Makers Empire’s augmented reality (AR) capabilities enable students to visualise and test their 3D designs in authentic, place-based contexts.
Here are 10 ways to use the AR tool in the Makers Empire 3D design app to enhance and demonstrate learning:
Add authenticity to the design thinking process by enabling students to test prototypes of their designed solutions in the real-world. Students might design playground equipment for their school and instantly be able to place their designs in the school yard. What a great way to visualise what their designs will look like in context, and to evaluate how well their solutions will work.
Students can become genuine partners in school or community-based construction projects. Their proposed designs for a new STEM building, classroom furniture, or Community Centre can be placed in context and presented to stakeholders.
Imagine students’ designs becoming part of an exhibition or art installation. Prior to visiting a museum, students might create an object or display related to their learning topic and then see their ideas come to life during the visit. Designs could be added to festivals and community events such as a Moon Lantern festival or Christmas parade.
Students can use their designs to create and tell stories. They might design characters, props, or settings to help present and share the stories they are writing in their literacy focus. Images could then be added to videos, live, and other presentations.
Use the new AR feature to help students connect and collaborate with others around the world. Imagine creating a character, animal or vehicle and being able to see what it looks like when placed in other students’ communities. A great way to help develop intercultural understandings.
Students can use the AR feature to present their design ideas to a range of audiences. They might be pitching a product idea and use the feature to demonstrate how their product might work or look in context.
The AR feature can really help with mathematical concepts and spatial reasoning skills. Students can test out the scale and size of their designs in real-time. It is often difficult to visualise how big a design really is in comparison to other objects, and we think this will help students connect this abstract concept to a concrete visualisation
Planning school events and presentations such as markets, fairs assemblies and graduation ceremonies can be a much more interactive experience if students can test out their ideas for displays, decorations, and layouts using augmented reality versions of their designs in actual venues.
Teachers might use the AR functionality to help students develop geographical concepts such as place, space, and environment. This provides an ideal way for students to represent and respond to the built and natural environment. Students can explore the ways human interaction shapes and impacts places by visualising how their designed solutions and models affect places in their school and wider communities.
Why not have students explore historical concepts such as continuity and change, and cause and effect by designing objects, buildings, people from the past and using the AR feature to help imagine what places may have looked like in the past from different perspectives.
