Nearly 700 Armijo students got to explore a new world through a Google Beta program that provides “augmented reality” images to scientific and historic sites. Imagine being able to see the surface of the sun in 3D, or visiting the Roman Coliseum and seeing it from multiple angles. That is the experience that the students were privy to on Tuesday and Wednesday, February 20 and 21.

Because of some fast work on behalf of Ms. Denise Montegato, Armijo High School’s librarian, Google selected the campus to test out their new program. The students were divided into groups and provided with a device that was set to read the information on a QR code. That information would be controlled by the teacher who was on a similar device. With a simple swipe, the image that the students would see, in vivid 3D, could be changed.

In the version with the Roman Empire, for instance, the students might be looking at a scaled version of the Roman Coliseum and then be able to look at a stylized Roman Dagger as they turned their devices up toward the ceiling to take in the entire image. “Augmented reality overlays items that don’t exist physically onto the physical world, like using a smartphone to view an empty area of a room and seeing a life-sized statue of David appear through the camera lens,” Bill Hicks from The Daily Republic explained in his February 22 article.

The hope is that this sort of experience can be used to develop more interaction and connectivity to lessons within the curriculum. “I don’t think it will ever replace the classroom experience, but it is a way to really make education come alive,” Ms. Montegato told Mr. Hicks.