A road map to teaching spatial thinking

The preschoolers were fascinated, looking at their classroom through the lens of an iPad camera, watching animated images popupasa cheerful voice told them: Feed apples toa pig behinda haystack. Select the carnival ride between two sets of balloons.

- BY KATE SEQUEIRA

A CHILD uses an augmented reality app on a tablet to learn spatial awareness.

(Gracie & Friends, WGBH Educational Foundation)

Although the game delighted these 3and 4-year-olds, they were actually participating in a serious research project that is developing an important foundation for their future in math: spatial thinking and its integrated vocabulary, a skill typically overlooked in early education.

The students used augmented reality scenes, testing the app on the iPad, to understand an object’s position in relation to other objects. With feedback from teachers such as Chelsea Attride in New York, the research was conducted by the nonprofit Education Development Center in partnership with Boston radio station WGBH Education Foundation and education nonprofit Digital Promise.

“That was the really new part of what we were doing,” said Ashley Lewis Presser, senior research scientist at the Education Development Center. “We were able to create these spatial tasks that kids would do that were really fun and engaging.”