The EdTech Roundup
Connect:
  • Home
  • Reviews
  • Editorials & Press
  • Ed Tech Sites
  • Lesson Plans
    • Elementary
    • Secondary
  • Former Weekly Podcast
  • About Me
  • Contact

Utopia 360°: 4D+ Augmented and Virtual Reality STEM Bundles

10/14/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
Utopia 360° is a company that offers a variety of virtual reality and augmented reality experiences.  In terms of K-12 STEM education, they currently have three bundles and apps: Space Exploration, Dinosaur Experience, and Animal Zoo.  All of these are meant to help students explore content through both augmented and virtual reality.  Each bundle comes with a headset and cards.  These cards are then used to trigger the augmented/virtual reality experience. 

For this specific review, I had the opportunity to test out the Space Exploration bundle, which is designed to let students explore content related to the planets, the solar system, space missions, and content along these lines.

​Before jumping into the review, here’s a brief introductory video from the Utopia 360° team.



The basic idea is that students can use their phone or tablet (with the free Space Exploration app installed) to scan the included cards and learn more about the content.

For the dinosaur and space bundles, students hold their device over a card, and are presented with information about that thing (e.g., the solar system, a velociraptor, etc.).  Students can interact with the augmented reality model, by turning it and zooming in/out, as well as read information about whatever they’re looking at.  Students can also take photos or videos of what they’re exploring, and in the case of the lunar rover, they can even drive it around the surface of the virtual moon.   

Picture

The Animal Zoo bundle expands on this somewhat by also offering students instruction in the alphabet, and providing multilingual support.  While I wasn’t able to review that specific bundle, the Space Exploration bundle did not include any similar instructional content.  Instead, it more comes across as an augmented/virtual reality encyclopedia.  In other words, it’s great for exploring content, but educationally, it doesn’t offer much beyond that.

Picture

The virtual reality side of the Space Exploration bundle is meant to allow students to explore the International Space Station and the the solar system.  You can put on the included headset and take a trip through these different environments.  

Unfortunately, during my own testing, as well as the testing of my colleagues and students, we were never able to get the display to function completely properly, even after adjusting the focal points on the headset multiple times.  

I have used many other VR headsets successfully, and with the Utopia headset, we were never able to get the images to align precisely.  It almost reminded me of those old Magic Eye images, where if you relaxed your eyes in just the right way, you would be able to see things as they were intended, but as soon as you looked somewhere else, or shifted your head, it was gone, and you were left with a slight headache. We tested with multiple devices on the headset, and always ran into this same issue.

In addition to exploring the International Space Station and the solar system, you can also use the headset to look at the included cards, but we encountered the same issues here as mentioned above.  
Picture

In addition to the aforementioned issues, I was also unhappy to see that there is absolutely no NGSS standard-alignment or curricular support for these bundles.  For a product that promotes itself as being part of a “STEM-based education series” - the actual classroom connections were completely absent.  Aside from the alphabet instruction included in the zoo bundle, there is no curricular support, no discussion questions, no classroom guides, etc.

Picture

On the positive side, the price point of these bundles is fairly affordable, especially compared to other augmented/virtual reality classroom bundles.  And the augmented reality component of the app worked incredibly well, and was certainly fun and engaging.  

Overall, I see this being more useful as a fun toy to get students interested in space, or animals, or dinosaurs, and less beneficial as a classroom/educational resource.  

It could be useful for students who are interested in learning more about these topics, but with the complete lack of curricular connections, support resources, NGSS-aligned materials, etc., it’s hard for me to recommend this as something that could be widely adopted in a classroom setting.  

Additionally, the issues we ran into with the virtual reality means that even if these resources did exist, there would still be those difficulties to address.  Plus, the included manual included information that was either incorrect or out of date related to the app, which was frustrating to see.  


In short, the augmented reality side of this experience works well for exploring content, but outside of that, the Utopia 360° Space Exploration Bundle does not appear to currently be a beneficial classroom resource.  If everything worked as expected, and the team had clearly placed an emphasis on developing something that was aligned with teacher and school needs, I think it could be valuable.  But as it stands now, it only has potential for being beneficial at some point in the future.

For more information in terms of pricing and products, you can check out their store.

Picture

​The opinions expressed in this review are my own.

I was not compensated for writing this review.
I recieved a Space Exploration bundle for the purposes of this review.

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Reviews

    Here you can find the Round Up's collection of in-depth reviews on the latest programs, apps, websites, and more.

    Make sure to click the review's title or the Read More link for the complete review!


    Picture

    Featured

    Picture
    Check out our featured review | ClassroomAPP: A Complete, K-12 Digital Platform for Online and In-Person Classrooms

    Teach.com

    Picture

      Subscribe

    Subscribe

    Connect


    Awards

    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

    RSS Feed


    Archives

    July 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    June 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    April 2013

           
​Except where noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
Picture

Copyright 2020 | Mike Karlin, Ph.D.