1. Smart Terrain and Montessori Pedagogy
An outlook of Augmented Reality in the future of education Presented by Donovan Toure
Research and Development Lead
NYU Mobile AR Lab
2. Jean-Jacques Rousseau – Emile (1762)
“Our first masters of philosophy are our feet, our hands, our eyes.”
3. Dr. Maria Montessori – (1870 - 1952)
“Only through freedom and environmental experience is it practically possible for human
development to occur.”
4. Montessori Grouping Structure
*Montessori education for middle and high school is less developed
than the other groups.
Group One Infant and Toddler 2 mos. – 3 years
Group Two
Preschool and
Kindergarten
3 – 6 years
Group Three Elementary 6 – 12 years
Group Four*
Middle and High
School
12 – 18 years
5. The Smart Terrain Approach
Creates digital meshes around physical
objects
Interactions are driven by the amount of
objects in the physical world
8. Why we should be excited about this combination
• The context Montessori Education was created
• The growth rate of AR technology
• Ubiquity of complex details in the modern built environment and how
they affect us all.
Hinweis der Redaktion
Nephew and light switch – 2 minutes flicking on and off. I stared at him in amazement. Started thinking about all the things he could be learning about by performing this act – texture, built in mechanical resistance, friction, toggle switches, light reflection and refraction. I think there’s a powerful force awakened in the instinct to imitate—especially because imitation can encourage beautiful things and also violent destruction. Maybe we can talk more about that later
I feel Montessori really expanded on this human fact and institutionalized it.
The fourth group is where I feel Augmented Reality can be of great use. It is in this age range (of 12-18 years) that the human mind—at least in education comes into contact with the complexities of life. Children start to learn more about politics, city infrastructure, they’re getting their first jobs, they may be learning how to drive, etc. So the universe of the light switch becomes incredibly more complex. And the vast majority of that complexity is artificially induced—meaning the environment that stimulates the child has been fabricated by us—for function and/or profit. It is almost as if the child grows into a second childhood and has to reengage meaningfully with the environment again as almost as an act of survival. I’m of the belief that we’ve reached a time where the problems we commonly face are technical rather than political.
As the user moves around, the selected area can expand dynamically and get more detailed. The interactive environment is driven by the amount of objects in the physical world. Ultimately, the goal is to integrate this into smart glasses.
It employs reconstructive techniques to reconstruct a 3D map of your environment—more specifically surfaces, objects, and edges. With this, applications can utilize the physical properties of the immediate environment –the dimensions, distance among objects, and the general area the user is constructing in.
In this current version of Smart Terrain, the computer vision is strong enough to read things on a flat surface. It’s an issue of depth sensing. The Cameras in today’s mobile devices aren’t strong enough yet to sense better depth (the infamous Z axis) And this makes the advent of multiple object tracking limited to what I feel are applications that are only on the way to being fully immersive. Flat reference planes, and —so think, we will eventually be able to scan this entire floor either with smart glasses or other mobile devices and engage it in fascinating ways.
There are some critical points around the design and implementation of smart terrain that I’m not able to get into here (sort of best practices)—such as the user experience that developers in this context would want to induce, behaviors that should be inspired, and also the lifecycle of applications and engagements. And a little more of the psychology that would be involved in creating Montessori-inspired apps such as suspension of disbelief that children have a higher level of.