Augmented Reality and Education - A Fit?

     My wife is an Autism Behavioral Therapist and I was curious to find out if there was an application for AR in helping children with Autism or other special needs.  I found a cool resource website called Do2Learn.  The website is basically a resource website for parents who have children who have Autism or other disorders and provides them with educational tools and research resources on the topic.  

I was surprised to find several peer-reviewed articles that relate specifically to the application of AR in helping children with Autism learn everything from safety skills to learning games to social skills.  Here are the links to some of the articles and resources I found that were interesting.  

1      An Evolution of Virtual Reality Training Designs for Children with Autism and Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders http://www.do2learn.com/aboutus/final%20language%20disorders%20paper.pdf

2     Video Enhanced VR for Teaching Restaurant Social Skills to Children with Autism (PowerPoint) http://www.do2learn.com/aboutus/team.htm

3    Developing Virtual Reality Instruction for Autism Report  http://www.do2learn.com/aboutus/research/phase1.htm

4      Overcoming Phobias by Virtual Exposure http://www.do2learn.com/aboutus/research/phobia.htm

    

The applications of AR in this specific field seems to be a great fit, I actually didn’t think I would find much as the application of AR technology to this demographic may be difficult, or at least that is what I thought, apparently I was wrong.