How has the evolution of technology changed the form of education in recent years? New features and applications are provided to the teacher to design a more interactive and experiential teaching. Augmented Reality is becoming increasingly popular in the pedagogical sciences. Augmented Reality means the interaction of the real world with digital objects and digital information, giving the impression that they coexist in the same space (Azuma et al., 2011). Specifically, a camera scans natural indicators or objects and performs an action, such as viewing the object in 3D or a video and providing information.
Students can now access the educational process through technological devices such as smartphones and tablets. Their use in educational structures, due to their portability, high social interaction with the user and their independent functionality, facilitate the introduction of Augmented Reality applications in teaching. In this way students participate in external on-site observations and other learning activities. Also, the ability to determine the location at any time on mobile devices allows students to experience the learning process and promotes collaboration between them (Akçayır et al., 2017).
Through Augmented Reality, students are able to analyze and experience events and phenomena that would make it impossible for them to come into contact with the real world, thus more fully understanding the content of each lesson. In fact, the interdisciplinarity of learning is promoted, because it is possible for the teacher to connect the cognitive objects by combining and projecting information in an understandable and direct way. In addition, children are more actively involved in the learning process, as their digital stimuli stimulate interest and develop their creativity. Augmented Reality technologies help students explore the real world and virtual objects, such as text, video, and images, which are complementary to learners’ discovery of the real environment (Wu et al., 2013).
Such a modern form of teaching shows more efficient results than the traditional one, since students -with the teacher’s guidance- discover and “build” knowledge in a pleasant, playful and more complete way, with the result that they become their “property”.
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- Azuma, R., Billinghurst, M., & Klinker, G. (2011). Special section on mobile augmented reality. Computers & Graphics
- Akçayır, M., Akçayır, G., Pektaş, H. M., & Ocak, M. A. (2017). Augmented reality in science laboratories: The effects of augmented reality on university students’ laboratory skills and attitudes toward science laboratories. Computers in Human Behavior
- Wu, H. K., Lee, S. W. Y., Chang, H. Y., & Liang, J. C. (2013). Current status, opportunities and challenges of augmented reality in education. Computers & Education
