Over the past three years, Yang Yang, a TransEET researcher from the UCL team, has been developing ShapeFactory, an augmented reality (AR) prototype designed to support primary school students in learning geometry and developing spatial abilities.
As part of this long-term research project, ShapeFactory has been iteratively designed and tested through a series of hands-on workshops conducted both in the UCL laboratory and in collaboration with three primary schools in London. During these workshops, children explored geometric shapes in an AR environment and used them to design and construct their own objects. The activities encouraged active engagement with geometry, allowing students to investigate relationships between shapes while working in a shared physical and digital space.
Beyond school-based activities, the project has also contributed to knowledge exchange within the wider mathematics education community. On 22 October, ShapeFactory was presented at the ICTMT17 conference during the workshop “Getting Started with Extended Reality (XR) Tools to Deepen Spatial Thinking in Primary and Secondary Mathematics”. Researchers and teachers from different countries were introduced to the prototype and supported in exploring how AR tools can be integrated into mathematics teaching to foster spatial thinking.
Through sustained collaboration with students, teachers, and researchers, the ShapeFactory project illustrates how extended reality technologies can be used to enrich geometry learning and support innovative educational practices within the goals of the TransEET project.
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