Using Augmented Reality for Geoscience Education in low-income schools
Abstract
The Young Scientists Program (YSP), a Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) Education program within the University of Southern California's Joint Educational Project (JEP), received funding AGU Celebrate 100 Grant to expand its Augmented Reality (AR) Sandbox program. The AR Sandbox setups will be installed in seven low-income schools and utilized for professional development sessions, parent workshops on technology integration and utilized for the weathering and erosion curriculum at those schools. Through the Young Scientists Program the proposed AR Sandboxes would be used at 7 schools within the Los Angeles Unified School District reaching over 2400 2nd-5th grade students each year. These thousands of students come from socioeconomic backgrounds which are underserved and underrepresented within the Earth & Space Sciences (Latinx, African American,, low-income, etc.) In addition to directly serving the students, these sandboxes can be used to facilitate teacher professional development sessions in order to empower educators to more confidently lead Earth Science instruction. The first AR Sandbox setup used by YSP was developed by Deezmaker (2017) and combines a real sandbox with virtual topographic maps and water generated by a closed loop of a Microsoft Kinect 3D camera, simulation and visualization software and a projector. Users can create topographic models in real time by moving the sand into different land forms which are then augmented by the projected elevation contour map. This tool can be used to demonstrate patterns in bathymetry/topography, how water moves through watersheds, how watersheds may be altered and how weathering and erosion shape a landscape. Because of the versatility of the Sandbox itself, real landscapes and watersheds may be recreated, allowing students to understand these concepts for environments relevant to their lives. This AR Sandbox setup provides an innovative, hands-on approach to meeting several of the Next Generation Science Standards (which have now been adopted by California State Schools) in the area of Earth and Space sciences.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFM.U33B..15K
- Keywords:
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- 0815 Informal education;
- EDUCATION;
- 0850 Geoscience education research;
- EDUCATION;
- 6349 General or miscellaneous;
- POLICY SCIENCES & PUBLIC ISSUES;
- 6699 General or miscellaneous;
- PUBLIC ISSUES