Discovery Education unveiled a new Sandbox AR iPad app to provide students and educators with an immersive learning tool using augmented and virtual reality. The platform will allow users to create interactive learning experiences at no cost.
The Sandbox AR app enables the students and teachers to create, share, and even inhabit virtual environments. They can come up with virtual scenes with hundreds of built-in unique objects from history, science, nature, and more.
The app also features an exciting mode where the users can participate in their own environments by taking photos of what’s around them, combining that with objects in the virtual world, and creating a unique space with a mixture of augmented and virtual reality.
“We know educators and students love augmented reality,” said one of the app’s developers, Phil Birchinall, Discovery Education’s Senior Director of Immersive Content. “Sandbox gives students the ability to control and have some agency over that augmented reality.”
Sandbox further adds several layers of data over the users’ scenes featuring built-in links attached to each object within the app to provide users with ‘real world’ information about each object they can see in the virtual world.
“Sandbox AR gives students the ability to immerse themselves in whatever scene or topic they’re learning and really show their knowledge,” said Jason Ediger of Discovery Education. “This app will have a real impact in the classroom and on learning outcomes. Highly engaging content is important, but giving kids a sense of ownership – underpinned by proper learning concepts – is the key.”
Birchinall, a former teacher, said his team developed the Sandbox AR with purpose instead of just creating a tool to modernize the classroom. “We know AR has a huge impact on learning,” he said. “Tools like these amplify the power, depth, and speed of student learning.”
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