About thirty students from the Pionniers high school in Trois-Rivières had the opportunity to create an escape game in augmented reality as part of an extracurricular activity experienced last fall.
Stéphanie Goyette, coordinator of the OMNI Sciences-Info-Multimedia concentration in the school and science teacher, piloted the project. After attending a conference of the two young entrepreneurs behind the company Deepsight, she immediately approached them to suggest that they create an extracurricular activity for high school students.
“As the coordinator of a specialized science and technology program in a secondary school, I find it important to keep myself up to date and to offer new activities to the students. When I heard the Deepsight entrepreneurs talk about their application, I immediately saw potential to motivate young people and put them into action,” explains Ms. Goyette.
Deepsight specializes in the development of augmented reality training for the aerospace sector. On the other hand, who says training says application in multiple fields. The tool developed by the company makes it possible to design various modules and the possibilities are endless.
“For us, this is an opportunity to transmit new knowledge to young people, to make them discover new avenues related to technology. We must not neglect the creativity aspect behind the project, too,” argues Nicolas Bearzatto, business development manager for Deepsight.
Augmented reality is characterized by the superimposition of elements on the real world. The user's perception is then altered live, without completely bringing him into an artificial world.
For 6 weeks, at the rate of one hour per week, students from 3rd, 4th and 5th secondary took part in workshops which were given after school hours. They got together as a team to create an escape game. This was to take the form of a virtual world in which the player would circulate to find hidden objects. They created using Deepsight software and could view the result on iPad or with augmented reality glasses. “The students quickly sprang into action. It was impressive to see them work as a team and use their imagination,” says the coordinator.
During the last session, they were able to make a presentation of their creation to the other teams in addition to allowing them to try it out. In addition, the Deepsight team had brought Hololens during this final session in order to allow the students to live the most complete experience possible. These augmented reality headsets are expensive and generally overpriced for schools.
Although organizing workshops in high schools was not part of Deepsight's business objectives, young entrepreneurs have taken a liking to it. “We are in discussions with other schools to hold other augmented reality initiation workshops. Honestly, we are surprised by the interest shown by the teachers, but we are delighted,” concludes Nicolas Bearzatto.
In addition, students who participated in the extracurricular activity will keep their account in the Deepsight application and will be able to have fun creating other digital environments.
Already published on École branchée: Augmented reality for learning
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