The Power of Learning Games

Playing games comes naturally to humans. From childhood through adulthood, games help us learn through exploration and experience. Although preschools and elementary schools commonly use game play, the perception that games aren't a serious way to learn persists in the business world. However, when it comes to team building, problem solving, learning new procedures, or practicing new skills, games can provide an excellent way to absorb information through collaboration and trial and error.

Games and Problem-Solving

We're not just talking about elearning games. (See our post on gamification for trends and research in that area). "Analog" games that involve dice, spinners, boards, cards, etc. offer a fantastic way for learners to explore and practice new ideas. By playing games together, participants can become deeply immersed in even the most complex topics and can create resolutions together while building essential communication strategies.

Games help participants talk to each other and make decisions in a safe environment. When people interact through games, many of the aspects of human behavior emerge: selfishness, generosity, conflict, confusion, and cleverness. But unlike the way reality works, games can easily be repeated. Learning through mistakes is one of the reasons why games are such powerful educational tools. If an assertive person with a bad idea wins over the crowd the first time, a shy person with a great idea could become the leader the second time.

Amir and Shannon playing an IdeaLearning Group game prototype

A great example of the power of games in learning takes place at the Pardee Center at Boston University. The small group of practitioners and scholars gathered to explore strategies and decision-making for the climate crisis. The topic was complex, but the rules were simple. For example, participants were each given some beans and had to make decisions about where they would plant the beans according to the number that came up on the die, which represented rainfall. They planned their strategies as a group, but they had to make decisions individually that could result in life-changing consequences.

Types of Learning Games

At IdeaLearning Group, we're inspired by many of the games we played as kids: Hangman, Life, Oregon Trail, Sorry, Clue, and Monopoly…just to name a few. The most effective games have clear rules and simple mechanics that participants can learn in just a few minutes. They build an atmosphere of shared experience and allow the learners to explore possibilities and consequences.

Most types of learning games also involve life and death, discovery, puzzles or problem solving, acquisition of goods, protection of territory, power, and even some drama. Check out some free examples from Thiagi, who is one of the leaders in training game development.

Designing Effective Games

Ultimately, an effective game should have a clear, relevant purpose and should engage the learners with a meaningful experience. When designing games for the classroom, focus on creating a great flow and a high level of engagement and interaction. One way to do this is to create a flow chart outlining all the interaction points, branching possibilities, and consequences. Planning this out first will help you see all the possibilities from an aerial view before filling in the details.

Some of the best games don't even appear to be games—they are designed so well that they naturally integrate into the curriculum. The rules shouldn't be complex or bog down the interaction; engagement with the technique should be secondary to engagement with the actual content. Include a challenge that intrigues the audience and is something they can directly relate with. At IdeaLearning Group, we incorporate brief discussions and reflection points as we play. We also test games to work out the kinks and make improvements before using them in the classroom.

What are some of your favorite learning games? What strategies do you use to develop or play those games?

How to Thrive When Giving Presentations

Presenting or speaking to an audience regularly tops the list in surveys of people's top fears—more than heights, flying, or even dying. A common physical reaction is a release of adrenaline and cortisol into our systems, which has a similar effect as drinking several cups of coffee. When this happens, the "primitive brain" shuts down normal functions as the "fight or flight" impulse takes over.

That used to be me.

Today I give presentations all the time. I love to engage with a group of people and talk about topics that are meaningful for the audience. Some people tell me, "I wish I could give presentations, but I don't have any natural talent for it." Well, I have a funny story to tell about my early experiences presenting.

The first time I stood in front of a classroom, my presentation pretty much turned into a recitation. That's right—I read from a book for six hours in a row. That night I went home exhausted and hoarse, and very aware that I needed to find a different approach. I bored myself to tears that day!

Over the next month or so I spent time reflecting on who the best teachers and trainers are and what I needed to do differently. I studied how I could emulate them and use clever strategies and tactics in my own presentations. I watched videos of expert presenters, read up on the topics, and practiced on my friends and family. And I had an epiphany: Learning comes from the participants, not from the presenter. I'm simply there to facilitate the process. In fact, the less I do and the more the participants do, the better the overall results.

So I went on to teach a workshop for a couple hundred people. I call this my "middle ground" era. I'm not sure that it was obvious to the audience how incredibly debilitating my internal stress was, but speaking in front of a large group was still a nearly paralyzing experience. I found comfort in rituals. Just before presentation time, I would lock myself in the restroom stall to close my eyes and collect my thoughts. What will my first 10 minutes look like? What will I say to connect with the audience? And then I began to do what some athletes do: I visualized success by going through the activity and imagining a positive experience. I could get myself to this calm place where I could, well, just do it.

