Augmented Reality and 3D Geometry — bring some magic to your classroom
If you think that magic is something you only see in the Harry Potter series and you can’t create anything even similarly engaging in your classroom — think again! Augmented Reality has a magical power to make your lessons so exciting that students don’t want to stop exploring mathematics when the bell rings.
3D Geometry — an abstract problem to understand
3D Geometry is considered one of the most difficult areas of mathematics. It requires many skills, such as visualization and spatial reasoning, which allows you to deal with three-dimensional shapes. Even students who are considered to be clever argue that they are not sure enough how to approach 3D geometry challenges. Why learning 3D objects is so hard when we live in a three-dimensional world?
Kids learn their environment of 3D shapes by exploring it — everything around us is three-dimensional. They know 3D shapes before even going to school — intuitively, by investigating and interacting with 3D objects. Then they go to school and learn to write and draw in two dimensions. They also get to know 2D geometry. Only sometime later, when kids already know that everything at school is two-dimensional, they start to learn 3D geometry. It is much more difficult for kids to grasp the notion of three-dimensional objects then and often spatial geometry remain abstract to them for the rest of their K12 education.
Unfortunately, traditional teaching methods often fail to adapt students to study geometry and cannot assist them to improve their knowledge of geometry. That’s why teachers more and more commonly reach for ready-made 3D visualizations that allow them to show a solid from many perspectives.
However, students still have difficulty in solving tasks that require them to have good spatial reasoning skills. Students are taught to draw an auxiliary 3D drawing depicting 3D shapes in 2D, usually in a notebook. No interaction with 3D objects and the need to perform so-called mental rotation hinders their understanding of 3D geometry. It leads to a situation that not only for students but also for many teachers spatial geometry seems to be an abstract field of mathematics.
Let’s bring some magic here!
3D Geometry is all about 3D objects so let’s make exploring them fun again.
Immersive technologies like Augmented Reality allow students to bring abstract geometric concepts to life and introduce a bit of magic in the classroom.
Nowadays, Augmented Reality (AR) is getting more common and more popular in schools and classrooms. AR can enhance creative power and logical analysis of pupils and students. Interacting with virtual objects through AR interfaces provides students with an increasingly intuitive and natural way of interacting with geometric solids.
The Augmented Reality allows you to freely rotate a 3D shape, and even walk around it and view it from the inside. Students can directly modify even more complex 3D structures to better understand the geometrical task assigned to them by a teacher. The multitude of ways of visualization and interaction with 3D objects in AR poses an important challenge for teachers to choose proper technologies and applications for the didactic issue and students’ skills.
The right technology to spark curiosity
There are different types of Augmented Reality (AR) that can improve the spatial reasoning and understanding of 3D shapes in learning 3D geometry. The use of appropriate tools to visualize and interact with geometric solids increases the understanding of solids.
Apps like Shapes 3D incorporate immersive technologies that support spatial reasoning and are easy to adopt in the classroom. Shapes 3D apps deploy Augmented Reality that allows students to place solids on their desks, walk around them and even hold them in their hands:
AR can enhance creative power and logical analysis of pupils and students. The Augmented Reality allows students to freely rotate a 3D shape and directly modify even more complex 3D structures to better understand the geometrical task assigned to them by a teacher. What’s the most important, it creates the bridge between the virtual, abstract world of solids and natural environment and 3D objects that exist around students.
Merge Cube is an exceptional use of AR in the classroom. When holding the Merge Cube, and turning the object around physically two senses are sparked: visual and kinesthetic, also called muscle memory. Kinesthetic learning is founded on creativity, which makes math a natural pairing. Paraphrasing the great master one may say:
Tell me, I’ll forget. Show me, I’ll remember, Let me touch it, I’ll understand
Augmented Reality is the right edtech to help teachers spark curiosity in their students and ignite the meaningful exploration that is just enough to start understanding 3D geometry.
With apps like Shapes 3D students can embrace failure and experience 3D shapes before they figure out the right answer to complex geometric questions.
That’s what makes math moments MAGICAL.
