Japanese Elementary Schools Introducing Epson’s Moverio Smart Glasses to Communicate

It’s amazing how technology has pushed forth in such a small time. Just a few months ago, during the Epson Fusion 7 event at Siargao, we witnessed the introduction of Epson’s Moverio Smart Glasses. It was impressive, it was functional but we didn’t see the use of it for school children until today.

Flash forward a few months later and here I am writing about Japanese elementary kids getting introduced to Moverio as a way to communicate.

Japan, 22 August 2016 – Takashima Elementary School in Nagano, Japan, has introduced a unique extracurricular activity in which each class decides what to study every year. “Let’s make healthy forests!” and used Epson’s Moverio* smart glasses as a communication tool to make school work even more engaging. Epson engineers began their activities with the children a year ago (Stargazing using Moverio) with the aim of making learning fun. Using the help of the same engineers, the children, who had been studying forests, wanted to communicate using leading-edge information products to ensure that people could understand the importance of nature.

On July 7, the children were divided into nine groups. Based on themes decided through discussions with the engineers, they uploaded to the Moverio photos and videos that they had taken themselves of the forest alongside materials they prepared on a PC.

Using an application on a tablet device, the same images were displayed on multiple Moverio units. With this feature, each group could share their thoughts about the forest among the entire group. The presenting group had created a quiz, and the children wearing Moverio all cheered when the slide appeared before their eyes, as if it were floating on a big screen in front of them.

By participating in the activity, the children clearly identified who they wanted to communicate to, with comments like, “I want my grandparents to enjoy these images of the forest since they can’t go themselves.” They plan to make some changes to the content, and improve the quality of their presentation using the ‘magic glasses.’

* Worn like glasses, Moverio smart glasses offer users the ability to enjoy crystal clear video entertainment, games, music, and web content, anytime and anywhere. It displays what appears as large semi-transparent images floating against the surrounding background. The Moverio BT-200 is intended for ages from junior high school and older, but for these extracurricular lessons, our engineers were present to ensure safety, and time limits were set for use of the glasses.

So yes, welcome to the future. I wish we had this when we were in high school and college. Pretty sure there’ll be a good number of students who’d have excelled in schoolwork with this as an added part of the educational materials.

Also, this pretty much puts the Moverio in the list of products I want to see under my Christmas tree.