As I put myself out there more often, I slowly improved my technique, and the stress diminished with each new presentation. Here are some techniques I've embraced over the years:

• The most important rule for effective presentations is to plan and practice. This is the only way I feel in control and more confident.

• It's hard to imagine anyone trying to memorize a presentation word-for-word. Recall takes so much energy that you would have little left for relating to the audience. So I never even consider memorizing. Instead, I use notes unobtrusively and effectively. If I know the content, there is no reason to feel anxious or concerned.

• If I'm using PowerPoint as a presentation tool, I don't rely on it for my notes. Because when you read the notes on the slide, you turn your back to your audience.

• I like to untether myself by using a clicker instead of standing next to a screen with a mouse the whole time.

• I ask questions to encourage participants to share their own perspectives. I find that this involves everyone and helps to draw people out—not just the "talkers."

• Every 10 minutes or so I change course to keep things interesting. I do this by providing some startling information—something that makes sense in the context of the presentation. This helps to bring people back to the moment and the content.

• I don't skimp on breaks. Research proves that short, frequent breaks increase retention. Breaks can be physical, like a stretch or quick walking activity, or they can be mental, such as a brainteaser, trivia, or other unrelated content. Even a five-minute break can provide enough of a brain shift to spur cognition.

• They say that kids are sponges, but what about adults? We may have stronger filters, but we eagerly soak up new information if it's compelling and engaging. Formal learning needs to be seeded with informal learning opportunities, like exchanging stories, observing behaviors, and playing games.

• If I see things starting to wane, I pull out what I call an "energizer"—a physical opportunity to engage, laugh, or have an experience together to keep things interactive. I always have these energizers up my sleeve and ready to go when needed.

Aside from techniques, it's important to cultivate your own style too. Here's what I've discovered about my own style:

• I see facilitation as partly a performance. People are sitting there. I might as well entertain them! It helps the learning come more easily. So it might not surprise you to learn that my presentation style is animated, with lots of movement. Standing in one place gets both boring and predictable and the audience ends up doing other things instead of listening or responding.

• My style can be fluid or structured and dialed up or down, depending on the situation. I spend a lot of time thinking about what the audience needs when cultivating my approach. During retail presentations I tend to move at a fast pace, using humor and wit to engage the audience. But when I worked with a group of fish scientists, for example, my approach was more low-key, more deliberate, and more grounded by data.

If you'd like to learn more about my approach to giving presentations, check out the Presentation Skills session I teach as part of the ASTD Cascadia Fundamentals of Training program .

I'd love here from our blog readers about your own experiences with presentations. What do expect from your facilitator in a classroom experience? If you give presentations yourself, what rituals to do you go through to get ready? Feel free to send us your comments in the box below!

Case Study: Coaxis - Software Development Training

IdeaLearning Group partnered with Coaxis to create a custom series of software management and development training courses. Coaxis serves the US and international construction industry, with headquarters in Portland, Oregon. The company is rapidly growing with an expanding customer base. Viewpoint Construction Software, a division of Coaxis, is currently the fastest growing construction accounting software provider in the construction industry.

Coaxis needed a way to quickly ramp up employees on technical skills to avoid a revenue bottleneck and to keep up with demand. Needing a "SWAT team" approach to training, Coaxis hired IdeaLearning Group to address their needs quickly and efficiently.

We got to work right away creating two key technical training programs, which included elearning, job aids, and classroom materials, with built-in mentoring opportunities and assessments. We were able to start with zero content and developed a full-fledged training program within 90 days. The result was impressive: a 50% reduction in ramp-up time and an increase in experts dedicated to revenue-generating technical services.

The first project involved creating database training for Viewpoint Construction Software. The material focused on interpreting data in key tables, finding information and resources, and identifying naming conventions and patterns in various tables. We also created a custom user guide to supplement the training, which Coaxis employees and contractors describe as an invaluable resource. The entirely self-paced training is widely applicable across the company. Overwhelmingly positive feedback flowed in from all over the company following its rollout.

Our next project focused on data conversion and was intended for a much more specialized audience. Our training goals were to explore the process of data conversion, review key tasks, and to emphasize the importance of mentor/mentee relationships in supporting ongoing development. The pilot session received extremely positive feedback, and attendees reported highly valuing the materials.

