Augmented Reality Classrooms

The Ultimate Safe Space

It doesn’t take an expert to notice that schools can be dangerous places. Despite the best efforts of teachers and educators alike, the safety of students can be undermined by external and internal events influencing their physical environment. These issues can range from extreme weather, flooding and pandemics to bullying, conflicts of political beliefs and of course just general health and safety around going in and out of a building with steps, hard furniture and a constant stream of people walking school corridors. A.R. Classrooms could be used to address these issues.

Modern life is a struggle at the best of times. It seems that where there are people, there will be conflict. Also, with climate change imposing itself more and more every day, it may become difficult to run a physical school without a lot of preparation. However, with the use of Augmented Reality (A.R.), many of these issues can be addressed, or at least bypassed.

To begin with, let’s create our A.R. classroom to see how it works. The school would set up a virtual classroom, like a room in a computer or console game (maybe with a little help from I.T. or a charitable Education Technology firm). There would be chairs and a board. It could look just like a normal class, except virtual. The board would be like a Microsoft whiteboard or a Google Jamboard (even though everyone just calls them Google boards).

The teachers and students would create their own avatars or if the school is well funded, they could upload a virtual version of themselves to the classroom. Of course, some level of supervision is required in the creation of these avatars, otherwise, the classroom will be full of virtual pandas, penguins and anime characters (I’m not just talking about students here, every school has a teacher who cosplays at the weekend).

Now that the class is set up the students and teachers can be anywhere, literally anywhere. They can be at home or in the forest. All they have to do is put on their Virtual Reality (V.R.) headset or glasses (in the future it will be contact lenses, they’re working on it) and they will be transported automatically to the class.

Before teaching even starts all the issues of transport, carrying books, physical health and safety and any bumps and bruises on the stairs have been relegated to the history books and no matter what the weather is like or what is going on in the streets, class can go on. Also, there will be no burst water pipes, heating issues or random pigeons or spiders popping into the classroom to cause a disturbance. This is also useful for the teachers; they can be in a calm relaxed environment and have all the resources they require to hand.

The A.R. environment can have strict settings or physical limitations on the avatars, for example, it could be set so that the chairs cannot be moved or that the virtual students will be confined to a set area to stop them from interfering or distracting other students. Also, it is a good way to control unruly students. While IRL (In the Real World) it would be difficult to mute a student who is feeling a bit fussy or seeking attention, they could easily be muted temporarily as a time out. Or possibly there could be a virtual ‘naughty step’ or time-out zone with calming music.

In this A.R environment, each student will feel they are the main student in the class and will have the opportunity to interact at the appropriate times with other students e.g. for debates etc. There could also be a virtual playground or social area where the students and the teachers can meet during breaks. The teachers and students get to interact in A.R. and at the end of the day, the notes and homework would be automatically uploaded to the students’ system. Of course, in an A.R. system with no IRL classroom, the hours of classes can be significantly altered to more comfortable times as everyone is in a different space.

A.R. technology and virtual headsets exist here and now, however not all schools will have them. Some schools won’t even have a digital whiteboard. However, some of the more advanced companies are using and developing these technologies as we speak. With the way society is becoming more divided and the impending climate disaster, this technology is becoming increasingly vital. A.R. classrooms could soon become the only way students and teachers can come together in a constructive educational setting.

The author

Dr. John Jennings

Dr. John Jennings is an educational theorist from Galway, he has a PhD in TESOL with research in Social-Media and Education. He has researched the perceptions that students have of Social-Media in Education and how it affects their interaction with the academic world. He is also an avid virtual runner