Engage High School learners with Reality Composer

In an ever-evolving landscape of teaching and learning, the integration of augmented reality (AR) has truly redefined ways of creating and exploring learning content in and out of the classroom. 

With Augmented Reality, you can enhance your classroom experiences making lessons more immersive, interactive and tailored to the individual needs of your students. Not only can AR allow students to interact with virtual objects and environments, but it also gives them the opportunity to be creators and demonstrate their learning in a unique, interactive and unimaginable experience with Reality Composer. 

Reality Composer is an application developed by Apple, available on both Mac and iPad. It allows students and teachers to create augmented reality (AR) experiences easily and without the need for extensive coding or 3D modelling skills.

Whether you are exploring sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic rocks in Science, biomes and food security in Geography, or calculating volumes of rectangular prisms in Maths, you can help students learn by providing immersive and interactive content that brings lessons to life. This dynamic and multi-sensory approach to learning fosters a deeper understanding of subjects and stimulates curiosity, making students more active and enthusiastic participants in their learning.

Below is a short tutorial using Reality Composer to help you get started in creating your first AR experience for your class. I used an example from a Year 8 class as we were learning about the layers of the earth. Not only did I get to introduce the concept by bringing the different layers of the earth into the classroom, but the students also had the opportunity to design their own experience by demonstrating their knowledge into a model with the information they had researched. 

As a teacher, you can always play the video above with your class so that your students can become familiar when creating their AR experience as they add various interactions, animations and behaviours. 

A few other ideas of how to bring in AR into your classroom across different subjects could be:

• In English, students can create an immersive scene recognising and explaining different viewpoints represented on the novel study being read in class.
• In Maths, students can calculate the surface area and volume of various shapes as they redesign a particular space in the school. 
• In History, students can recreate the way of life in Medieval Europe as they show and highlight the social, cultural, economic and political features of a given era. 

For an more in-depth tutorial of Reality Composer, make sure you check out Michelle Forrest’s walkthrough. She shares how to download and import 3D assets, how to add audio to your scene and a few other ‘magic trick’ animations using Realty Composer. 

How else have you and/or your students used Reality Composer in the classroom? It’d be great for your to share in the comment section below. 👇🏽