Expand your Imagination! The Use of AR in Teaching

Expand your Imagination! The Use of AR in Teaching. 

Do your students find it hard to understand real-world situations? How can you expand their imaginations to the real world? Understanding real-world situations can indeed be challenging for students, especially when they are presented with complex concepts or unfamiliar contexts. To expand their imaginations and bridge the gap between classroom learning and real-world application, there are some great tools to minimize their learning anxieties and enhance your teaching qualities! 

Explore WWF Free Rivers 

Explore WWR Free Rivers is a ready-made AR application. It includes geographical patterns and their related information to bring awareness of how environments work and affect our lives. Teachers can utilize the existing models and environmental information to educate students about vocabulary, contexts, and even topics, which relate to geography, ecology, and conservation. It allows classroom activities to be more engaging and improves students’ understanding of environmental concepts. With the provided information, students will be more thought-provoking toward the living environments and take action to preserve and cherish the place where they live. In this case, students do not merely enhance their English proficiency levels but develop civic literacy. 

(iOS: https://apps.apple.com/tw/app/wwf-free-rivers/id1349935575)

(Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.worldwildlife.FreeRiver&hl=zh_TW&gl=US&pli=1 )

AR Makr

If the above application does not satisfy your need of teaching, you may try out this one: AR Makr. AR Makr is a self-built AR application. It provides flexibility for you to build your own AR mode. Of course it offers some samples but most of the time you can develop your own models, which you can use readily in the classroom. At the same time, you can also ask your students to build up those models and create a story-telling activity. It helps students to expand creativity and generate original stories to express their opinions. More surprisingly, these self-made AR models can be animated. They can move around the places and make the models look alive. It can be very playful if you use it in classroom activities. There is one unfortunate issue, though. You can only use Apple products to run the application. 

(iOS:: https://apps.apple.com/tw/app/ar-makr/id1434081130)

Makar

If you are also thinking of building up an AR model but you do not have any Apple products, here is another AR application: Makar. Makar is one of the greatest teaching tools for teachers. It contains a great number of AR models and collaborates with other applications such as Google Maps. Teachers can build a great adventure for students to explore their living communities and create contents to introduce those beauties around them. Students will be more engaging in learning their neighborhoods and generate great contents to show their talents in hands-on activities and language proficiency levels. If you do not have an account, don’t worry, you can find it in our Dah Hsian Seetoo Library and go to explore its magic. (https://dhl.lib.nccu.edu.tw/p/412-1001-86.php?Lang=zh-tw)

(iOS:: https://apps.apple.com/tw/app/makar-arvr%E5%89%B5%E4%BD%9C%E5%B9%B3%E5%8F%B0/id1238600928)

(Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mifly.MakarViewerApp&hl=zh_TW&gl=US)

All these AR applications are trying to make our students learn engagingly and picture how to use languages outside the classroom. It is not merely a language teaching activity but to expand and explore their boundaries out of their creativity and imagination. Hope these AR applications can help you make your teaching more playful and joyful. If you have built up something, please feel free to share with us~