Many of the new phones made by Google, as well as other companies, feature multiple cameras. These cameras can be used in combination to give the phone the ability to sense depth, a feature used in Google's AR platform, Tango.
Tango gives developers the use of Google's dual camera phones to create apps that will interact with the user's environment. This has already been used to create apps for museums, most prominently the Detroit Institute of Art. The interactive tour presented by the museum, called "Lumin" opened the doors to give users at the museum a chance to learn more about the art they are looking at, as well as engaging them further through inclusion of art and surroundings unavailable without the use of AR.
Google themselves have tapped into this realm of education with the Solar Simulator App. This allows you to pull out a model solar system anywhere, with facts about the planets, sun, and scale of the universe anywhere, and would be ideal for creating an interactive environment when educating people on the solar system.
The uses don't end at adding depth to education, though. There are already apps that can assist in making projects, offering measuring tools and interactive objects, negating the need for rulers or other objects to take up space. Google has shown the promise with these features in their own app, measure, with which you can measure objects on your phone without the need for a ruler or tape measure, and apps by Wayfair and Lowes that allow you to preview furniture in your own home before purchasing.
Although these currently are being used for furniture shopping, the possibility exists for developers to create apps that will allow for testing of structures or mechanics. Apps like this will prevent the waste of real materials in tests, allowing students to try multiple ideas without the restrictions of limited testing materials. Tango's ability to remember the location of offscreen items could also be a useful tool. Google's app Domino World, an app that allows the user to create an elaborate chain of dominoes and other objects around the house, exhibits this ability, and shows the possibility to create complex machines without the constriction of a limited area on the phone's screen (Not to mention the potential for lessons in chain reactions without the cleanup time).
Google Tango takes a leap into the new potentials of AR, and with this it can push the current limitations of eduction to more interactive, more informative, and more memorable levels.
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