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I'm hoping so much someone is interested - I'd be very grateful if anyone has more suggestions for how to approach my project or even wants to talk generally about AR in learning.

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Background that probably only I find exciting:

I'm writing a Masters thesis on the potential to use augmented reality for informal science learning. I am not claiming to be highly original: I've seen great uses of AR in classroom settings, witnessed the explosion in the past year of virtual museum tours, and read up on historical walking tours of cities where AR is utilized to call out points of interest.

For the practical part of my thesis, I want to mock up a walking tour that reveals local prehistory. For example, we learn as kids that dinosaurs walked the earth, but I think AR overlay is the most perfect way to really show that it happened right where the learners are standing (depending on where you live in the world). I'm not trying to push the amazing boundaries of AR: the proposed exhibit would be location-based and have distinct 'exhibits'. At its very simplest, an exhibit could be one main overlaid object (e.g. a dinosaur fossil on the ground) and then different hot spots of interaction to 'learn more'. I have many other ideas to take better advantage of how amazing AR can be, but I have to keep adding all those ideas to the 'further directions' section of the paper.

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Specific question: Are there any good options out there that can let a layperson lay out a simple AR scene for educational purposes? I feel like I keep reading up on apps/engines that were available, but aren't any longer.

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If that doesn't seem realistic or 'worth it', are there any good options for a layperson to mock up AR to show a proof of concept? In terms of being acceptable for my level of work, I know I can have a proof of concept that does not involve actual AR. One idea I'm playing with today is creating a tour in Tour Creator and asking my users to access it in the real location. There are immediate issues: it means relying on Google street view, it won't allow users to be in the frame and therefore misses out on immersion, and it's going to disappear in June 2021. Is there another way to get the feel of AR?

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Thanks, all. Excited about the work you're doing.