Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) are now accessible to many classrooms and homes. They will be ubiquitous in the near future, so it is important to understand their potential benefits, the requisite technologies, and how they can be practically used for both traditional and new kinds of learning. But first, we need to know the fundamental differences between AR and VR.
AR augments, or “adds to” your present physical environment. AR uses a camera that faces away from you, the viewer, to capture and analyze what you’re looking at: an image in a book, a historic building or museum exhibit, a corner of the classroom, or a table or wall in your home. It then superimposes a layer of computer-generated text, image, animation, or video over what you are looking at. For example, aiming a phone camera at a picture in a textbook could bring that picture to life as a narrated video on the phone, like the Daily Prophet animated newspaper in the Harry Potter movies. A smartphone or tablet computer is a perfect AR device because it is portable and has a camera to aim at the scene you will augment. A typical laptop or desktop computer does not work for AR because it rarely has a camera facing away from the user. AR brings your existing environment to life.
VR, in contrast, replaces your present physical environment. In VR experience, you can’t see your room or hear the people around you. You are immersed in a computer-generated reality can appear to be real or can be more symbolic like traveling through a 3-D graph or wireframe architectural model. VR can be implemented in a wide variety of hardware from smartphone to expensive head-mounted displays and hand controllers attached to a powerful computer. VR transports you to a different reality in another place, another time, or another scale as exploring the operation of a human cell from the inside. VR replaces the look and sound of your existing environment with anything, any place, or any time its creator can imagine.
The term Mixed Reality is sometimes used to combine AR and VR, but I find it to be confusing. While AR and VR use similar technologies, their applications in learning and in the classroom are completely different. The choice of AR and VR hardware would often be completely different (as of 2018).