Samsung: Providing Augmented Reality in Classrooms

A recent report says that almost 88% of the age group of 16-24s own a Smartphone and utilizing it to access internet, playing games, listening to the music and what not. And this is the age group that uses to be found in colleges and universities.

Because such a large percentage of students own a smartphones, therefore, it’s is mindful to say that it would be awesome if teachers also start using smartphones and tablets to engage students in classes.

And after studying one of the recent patent applications filed by Korean tech giant Samsung, it seems to me that Samsung is all set to work along this direction.

The patent application hints that Samsung may be using augmented reality in classrooms to provide smart teaching environment. By using this AR app, a teacher can communicate with students through his smartphone or tablet and can enhance the students’ experience.

What A Teacher Can do with this AR App

• He  can take attendance of the class
• He can check previous record of a student and change his teaching strategy accordingly
• He can send assignments directly on students’ smartphones by a simple drag and drop
• He can explain complex topics in easy manner to take learning curve to the next level

Let’s first understand how the AR Technique works and provides a smart classroom environment and then,  I’ll go over the other applications of this app later in today’s post.

This is How Samsung’s Augmented Reality App for Smart Classroom Environment Works

In order to take attendance and to interact with the students, teacher has to capture an image of the class in such a way that face of each student is clearly visible in the image.

After that, the teacher will send this captured image to the school/college server database that stores profiles of students.

The college server will run a facial recognition algorithm to recognize faces of students in received image. Moreover, the server will also determine the location of each student i.e. who is sitting where.

After finishing the analysis, the server sends this information back to teacher’s smart phone or tablet.

Now teacher has information of who is present in class and where he or she is sitting. The teacher can interact with students in an easy fashion.

He can send text files, images and other study materials to a particular student as he knows the location of every student who is present in his classroom.

He just has to simply drag and drop those files according to the location information provided by the server. Apart from this, a teacher can access previous records of a particular student on his device.

Applications of Samsung’s Augmented Reality App

Taking Learning Curve to next level – We grasp a large amount of information when we actively get involved in the classroom. Teachers know  when they interact with students, the learning gets deepen.

Abstract concept and ideas those are difficult for a student to grasp and teacher to explain can now be explained in a better and creative way by involving the learners through this augmented reality classroom app.

Teacher student interaction can increase – You must have a shy friend who is intelligent and has lots of doubts. However, because of his shyness he never asks anything in front of the whole class.

This app is for such students where they can ask their doubts directly from teacher through this AR app and teacher can explain the concept to the whole class. A kind of win-win situation.

Performance Monitoring –  As a teacher can excess the previous records of a student through this AR app directly on his smart device. He will be having a better understanding of weak and strong areas of a student and he can help a student to overcome his weaknesses.

This is from my side. What do you think where else a teacher can utilize it to deepen the learning? Do you have any idea where else augmented reality in classrooms can be used? If yes, then do share with us. We will be more than happy to include them in our post. 😉