TechSmith provides simple and intuitive visual communication software for both academic and business environments.

Teaching some subjects, such as physics, is often a challenge. It is difficult to depict physical forces and objects visually.

Our Teacher’s Virtual Toolbelt uses the Microsoft HoloLens augmented reality device as a teaching tool to better illustrate challenging subjects and concepts using holograms. By combining a HoloLens app and a web app, this tool allows for collaboration between students and teachers.

Our HoloLens app is used by the teacher. It provides a set of basic holograms such as cubes, spheres and arrows. The HoloLens enables the teacher to interact with these holograms in a 3D space using hand gestures and voice commands.

The teacher uses our web app to plan lessons that include quizzes and textual reference material. Students use the web app to view live lessons and take quizzes. Students submit questions that are visible to the teacher in the HoloLens. The teacher starts the lessons and quizzes using voice commands.

The teacher’s augmented view of the holograms is streamed from the HoloLens to the web application, allowing students to see the holograms as the teacher conducts the lesson. This mixed reality stream lets an entire group of students benefit from the capabilities of one HoloLens device.

Our HoloLens app is written in Unity. Our web app uses the .NET Web API framework, and is written in C# and JavaScript. The web app and SQL database are hosted on the Microsoft Azure Cloud.