On the 21st September Nordic Edge, held a 24 hour hackathon over a Monday and Tuesday entitled reinventing Education.

https://nordicedge.org/events/hackathon-reinventing-education/

This hackathon sounded very interesting as I have some thoughts for innovations in Education and Hackathons with support from Microsoft seem to be well organised. There were some webinars throughout the days about innovation, products and hackathons. The organisers were very friendly and helpful.

However because it was over a Monday and Tuesday, it meant that the only real time I could do anything towards it would be the Monday night. It certainly didn't feel fair to form a team seeing as though I couldn't commit more than a few hours to the Hackathon.

My submission (LeARning)

However, I entered solo and managed to knock something together in that short space of time. My whole premise was that readily available Augmented Reality could be used to increase student engagement through increased enjoyment in learning. I mention some other benefits in my accompanying slidedeck.

Firstly, I took a times table poster and re-created it very crudely (< 3 hours work) in Augmented Reality for my iPhone. Secondly, in the slide deck I also show previous potential educational AR resources that I have produced (periodic table for Science & 3d terrain for Geography).

Accompanying SlideDeck

I had to put together 10 slides explaining the concept, the benefits of it and how it could be further developed. They can be found below.

Architecture

As well as showing the prototype app on my iPhone built in Xamarin using C# and ARKit, I also had to show architecturally how it could use Microsoft Cloud Services in the product. An obvious way is to store and retrieve the 3d models as well as provide logic around AR resources for different subjects and managing access. A healthy dose of Azure Web Services, Blob Storage and SQL Server Databases basically.

Summary

I am happy with what I managed to put together in a few hours on a Monday night and believe the proposal is a sound one. I only wish I had more time to develop the concept further.

-- Lee