach technology and creative stills. That is actually a self-defeating paradox, however, as technology has the power to vastly improve those very skills:

“Our projects show teachers how they can achieve incredible academic results whilst engaging and motivating their pupils using basic technology. We bridge that gap between the National Curriculum and technology. Over the course of 6-10 weeks, students study 6 different genres of writing as well as writing, performing, filming and editing their very own adventure film. Then, at the end of our projects, schools host their very own film premiere to showcase their end product. This all provides a platform that brings meaning to the traditional literacy work the pupils do in class. It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved!”

Projects show teachers how they can achieve incredible academic results whilst engaging pupils using basic technology
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Despite being developed on a shoestring, their pilot had overwhelmingly positive feedback from schools, and they knew they were onto something when 1000 classrooms were reached between the pilot and the launch of the current resource. The company has since raised £65,000 through the Emerge Education accelerator programme and their investors, and has a sustainable Software-as-a-Service model where schools pay a subscription fee to access their resources and support. They favour an open and collaborative approach, where different technologies are mixed and matched to each project in order to bring learning alive for students.

They favour an open and collaborative approach, where different technologies are mixed and matched
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“We’re actually starting an online film festival. Connecting classrooms and creating a movement is the big vision and so we want to start showcasing the amazing work done by our schools to a wider audience. It’s hard to describe the feeling we get when a teacher tells us not only that our project has doubled literacy progress in their class, but that it has given them their teaching mojo back.”

But teachers often need support and training in making the best use of technology to fulfil the skills and content in the National Curriculum, so Dominic is working on putting together online training and accreditation courses so that teachers can develop their professional skills at the same time as teaching the film projects. The size of the commercial opportunity is interesting to say the least: In the UK alone, there are around 22,000 primary schools, and over 250,000 in the English-speaking world. We’re talking about a £700m market without even beginning to consider the possibilities around secondary schools or the TEFL sector.

Teachers often need support and training in making the best use of technology
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“The future of education is quite clearly digital. The opportunities that devices like tablets bring to learning in schools are incredible when used in the right way. Personalised learning and diagnostics are just two very obvious and hugely effective ways in which they can be benefit both pupils and teachers. However, I’m still a traditionalist at heart and would hate to see a decline in the physical act of writing, the pleasure of reading a real book and real human interaction in general. I don’t think that the use of technology in schools automatically leads to a decline in those things but it can be an easy trap to fall into. Training is absolutely key to making this digital revolution in schools a humane one. As long as schools can get that balance right, then this has the potential to improve society for the benefit of everyone.”

The future of education is quite clearly digital
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Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Telling Tales in The Classroom appeared first on Tech Trends.