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Up to this point, Google’s ARCore has been limited to only phones. The tech is pretty awesome, giving users the ability to see immersive, 3D objects in real space through the included camera. ARCore has been around for over a year at this point, and it has allowed really cool stuff, like this:
As I said above, however, this experience has been locked to Android phones at this point, but that is all changing. Acer is announcing ARCore arriving on the Chromebook Tab 10, making this the first non-smartphone device to directly leverage ARCore and, of course, the first Chromebook to do so as well.
Using Expeditions AR (a part of Google Expeditions for Classrooms), students can augment their lessons with more tangible, navigable objects right in the classroom. Think along the lines of placing active volcanoes or life-size DNA strands floating in space right in front of students.
An additional feature Acer is touting is the 3D Graphing Calculator by GeoGebra that allows students to create geometric shapes that they can see around and help them solve complex math problems.
There are whole worlds of possibilities awaiting students with this new technology, and the Acer Chromebook Tab 10 is likely just the first to take advantage of it. With more powerful tablets coming, it is highly likely that we’ll see ARCore making an appearance on more and more Chromebooks as better cameras are now becoming a part of the Chromebook experience. As we see more develop on this, we’ll report back.
