On June 27 and 28, Yann Deval, Xinyu Huang, Darlene Armenta, and Fridolin Wild, on behalf of PAL, was teaching secondary school students and their Computer Science teachers/teaching assistants how to develop their own Mixed Reality application. The workshop is part of the STEAM-AR project, a university funded impact accelerator, aiming to foster student engagemetn in STEAM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Maths). When integrated well, AR has potential to support classes with stunningly engaging holographic content, rendering lesson contents more apprehendable, while providing an unprecedented sense of immediacy. New and highly interactive AR lesson support can help students build passion towards STEAM subjects.
At the Performance Augmentation Lab, we have developed over the past three years novel production and performance tools for AR lesson content, which help trainers and teachers in creating their own AR learning experiences. With the AR-STEAM project, we seek to replicate the success we have in industry and help secondary schools in Oxford (and beyond) to upgrade their tech for STEAM subjects (including the arts!) to include Augmented Reality, building a pathway for local students to benefit from such technological advance. From our research, we know that students find Augmented Reality learning very stimulating, engaging, and easy to use.We find that AR can unfold its magic especially in STEAM subjects, where abstract and difficult content can be presented in a more direct way. 15 students and four teachers participated in the activity, a short video recording with the results will released in due course.
Mixed Reality Workshop for Year 10/11/6th Form from Fridolin Wild on Vimeo.