Press Release
Award-winning education pioneer CleverBooks secures partnership with the world’s most-read history encyclopaedia
Dublin, 13.07.18. In a newly-founded cooperation, CleverBooks’ AR products for Geography will soon be expanded with the extensive knowledge base of Ancient History Encyclopaedia, providing detailed information on the cultural landmarks that can be discovered by students on the interactive AR World Map.
With student engagement and excitement being more and more difficult to find in classrooms nowadays, educators all around the world are facing urgent questions: How can classroom resources live up to the colourful, highly interactive and entertaining digital environment that today’s students, often referred to as ‘Digital Natives’, are so used to? How do we adapt to the digital age and the fourth industrial revolution and ensure that our children are well-equipped for the future?
STEM
At the same time, STEM subjects have been identified by governments and educational leaders all around the world as crucial to our economic, environmental and social sustainability for the future. But, STEM subjects are also among the most difficult subjects to master and to get students excited about, especially when there is a lack of appropriate visualization tools. This holds true for both geography and culture which are the most important resources to understand our present and future. Our understanding shapes cultural identity of history. Increased historical awareness through history education helps future citizens navigate the modern media landscape in search for accurate information.
What AR can do?
With AR solutions, an entirely new way to deliver knowledge and ensure an engaging learning experience and -environment. Through this immersive technology, students can view landmarks all around the world and explore in 3D, traveling countries and continents in seconds on the AR World Map. The map , beside cultural heritage, features information on animals, plant and more.
Voice-over by children ensures a better understanding of names and pronunciation, while the overall AR experience supports all learning styles and -modalities. We find additional information on the screen of the mobile device from Ancient History Encyclopedia’s vast database of over 2000 history articles. The encyclopedia’s content has a proven track record in education: Over 1000 schools regularly use the resource in class.
In a recent study conducted by Ancient History Encyclopedia, 84% of students report that using the website’s multimedia resources for their studies has improved their academic performance and understanding of history.
Jobs of the Future
As stated by the World Economic Forum, 65% of current primary students will work in jobs that do not even exist yet, while their prognosis for 2020 sees critical thinking and creative problem solving as two of the most highly demanded skills in the future workplace.
In recent research, AR clearly presents itself as the most important tool to deal with this outlook. AR increases knowledge retention among students by up to 100% and lead to test score improvements of up to 33%. At the same time, it contributes strongly to building exactly the aforementioned skills, as also recently pointed out in this article by Inc Magazine.
By combining forces, both CleverBooks and the Ancient History Encyclopaedia aim to create learning resources of the highest academic quality to teach a generation of students that will be crucial to the solving of pressing global problems of the future. AR solutions suit their learning demands together with technology. Students can exploit the advantages that our rapid technological progress will bring.
About CleverBooks
CleverBooks is a Dublin-based powerhouse advancing education systems around the world to match the requirements of the digital age and set the standards in the use of Augmented Reality in education. Their focus on an established core curriculum and traditional teaching aids powered by AR makes CleverBooks’ solutions effective and adoptable for every school around the globe.
CleverBooks AR resources are available at a range of major global distributors and at cleverbooks.eu.
About Ancient History Encyclopedia
Ancient History Encyclopedia is a non-profit company publishing the world’s most-read history encyclopedia with over 20 million annual readers. Its mission is to engage people with cultural heritage and to improve history education worldwide.
The website helps teachers, students, and schools by providing them with reliable, easy-to-read, and high-quality resources entirely for free. 80% of the website’s readers report that they have become more interested in learning more about history through the engaging content found on Ancient History Encyclopedia.
Ancient History Encyclopedia is now developing an education platform to help educators teach history in an engaging fashion to create a lasting difference in their students’ understanding of history.