Although IdeaLearning Group was new to the construction software industry, we attribute our great success in both programs to the effective partnership we built with Coaxis subject matter experts and our ability to conceptualize and execute the technical training based on solid instructional design principles.

How Kids and Adults Learn

Children and adults learn in different ways. But research shows that one learning principle kids and adults have in common is our need to build upon prior knowledge. Although prior knowledge helps individuals of all ages learn, the techniques and expectations are very different for adults than children.

Let's look at one of the most fundamental skills we build: learning language. Learning to read doesn't just typically start in kindergarten. Exposure to language starts inside the womb. In a fascinating New York Times profile on Harvard cognitive psychologist Elizabeth S. Spelke, the writer describes a study involving infants and social intelligence. They found that infants just a few weeks old prefer people who use speech patterns they're already familiar with, including languages, accents, and intonations.

Dr. Spelke suggest that language is the secret ingredient, and it can be used "to combine anything with anything." Language is the "cognitive catalyst that allows our numeric, architectonic and social modules to join forces, swap ideas, and take us to far horizons."

This building-upon-prior-knowledge principle isn't new. Jean Piaget pioneered research on the importance of childhood learning and theorized that cognitive development occurs in stages. Obviously, as we age, we have a vastly larger number of experiences to reference. That's one of the major differences between how grown-ups and kids learn new information.

Another important difference is that adults are more receptive to learning new information if they understand its direct application and value the content. Children, on the other hand, are more likely to soak up what they're learning regardless of the purpose of the information or how applicable it seems. (Hence our assumption that their noggins are sponges.) The information still needs to be appealing in order to "stick" or avoid boredom, though, which is of course means different things depending on where they are in their cognitive development.

Malcolm Knowles, who was famous for adopting the theory of andragogy, observed five characteristics unique to adult learners:

• Self-concept: Adults are less dependent and more self-directed learners than children.
• Experience: Adults have a larger well of experience to draw from.
• Readiness to learn: Adults' readiness to learn is more closely tied to developmental social tasks.
• Orientation to learn: Immediate application of knowledge is very important to adult learners.
• Motivation to learn: Motivation is more internal for adults.

At IdeaLearning Group, we incorporate these principles into all our programs for adult learners. We call our first phase "Ready, Set, Learn," which is where we prime the learning pump by assessing where our learners are in their development and identifying the gaps that we need to address in our program.

What strategies do you embrace in working with adults or young learners?

It's Not How Much You Know, It's How You Think

by Shannon McKenzie

In case it isn't obvious, Jillian and I are fascinated by brain research that explores how people learn. Last week we looked at emotional learning. This week we're taking a closer look at cognitive learning, which incorporates emotions and thought into the learning process. This theory gives less importance to the role of behavior and instead embraces the learner's thought processes and other internal insights unique the individual.

Cognitive learning theory focuses on learning through understanding and meaning, as opposed to memorizing facts and figures. We observe, listen, touch, read, or experience new information before processing and then recalling it. Although it might seem passive, cognitive learning is quite active. The difference is that all the activity is going on inside the processing and storage areas of the brain.

Roger Schank, a leading visionary in cognitive science and learning, defines learning not as an accumulation of knowledge, but as an improvement in one's own cognitive processes. In his book Teaching Minds: How Cognitive Science Can Save Our Schools, he outlines twelve learning processes organized into three categories:

• Conceptual processes: prediction, modeling, experimentation, evaluation
• Analytic processes: diagnosis, planning, causation, judgment
• Social processes: Influence, teamwork, negotiation, describing

According to the ASTD Handbook, the cognitive view of how learning takes place is "based on how information is processed, stored, and retrieved in the mind, rather than on how behavior changes." The approach helps learners remember information, comprehend how things work, and refer to new procedures when needed.

That's a high-level view of cognitive learning theory. So how do we use cognitive learning theory to actually design training for adults? Here's what the ASTD Cognitive Training Model recommends:

• Gain attention: Start with a relevant way to grab the learners' attention right away. Focus the attention on the new knowledge to generate encouragement and excitement for learning.
• Recall and relate: Draw a connection between the information the learners already know and the new knowledge they're about to gain. Highlight similarities between the old and new knowledge throughout the course.
• Structure content: Be clear about the desired behaviors and knowledge. Organize new information into bite-size pieces to avoid cognitive overload and to promote learning that will stick.
• Use visuals throughout: Along with organized on-screen text, graphics and animations may help introduce and support new content.
• Assimilate the old and new knowledge: Use real-life or realistic examples to demonstrate how the new knowledge works in a context that appeals to the learners.
• Strengthen the new knowledge: Engage learners by having them do something with their new knowledge, such as through interactive exercises, games, or on-the-job application of their new skills.

