Teaching Maths With Microsoft HoloLens

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FdmvOmOM4A

I've blogged previously about Subash Chandar K exploring the possibilities of Microsoft HoloLens with his maths students and now there is a great video above capturing the enthusiasm of his students.

After the experience, one of Subash's students commented:

“We are a generation that learns through examples and visualisation, not explanation and reading, and HoloLens is supportive of this. It helps us rediscover the touch of ingenuity we have lost through the boring, old methods and disconnected learning environments.

“HoloLens inspires critical thinking. It has tremendous potential because it gives us as students so much freedom to experiment, and the only limits are our creativity and imagination. This is not changing what we learn but simply how we learn it, and it may just be the solution to the problems of our education system.”

It's an interesting observation from the perspective of an active participant in the New Zealand education system and I shared it with 32 Principals from the Taranaki region last week. I was asked to step in at short notice and talk about Microsoft Mixed Reality and HoloLens to them and then allow them to experience it first hand with a HoloLens unit I had managed to borrow for the session.

It was interesting observing how they immersed in the experience they were and also how intuitively they picked up the gesture controls. I've demonstrated HoloLens to hundreds of people and there is always a spectrum of how quickly they learn to use it - these Principals were sharp!

As more providers like Pearson Education develop HoloLens educational apps the appeal of  Mixed Reality in the classroom will only grow. Meanwhile, the commercial and enterprise sectors completely understand how this will transform marketing and design, with Mercedes Benz recently releasing a video showcasing HoloLens with the question posted:

How do you present invisible technology?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6\_uymfV82g

Mixed Reality is the perfect medium to visualize the underlying safety features built into a vehicle, by connecting real objects (the car, the observers) with projected scenarios (the holographic cyclist) and how the "invisible technology" actually operates (the sensors constantly scanning the environment around the vehicle and triggering warnings).

This is hugely exciting technology that will invariably become more mainstream in classrooms and beyond.