Holographic Electricity Toolkit and Curriculum

Awardee: Iulian Radu (HGSE)

Summary: Awardee will use augmented reality (AR) technology to design tools that allow students to visualize invisible phenomena and support digitally mediated scientific inquiry and knowledge exchanges in makerspaces.

Responding to a limitation to student learning within makerspaces, the awardee will use the emerging technology of augmented reality (AR) to allow users to see holograms on real physical objects to inform the design process. Examples of invisible phenomena that AR will help make visible are electronic signals that control electronic devices and magnetic fields which control speakers. The project team will also construct curriculum that uses these tools to teach electricity concepts to novices that will be deployed at the Education Innovation Student makerspace in the HGSE Gutman Library.

By the end of the grant cycle, the team aims to deliver: 1) an open-source software infrastructure for allowing holographic visualizations involving electricity and electronics phenomena. The software will work arbitrarily of any specific physical apparatus, and will thus be generalizable and useful for any makerspaces on or off the Harvard campus; 2) a set of curriculum modules which teach the basics of electricity (i.e. concepts of Voltage, Resistance, Current, Ohm’s Law, and Inductance) through interactive activities that are enabled by our augmented reality system; and 3) A systematic evaluation of the effects of implementing this augmented reality curriculum into existing makerspaces.