The Role of Emotions in Learning

by Shannon McKenzie

Let's say you're in charge of creating a program that influences a change in behavior: reducing texting and driving among new drivers. You have the choice to either create a document that can be emailed to students, or to create a visual piece that gets your message across.

Which would you choose? A PowerPoint file that reviews reasons why drinking and texting is bad…

…or a wrecked car display at the school with a reminder to avoid texting and driving?

Which do you think will evoke more emotions?

Which do you think will come to the driver's mind as he or she decides whether or not to text and drive? Why?

Emotions act as the framework that learners of all ages use to interpret meaning. They play a major role in defining our personalities. We make thousands of decisions every day based on our emotions. In his book Brain-Based Learning, Eric Jensen describes that emotions also have the ability to influence how we learn by:

• Helping us figure out what's real and what we believe and feel
• Activating long-term memory; the more intense the amygdala arousal, the stronger the imprint
• Helping us make faster decisions by using gut judgment
• Helping us engage our values while making decisions

The old way of thinking was that rational decision-making was the way to go; eliminate feelings and let the pros and cons guide the way. But modern brain research casts a new light on the important role of emotions in learning and decision-making.

According to research by the Center for Development and Learning, the brain relies on emotions to drive action. The limbic system in the middle of the brain is where we determine and manage our emotions and behavior. In response to internal and external stimuli, the amygdala releases chemicals that stimulate our brain, which can help us process and remember information. When the limbic system receives information, it sets the "emotional tone" of the information before sending it to the cortex for processing.

When the brain interprets information as positive, it sends off a signal of purpose and excitement and directs our behavior toward a goal. The result is motivated learning, thinking, and enhanced memory. But when information is interpreted in a negative manner, chemicals are released in the bloodstream that produce a range of stress-related bodily responses, like sweaty palms, internal tension, and increased blood pressure. These emotions often prevent us from learning and remembering.

Trainers and educators can enhance learners' ability to absorb new information by consciously allowing emotions to help shape their experience instead of shutting them out. Here are some ideas for incorporating emotional aspects of learning into your curriculum.

• Provide projects that are personally meaningful to the learners.
• Design a classroom environment that's comfortable and allows for non-threatening collaboration.
• When reviewing goals for learning, ask your learners why they want to reach them, and encourage them to share their answers with other participants. According to Jensen, "It is the emotions behind the goals that provide the energy to accomplish them."
• To minimize stress, make sure helpful resources are available for every learner.
• Try to engage as many senses as possible. When multiple senses are engaged, the brain has a very rich learning experience.
• Encourage learners to discuss feelings and emotions that relate to the new material.

Is emotional learning part of your training program? Ask us how we can help.

Crowdsourcing and Innovation

A combination of "crowd" and "outsourcing," the term "crowdsourcing" was coined by Jeff Howe who wrote an overview about it for Wired magazine in 2006. Here's how he described the concept: "Hobbyists, part-timers, and dabblers suddenly have a market for their efforts, as smart companies in industries as disparate as pharmaceuticals and television discover ways to tap the latent talent of the crowd….It’s not outsourcing; it’s crowdsourcing."

We're in a new age of connectivity with the Internet. Despite all the distractions, the Internet era is helping us get back to our roots: forming communities of interest, sharing and improving upon ideas, and ultimately innovating in a collective manner—in real time. And modern crowdsourcing is gaining traction. It involves identifying a problem and putting out an open call to a group of people to solicit ideas, solutions, and innovations. The belief is that by combining expertise and creative thinking, the best solutions will ultimately emerge from collaborative effort.

People rarely come up with amazing ideas in an instant or by themselves. Innovative ideas usually take a lot of time to percolate. History is full of half ideas that only became powerful innovations after combining forces with other ideas. Stephen Johnson explores this concept in his insightful video on collective innovation.

Although crowdsourcing is a relatively new buzzword, the concept is hardly new. In fact, we can partially blame the industrial era for interrupting our natural tendency to collectively create. In his book Crowdsourcing, Jeff Howe goes on to explain that prior to the industrial age and the rise of mass production, the line between audience and creator was not as rigid. People met in parlor rooms and coffee houses to exchange and evolve innovative ideas. The decentralized Internet is helping us dismantle the boundaries we've been used to for multiple generations, bringing us back to an ancient tradition of shared storytelling.

