A year ago I co-authored The Periodic Table of AR and VR iOS Apps with my good friend and serial innovator Mark “ICT Evangelist” Anderson. Part of Mark’s expanding line-up of educational Periodic Tables resources, it was launched at BETT London 2018 by Mark. I then delivered my own presentation on the project inside Engage as a part of the #CPDinVR events. This free resource was incredibly well-received and was shared thousands of times across social media. You can find my or

It might seem like I’m late to the Merge Cube party posting an article in 2019. These little augmented reality (or mixed reality if you prefer) cubes have become quite the edtech sensation in the last six months and I’ve never really mentioned them here on VirtualiTeach. So let’s start with the backstory… I was aware of the Merge Cube before it’s launch in August 2017 and was eager to try it for myself. I even reached out to Merge to see if they would send me one to demo and

Whilst out Christmas shopping today I picked up the Virtual Explorer Antopia Adventure set in a discount toy store. At just 39aed (that’s about $10 or £8) it seemed like quite a bargain. Several companies have released this sort of VR learning set and often they are quite pricey for what they actually contain but at this price I was happy to pick one up and see what it had to offer. My youngest daughter and I cracked the set open when we got home and filmed a little impromptu

Just over a year and a half ago I set up this website with two specific goals - 1. To share ideas and examples of best practice in the use of AR and VR in education 2. To connect with like-minded educators and pioneers working with immersive technologies. As I sit here writing the site’s 100th article, I think it’s safe to say that I’m doing pretty well with regards to my first goal but I never dreamed that I would build such an amazing network of colleagues, collaborators an

Language learning is one area of education that is genuinely being transformed through the implementation of immersive technologies. Interactive and engaging, AR and VR also benefit from breaking down geographical borders and providing access to native speakers to facilitate experiential learning for the modern student. Both AR and VR have the potential to redefine the way students can learn languages in a variety of ways. Let’s take a look at five different ways that these t

About a year ago I started what was set to be a five-part series here on VirtualiTeach around the theme of AR vs VR in Education. It was a common question I was getting asked at events and I thought that to a good approach to tackling the theme would be to look at it from five different angles. My plan was to release one part each week for five weeks, with a winner in each round, building towards a final decision… Anyone who’s been following the site for a while now will know

One of the most unique functions that has arisen since the debut of ARKit technology with IOS11 is the augmented reality portal. I’ve highlighted this concept several times here on VirtualiTeach, from the original piece from the days of ARKit demos before the launch, to the use of Figment AR to transport students to other worlds, to the recent article about the excellent Hologo World platform. This new app Enter the Room, produced by the International Committee of The Red Cro

Ok so yes the title is a bit of an awful pun. I can’t resist a bit of wordplay and literally minutes after I first downloaded the beta version of Hologo World, that title jumped into my head (complete with Aladdin vocals). I guess it comes with the territory when you have two young daughters. Disney song references aside, I've wanted to share something about the excellent new Hologo World platform for a couple of weeks now (since the aforementioned beta testing and before the

Most educators that have connected with me over the last five years associate me with iPads and Apple technology in general but whilst I still use my iPad and iPhone every single day, I am a man of many devices and over the last two years Microsoft technology has begun to play a bigger role once again. This is partly due to our deployment of Office 365 across JESS Dubai, partly due to my need for a “superlaptop”to run my HTC Vive (I use an Acer Predator) and partly due to our

Civilisations AR is an outstanding new app developed by the BBC and and Nexus Studios, developed as a tie in to the documentary series of the same name. It features more than 30 digital scans of artefacts from museums across the UK which can be placed in the world in AR. The detail on the models is simply stunning and Civilisations is without a doubt one of the most impressive examples of augmented reality I’ve seen yet. Here’s a little clip I recorded of it in action What th

Without a doubt one of the most innovative educators I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with is Mark Anderson aka ICT Evangelist. Mark and I met in 2015 at the Apple Distinguished Educator Institute in Amsterdam and since then we’ve collaborated on several projects including the App Wars event on iPad Educators, Mark’s #AppShareLive shows and even the first JESS Digital Innovation Summit (which Mark came over to Dubai to keynote for me.) Over the last year, one series of p

Apologies to those who have been following this series and wondering what happened to Part 4. Traditional Christmas chaos kicked in at school and then I travelled home for the holidays for the first time in eight years so the amount of time I could spend on writing was limited. We're back now though and ready to see this thing through to a decisive conclusion. For those that are just diving into the series, here are the links to the previous rounds: Round 1: Ease of Implement

Last week saw the launch of something quite special though – Home: a VR Spacewalk for the HTC Vive. Not only is this a stellar (no pun intended) example of an educational resource for this theme but it also marks the beginning of a new era in VR production for the BBC. Definitely exciting times ahead if this is an example of the quality they will output. Inspired by the launch of Home, I decided to take a little spacewalk of my own – through the App Store, YouTube and Steam.

What's better for education - AR or VR? That's the question I'm exploring across this five part series. Obviously I feel that they both have merit, otherwise this site would only be dedicated to one of them. This series is exploring the pros and cons of each across five rounds of head-to-head analysis using a set of five key criteria. PREVIOUS ROUNDS Click the links be,low to access the previous parts of this series: Round One - ease of implementation. Round Two - range of co

Most of the presentations I’ve been asked to deliver at events recently have been solely focused on VR in education so I was happy to get the chance to chat about both AR and VR at the recent EdEX MENA event here in Dubai. Whilst putting my slide deck together I realised that I’d never given AR the same focus in terms of theory as I had done to VR. As a first step towards balancing them, I decided to delve into the Why of AR in the same way I explored the why of VR last month

Do you like the graphic? If you’re a Stranger Things fan, you'll no doubt recognise it and are likely wondering how I made it. The answer is this cool little web app which you can find here. So indeed, this piece is somewhat inspired by the fantastic slice of sci-fi brilliance that is Stranger Things. I absolutely love that show and having recently finished the new season on Netflix, it had me thinking a lot about the whole concept of portals to parallel worlds. It’s a concep

I initially held off on discussing any of the new ARKit developed apps when iOS 11 launched for one main reason - I couldn’t actually use most of them! My iPhone 6 was hanging by a thread as I waited out the X whilst my iPad Air 2 is doing just fine and I have no plans to upgrade it any time soon. Neither of them could run the vast majority of the ARKit apps though as they simply weren’t powerful enough. Now I have the iPhone X, I have finally been able to dig into these new

What's better for education - Ar or VR? That's the question I'm exploring across this five part series. Obviously I feel that they both have merit, otherwise this site would only be dedicated to one of them. This series is exploring the pros and cons of each across five rounds of head-to-head analysis using a set of five key criteria. Please do join the conversation by sharing the posts on social media or adding your own comments to each round. ROUND 2: Range of Content So in

With Tim Cook and Apple pushing AR whilst Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook push VR, there has never been a brighter light shone on the world of AR and VR. One question I seem to be getting asked quite regularly at events I am presenting at recently is, “What’s better for education – AR or VR?” It’s a fair question - educators are hearing more and more about these emergent technologies and simply want to know if one or the other should be their focus. Their concerns are also often

I’m a huge fan of Halloween, probably due to a somewhat unhealthy obsession with horror movies growing up! I also love bringing the spooky fun of Halloween into the classroom and have implemented a wide range of ghoulish activities over the years. One thing that we all associate with Halloween is masks and this is something that augmented reality can do very well. Indeed it was the Snapchat/Facebook live filter phenomenon that (along with Pokemon Go!) brought AR to the masses