First-year medical students at Case Western Reserve now remotely using Microsoft HoloLens and HoloAnatomy® software from 185 locations in U.S. and Canada. For the first time, instead of working together on campus, all 185 first-year students from Case Western Reserve University’s School of Medicine are using Microsoft HoloLens and the university’s signature HoloAnatomy mixed-reality software, despite the physical separation created by the COVID-19 pandemic. The remote-learning application of HoloAnatomy that began in late March is believed to be the first of its kind in the world and the latest advance in the educational use of the holographic headset by Case Western Reserve.
This post provides a few different AR technologies that can be implemented in K-12 environments. Specifically, CoSpaces edu allows students and teachers to design and animate 3D worlds with augmented reality instruments. This will lead a real path to creation and creativity. I see this as a way for my students to create AR learning experiences for their peers. For example, creating a setting from a novel with characters and information to share with their peers.
Fundamental SVRgery provides a learning program for health professionals to train in surgery simulations. This enables necessary practice opportunities in a safe and effective way. Healthcare has piloted many XR learning experiences, but I wonder in what ways these experiences can be adopted within different learning environments.
Although Google Earth and Voyages are not new tools, people can now create maps and stories within Google Earth. For example, instructors can create tours so that students can experience different settings and background as pre-learning before reading a novel. Additionally, I assign a project where students have to plan a class trip using research skills. This year, instead of creating a presentation, students could create a Google Voyage so that their classmates could see what specific locations they could visit and what they may learn.
The newest addition to the Adobe Creative Cloud allows creatives to produce and publish augmented reality content without a single line of code—democratizing who can create immersive content. Adobe Aero, the most intuitive way to build, view, and share immersive AR experiences. Available on iOS and as a public beta for desktop on Mac and Windows.
Embodied labs has developed a VR experience that allows caregivers or relatives to experience a patient's perspective as they grapple with different aging issues. This will help people to gain perspective and understanding so that they can better support their patients. From my perspective, I wonder what VR has been developed to teach students about empathy and perspective through visualizations.
Google provides many resources for how schools can begin to use XR in classrooms. While XR is still expensive, Google provides sets and tools which are more affordable. They even link to Coursera classes where teachers can learn how to create their own VR tours and other AR presentations. This is a skill that I hope to learn on my own rather than just using pre-created materials so that I can better adapt the experiences to my course learning goals.
This article gives a clear overview of what XR is and how it is used in the education field. It also highlights the current innovation occurring in XR due to the pandemic. Because the opportunity for many in-person, hands-on activities have become put on hold, XR technology is adapting to give students hands-on experiences from their homes. For VR, this is more difficult since a lot of VR equipment is more expensive and not widely available. But Google cardboard and other groups are adapting to make these technologies available.