By Jason D.
STEM Innovation High School Grade 11 Student

The Microsoft HoloLens is one of many pieces of technology in our school that students have the opportunity to work with. It is a “Mixed Reality” headset, which displays digital images on a transparent glass screen, making them appear as though they exist in the real world. Grade 11 students were first exposed to this during our first week of grade 10, where volunteers at the University of Calgary allowed students to use the HoloLens and explore its functionality. Since then, students have had continued exposure to the real-world applications of the HoloLens, such as guest speakers from our Future-Ready program who are using the HoloLens to scan terrains for topographic mapping.

Over the last 18 months, I have personally explored some of the many features that the HoloLens has to offer. These features include things like hand tracking, eye tracking, 3D scanning and QR code detection. I’ve even been invited to the University of Calgary to meet with some graduate students and talk about different projects that I am working on. Working with the HoloLens has given me so many opportunities to learn and develop my skills. When I started this project, I would never have expected to learn so much from this one device. I would highly encourage any students to find and explore one of their passions by using one of the many available pieces of technology at this school, because you never know where a simple hobbyist project can lead you.

Jason has also created documentation to share with interested students so that they can work with the HoloLens, if you are interested, please reach out to Mr Mackrory in the High School