#Science

12 Free VR Apps for the Classroom

One of the teachers I work with recently asked me to look for some mobile AR/VR content on the theme of Natural Disasters which her students were studying after the Christmas break. My first port of call was YouTube where I curated an appropriate set of 360 videos about volcanoes, tornadoes and other natural disasters. This has become a go-to move for me as I can navigate the content quickly and produce staff a sheet of QR codes that students can scan to directly access the

Become a Virtual Ant Explorer

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

Taking a Journey to Mars

Two weeks ago I returned to GESS Dubai for my seventh year and delivered a set of presentations on the theme of VR in education. In the lead up to the event I heard that a local company called Alef Education would be showcasing a virtual reality Journey to Mars experience. I’ll admit to being somewhat skeptical as to the format and quality of the experience as I had already been hands-on with excellent Mars themed apps like Mars Walk VR on iOS and the webVR Access Mars projec

Exploring Human Anatomy with YOU

I love the way new realities have the ability to transform medical education and thus, at an earlier stage, biology classes. I’ve tested a whole range of content in this field, including both AR and VR experiences. Some are very good but often they can be pricier than other apps (likely because they are simultaneously being pitched as tools for doctoral students in medical colleges) which can make educators more hesitant to look into them. To be fair you get what you pay for

Into The Deep: Operation Apex

I’ve always had an interest in aquatic life, likely born from my dad being a keen fisherman and my uncle owning a tackle shop when I was young. These days I have a large aquarium in my house full of Amazon Discus fish. I’ve also enjoyed swimming with Turtles here in the UAE (read a blog about that on iPad Educators here) and hand feeding Stingrays (that one is here.) My fascination in the underwater world has been well-catered for in virtual reality, with the obvious experien

Space: The Virtual Frontier

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.

Animated diagrams in AR using JigSpace

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

Early Learning in AR with NeoBear

Recently I caught wind of an augmented reality company based in China called Neobear. What struck me about their AR products was that they were purely educational and aimed squarely at younger learners. This week I was fortunate enough to get my hands on three items from the NeoBear range – the AR Globe, The AR Pop-up Zoo flashcards and the NeoBear’s World Tour Pop-up AR Paintings book set. Each product comes with access to a free app (iOS or Android) which brings the content

How to find the best 360 videos on YouTube

YouTube has a wealth of free educational 360 videos that can enrich and transform learning. Of course it also has a lot of other content to wade through (360 and otherwise.) I've spent some time trawling through YouTube looking for the best channels for educational 360 videos. First though, a few tips and tricks for using 360/VR content from YouTube: - Once the video is playing look for the VR headset icon in the bottom right corner to switch to stereoscopic VR mode and view

The Augmented Reality Dinosaur Safari

A few months ago a colleague of mine who works in EYFS asked me for ideas to enrich their new dinosaurs topic. I suggested several applications that provided opportunities for these young students to learn more about dinosaurs during independent learning and free flow activities. Then I remembered an augmented reality app that I’d stumbled across a couple of years ago called Dinosaurs Everywhere and we used it to create quite a powerful hook for the start of their topic: she

Exploring microscopic worlds in VR

Micro Cosmic World is a new VR app from developers Codon VR. It makes clever use of virtual reality to explore and learn about the microscopic world. I really like this concept; we often think of VR as a tool for travelling to distant lands, or even back in time but being able to gain this unique perspective on the world around us is an excellent idea and one that I'm sure we have not seen the last of. There are four stages to the experience that take you into smaller and sma

Five reasons I love the ZooKazam app

One AR app I have loved using with students over the last few years is ZooKazam. This mobile app offers a bank of augmented reality animals in 3D. There are several similar apps that can bring animals into AR but ZooKazam is by far the best and the one I recommend most regularly to other educators. There are two versions of the app available: the free version has a limited selection of models available but lets you try the app and experience it for yourself. What you want t

Building multi-user AR/VR experiences with Eon Creator AVR

There are lots of platforms available that offer AR and VR experiences for the classroom. There are far fewer though that allow educators to actually design the learning experience by framing the content effectively. Nearpod lets you build presentations around 360s, Expeditions scaffolds their experiences with information and focal points whilst other apps will enrich their virtual content with facts and figures. Eon Creator AVR offers something quite different - the ability

Innerspace: 5 ways to enter the human body in VR

One of my favourite films as a kid was Innerspace (showing my age here!) This comedy starring Dennis Quiad and Martin Short, released in 1987 and had the unique hook of a test pilot (Quad) being miniaturised and accidentally implanted into a bumbling clerk (Short.) For posterity, here's the original trailer: It's now 30 years later and though we aren't yet able to experience something like Innerspace for real, we can explore the insides of the human body using VR! In fact the

Dubai based startup bringing dinosaurs to AR

One of the best things about being based here in Dubai is that there are a lot of innovative people here doing a lot of interesting things with technology. I've seen some great stuff in the field of augmented reality in particular from companies like Pixelbug and Etechan and now I can add iLike to that list. I came across their products whilst in the Mall of the Emirates today and was struck by two things - the range they had on offer, the price (surprisingly affordable.) Fou

A Guide to the Lifeliqe VR Museum

We are currently running a pilot of Lifeliqe in JESS Dubai and whilst the app version is being used on iPads and Surface Pro devices by students in the Secondary Science department, I was given access to the VR app to trial with my Vive. The Lifeliqe VR Museum app offers the same broad range of 3D models available in AR via the regular app but you can interact with them in full VR. It has some other treats too including some immersive experiences that utiilise the models in d

The VirtualiTee - AR you can wear

In the lead up to our VR presentation at BETT Middle East in April, my colleague and co-presenter Ronan MacNicholl managed to get his hands on a couple of the VirtualiTee shirts from Curiscope. I have to admit -when I first heard about this product (during their Kickstarter campaign) I was skeptical. It seemed gimmicky to me and I wasn't sure how well it would work or if it would be worth the investment. Turns out - yes, it works incredibly well and is definitely worth the i

Ideas for integrating the Octagon 4D+ Cards

Having been a fan of all this augmented reality for some years now, the AR flashcards from Octagon Studio caught my eye late last year. At the time, I couldn’t source any (cheaply) in Dubai but after seeming them for myself at BETT Middle East (courtesy of Denaster) I managed to get my hands on three sets of these awesome cards. These flashcards do what all AR does, in that you scan them with the relevant app and digital content comes to life from them on the screen, and t