At ILG, we're most interested in what crowdsourcing has in store for the learning/training field. Crowdsourcing encourages sharing ideas in order to mine the most innovative solutions to learning challenges. It's improving our ability to collaborate, making learning easier and more innovative than ever. We're all pretty familiar with certain crowdsourced resources: wikipedia.com, stock photography sites like istockphoto.com, product and service review sites like Yelp.com and TripAdvisor.com all come to mind. Companies are developing new crowdsourcing tools that give users access to essential information when they need it.

Crowdsourcing is also gaining popularity with online training. Basic topics are established and then content is solicited from either a defined group or an open audience. The result is often an interactive learning experience based on the collection of content. The Faculty Project is one example, where professors from all over the world join together to create free online courses on a wide variety of topics using PowerPoint files, PDF documents, videos, and other supporting materials.

In his article for TrainingZone, Matt Pierce discusses the role of crowdsourcing in the flipped training content model, which gives learners access to training materials prior to the training session. He suggests crowdsourcing as a way to survey an organization's workforce to find people with expertise in certain areas who can share their knowledge. Incentives and prizes for the most valuable contributions are built in.

How have you used crowdsourcing in your organization to build and share common knowledge?

The Rise of Social Learning at Work

A tidal wave of social learning is reshaping the way we experience new information. As businesses become more globalized, people are discovering more flexible, engaging ways to make connections with each other. We're now able to cast a net into the ebbs and flows of relevant information that surrounds us. And the results are pretty amazing.

The Nature of Learning

Social learning builds a sense of community, creates standards or reference points, and offers alternative perspectives. It also generates support and encouragement within our networks.

The essence of social learning for businesses is that people collaborate and share to make sense of new ideas. In her excellent post on social learning on FastCompany.com, Marcia Connor sums it up this way: "Social learning combines social media tools with a shift in the corporate culture, a shift that encourages ongoing knowledge transfer and connects people in ways that make learning a joy." New technologies are making it possible to create vibrant working environments that are "enthusiastically supported, where your sense of wonder returns and creativity blossoms — where people thrive."

Children seem to learn through social interaction quite naturally. In days past, workers regularly learned by doing, by finding mentors and observing their behaviors. Our learning hasn't always been bound by rigid org charts and corporate seminars.

Why has the business world taken such a siloed approach to learning for so long? The explosive potential for social media has helped us improve the way we learn at work, beyond the org chart. Perhaps social media tools are letting us tap back into something fundamental to learning: a sense of curiosity and exploration.

The Tools of Social Learning

If learning is a journey, then online social learning tools allow us to leave a trail of breadcrumbs—without geographical restrictions. Here are some common tools many of us already use every day to learn and share new information:

•  Wikipedia: A free content encyclopedia that anyone can edit, Wikipedia is one of the most popular sites in the world. It attracts more than 400 million visitors a month and a total of 1.2 million contributors. This is made possible by a software platform that simplifies collaboration.

• Twitter: People flock to twitter because it allows them to connect, communicate, share, and collaborate with people all over the world, as well as find the most current topics of interest. These topics can be organized using hash tags (#) for easy searchability.
• Company Blogs: External blogs let employees contribute posts and invite comments from visitors. They help build a company's brand and allow a free-flowing exchange of new ideas.
• Internal Wikis: These sites let employees share knowledge within an organization, access common files like job descriptions, style guides, policies and procedures, and browse resources created by company subject matter experts.

 Social Learning Strategies at Work

Many of us are more than knee-deep in social media through sites like facebook, twitter, and pinterest. Then when we go to work, it's as if we're reverting back to how we used to communicate a decade ago. With email as the standard mode of communication at work, it's difficult to openly communicate and collaborate on projects.

Embrace social learning or be left behind, says journalist Debra Donston-Miller. Users are tired of just searching for information online; now they want to network. It's the next big step in social communication.

The opportunity for growth in the social business industry is vast. One company that has claimed a big stake in this space is Jive Software. The company's enterprise-wide social platform leverages the social graph to offers people better ways to collaborate and communicate at work without having to resort to outdated modes of communication like email. Hundreds of big-name companies have adopted the technology with incredible results.

You don't always need fancy tools for social learning to take place. For example, one of our clients needed a leadership program and a way for participants to practice applying their knowledge outside the classroom. We helped create a "lunch buddies" program to pair different individuals together for lunch following every training session over a nine-week period. They also participated in monthly cohort meetings as an opportunity to review and practice what they learned together.

