What is the AR Toolkit for K-12 Educators?

This AR toolkit provides pedagogical goals for teachers to grasp the purpose of using AR within their classrooms. The toolkit is designed for our intended audience of K-12 educators who want to employ AR into their teaching, enrich the student learning experience, or are interested in how AR will impact teaching and learning in general. On this website, we provide information related to the aspects of:

• What AR technology is

• What you need to know before using AR in the classroom

• How to create AR learning environments to benefit classroom experiences

• How to use current AR applications

• References and guidance on available AR resources

• Pragmatic examples of AR lessons and the class planning templates that can help you get started quickly

With the increased diversity of K-12 classrooms across multiple academic subjects and various teaching contexts, we cannot prepare a one-size-fits-all solution to be used in the classroom. We designed this toolkit to broaden the K-12 educator's perspective on technological approaches in teaching and learning, to introduce AR in a simple and straightforward way, and to ultimately assist educators to implementing AR into their classrooms. Simultaneously, while enabling our audiences to conduct self-directed online learning, we also provide several Feedback discussion boards that support asynchronous communication.

The following learning strategies are recommended when diving into the content in the Augmented Reality Toolkit for K-12 Educators.

1. Keeping a Critical and Developmental Perspective

In the process of preparing this toolkit, we found that the application of AR in education is still in its infancy. It is not only because the technological expenditures for creating and maintaining a learning environment that incorporates AR for learning likely limits how widely the technology can be used, but also because the integration of AR into educational practice is still in the experimental stage. We can see that some pioneering AR educational platforms such as Cospaces and 3DBear are in the pilot stage, with much more development to occur before we can objectively decipher their level of quality. Given this, as educators, we need to keep a critical and developmental perspective to decipher AR technology and AR applications. Remember, there is no “silver bullet” for the implementation of AR in our classroom.

2. Keeping a Practice-based Approach

The toolkit serves as a guide and resource that could be used in teaching practices. We emphasize hands-on practice that ultimately allows you to deepen your understanding and acquire practical skills. We suggest a practice-based approach when exploring various AR applications and lesson plan suggestions. Installing AR applications, registering for a free account, and using tutorials are all good ways to overcome the fear of using a new technology. The more practice you have with AR, the more you will determine what impact the technology will bring to your students.

3. Keeping a Reflective Learning Approach

Please join the discussions on the Feedback or Sharing Your Ideas section of Create Your Own AR Experience page. We strongly suggest a reflective learning approach while exploring the website in order to maximize our understanding of AR and its applications. Reflective thinking and discussion help to reflect upon and assess course plans and outcomes, which assist with improving them further in the future. Constant reflection on what we have learned about AR in addition to exchanging our insights with each other, will accelerate our understanding as well as the development of our application skills.

Technology Requirements for AR

A computer, smartphone, and/or tablet is required to access AR applications and their content. Some applications will require a computer for you to construct the AR content. There are many diverse apps for AR for you to take into consideration on what is best correlated to your teaching practices and learning environment. This toolkit will provide you with the foundational knowledge for applying AR in your K-12 classrooms.

We have tried to focus on FREE AR apps. However, there are some that we have shared that do require a payment. Please also note some apps only work on IOS devices.