eTwinning and Agumented Reality

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In October Arjana Blazic from Croatia  and Bart Verswijvel from Belgium were  hosts in the learning event Agumented eTwinning Reality. As they explain:

“Augmented reality means that the user watches a real scene or image which is augmented or enhanced by the computer with additional information. The information added to the scene or image can be textual, graphical, aural or visual.  As opposed to virtual reality where the user is fully immersed into the virtual environment, in augmented reality the user is fully aware of the real world and is part of it. The virtual images that the user sees or sounds that he can hear are combined with his real view of the environment and it is this fusion of virtual and real that creates augmented reality.”

Until recently the virtual and real world were separated. Nowadays, as more and more people use social networks where they communicate with people who can physically be close to them or very far from them, along with the improvement and the widespread use of mobile technologies, the boundaries between the real and the virtual world are not so strict any more. 

Augmented reality bridges these two worlds and creates a reality that is enhanced or augmented. Some researchers define augumented reality as a system that has the following characteristics:

- a combination of virtual and real worlds
- real-time interaction
- 3D registration of virtual and real objects.(…)

You might think that you haven't use AR in your teaching, but if you have used QR codes then you already have a basic idea how AR functions. While QR codes act as hyperlinks to information or data, AR goes a step further and makes the user interact with the information and data or manipulate it.

AR can be used in education in two different ways: so that educators use already developed AR materials, or they can encourage their students to design their own AR learning experiences. The latter is certainly more demanding and time-consuming, but its benefits by far outweigh its drawbacks. By learning by doing students will develop their higher-order thinking skills, they will learn how to solve problems, how to think critically, how to create their own learning experiences and how to evaluate their own and their peers' work. Creating an AR product is challenging and can be messy, but it is worth it, because during their work on a new unique product students will experience a new rewarding learning opportunity.

Augmented eTwinning Reality

In this learning event the participants will learn how to make their teaching and learning practices interactive and connected to the real-world environment. They will learn how to enhance standard educational material with augmented reality applications that will motivate students to become actively engaged in the learning process and enable them to discover new ways of interactive learning and create their own augmented learning material. Special emphasis will be put on the implementation of outdoor learning in combination with art and the media. Twitter will be used throughout the learning event. The teachers will have the opportunity to try out the activities with their students and implement them in their eTwinning projects.