First series of Augmented Realities books made available to Vietnamese children, initiated by the UNICEF-sponsored XR project
With the support of the project “Piloting the application of virtual reality and augmented reality technologies in two levels of education in Vietnam” (sponsored by UNICEF Vietnam), the first series of 20 augmented reality books (AR books) in Vietnamese language, provides an enriched reading experience for Vietnamese children.
Umbalena is a pioneering edtech startup in the field of technology application to encourage Vietnamese children to read books anytime, anywhere in fun, engaging way. The project “Piloting the application of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality (XR) technology in preschool and lower secondary education in Vietnam” has partnered with Umbalena’s talented team of software engineers and graphic designers to develop first-of-its-kind augmented reality (AR) books for young Vietnamese children.
Within the first month of its launch in April 2021, the AR book series has had more than 60,000 downloads, helping more than 60,000 Vietnamese families with young children learn and explore the world in a richer way, in the context of school closures due to covid-19.
With the encouragement of the XR project, in June 2021, the Umbalena team has upped their game to make AR books even more pervasive. They successfully presented their project proposal titled “Upgrading and developing the UMBALENA application – The application of language and knowledge development for children” to the Department of Science and Technology of Da Nang City. Key tasks of this DOST-approved project include the “Improvement of application of augmented reality technology to book production” and “Building and perfecting the reading feature of Vietnamese-made online books”, thus further accelerating the goal of “universalizing AR books” to all Vietnamese children.