Zappos.com is another company widely recognized for innovative uses of social strategies that support its customer service and culture. The company's CEO says that he views social media use as more of a communication channel than a marketing channel. Zappos encourages positive and negative feedback exchanges from customers and employees to align with the core values of openness and honestly. The company offers twitter training to employees, and more than 400 have active accounts. They post YouTube videos and manage several corporate blogs focused on culture and customer service.

Professionals are also using social learning strategies to build their own personal learning networks (PLN) to keep up to date on topics of interest. Learning expert Jane Bozarth recommends using social networking to find people you want to know, participate in interesting conversations, and expand your usual horizons. By creating your own PLN, you can create your own professional brand and build a community of those who share—or even oppose—your interests.

One obvious downside to these abundant inlets for social learning is information overload. It's something we're all learning to manage as we juggle our many devices, online accounts. As we become more social online, we must develop stronger filters to weed through the distractions and irrelevant details.

Which social learning strategies do you use at work?

Trends in Augmented Reality

Reality is a wonderful place to be. But it's also fun to modify our surroundings in order to find information, learn something new, or just play. Augmented Reality, or AR, is making that possible. AR enhances the way we experience the world around us using object recognition technology that adds layers to our existing environment.

AR is actually a first cousin to Virtual Reality and a second cousin to the one-person 3D theater from the 1960s called the Sensorama. But while the older technologies were designed to replace the user's environment with a virtual one, AR enhances the user's actual environment with computer-generated sensory input like sound, GPS data, or video. It's all about imagination and wonder.

AR in Mobile Technology

Things are changing so fast with AR in mobile technology—it's hard to keep up! All you need is a smartphone with a camera, an Internet connection, GPS, and an AR app. Hundreds of apps are designed to help us dig deeper to find useful information when we're mobile. When you're out and about, you can point your phone at your environment to magically identify spots of interest to you. For example, if you're in the market to find new office space, an app called Rofo lets you point your smartphone at a building to learn about vacant space. You can click a button to learn details about the vacancy, or fire off an email to the rental company.

Another app called RedFin is great when you're looking for a house to buy. You can use this map-based app while riding in your car (only if you're the passenger!) to view house prices, interior images, and realtor contact information.

Google is developing AR-infused "glasses" that use heads-up display (HUD) technology. The idea is that you place the device over one eye and essentially look through the lens of a camera to see detailed information from GoogleMaps or other GPS systems when you're out walking around.

 AR in Marketing

Marketing is driven by visuals, so AR has so much potential in this area. If you've been inside a Lego store lately, you might have played with a "Digital Box" kiosk that lets you scan a product box and see a 3D rendering of what's inside. It's a toy for your toys!

The US Postal Service has an online Virtual Box Simulator AR tool that lets you compare the size of objects you want to mail to the size of a virtual flat-rate 3D shipping box—without waiting in line. You can easily switch out the virtual box if it doesn't fit until you find the one that works.

The Nintendo 3DS systems come with a collection of "AR cards." The player puts the device on a flat surface, looks through the special camera, and seemingly brings characters and game content to animated life.

AR in Education

AR technology is all about self-paced exploration, discovery, and user engagement, and so educators and trainers have much to look forward to with AR in the classroom. Learners can use AR apps to practice skills, make mistakes, and experience virtual consequences. Check out how BMW service employees use AR goggles to help diagnose and fix problems.

Schools are beginning to adopt AR technology as well. This PBS video describes some great examples of how AR programs help teach complex information in an engaging way, such as physics concepts in a 3D format, gravity concepts, ramp building skills, and even new styles of 3D art creation.

AR in Safety

Safety is area where AR technology is experiencing incredible growth. NASA is working on a display system that pilots wear on their heads that displays a clear electronic image of the environment around the airplane, which is especially helpful at night or during cloudy or rainy weather.

GM has a system that augments a car's windshield with transparent overlays that highlight objects in the real world not easily seen by the driver. The system is designed to enhance the driver's ability to see objects, edges of the road, animals along the road, and other safety concerns. The technology uses forward-looking sensors and cameras in the car to track a driver's position.

We're in an era where technology is opening up new dimensions for exploring the world around us. What's in the store for the future? In a few years will we be wearing contact lenses to see robust layers of information as we walk around, shop, or take classes?

What are your experiences using AR technology, and how do you think it's affecting the way we live?