#AssemblrEDUStories: How a Geography Teacher and Her Students Took AR to an International Stage

Some of the best ideas start with the smallest conversations. For Mrs. Siti Noviati, a teacher of Geography, Economics, Sociology, and Anthropology at SMA Islam Al-Azhar 35 Cilacap, that conversation happened in her own classroom, and it eventually led her students to a Gold Medal on the international stage.

Discovering AR, One Lesson at a Time

Mrs. Novia first learned about Assemblr EDU through a fellow teacher who creates educational content online. Curious, she began exploring the platform in 2024 and started building AR-based learning materials for her classes.

The response from her students was immediate. Lessons became easier to understand, more accessible, and thanks to AR's combination of visuals and audio, genuinely enjoyable. Seeing that shift sparked an idea: what if this technology could be used for something bigger than a single lesson?

‍A Classroom Conversation That Sparked a Project

Mrs. Novia brought the idea to her students directly. Together, they had a casual discussion about issues happening in their community, and one theme kept coming up: young people were starting to forget the local culture and wisdom of their own region.

The students were on board immediately. They believed Assemblr EDU could help them build something meaningful—an AR-based cultural learning tool that could make local heritage fun and accessible again.

From there, the project took shape through several stages: identifying community needs, developing the tool, implementing it with Assemblr EDU, gathering feedback from the surrounding community, and validating both the content and the media with expert input. The team even registered the project under HAKI (Indonesia's intellectual property rights system), ensuring the work was officially and legally their own.

Teaching AR, Step by Step

Mrs. Novia’s approach to teaching Assemblr EDU was hands-on and methodical. She introduced the platform's features to her students one at a time, what each tool did, and how to use it, before guiding them on how to incorporate those features into their cultural learning tool.

It was a slow build, but a deliberate one. By the time the project was ready, her students weren't just users of Assemblr EDU, they understood it well enough to design with it.

From School to the International Stage

The team submitted their AR-based cultural learning tool to the Youth International Science Fair, aiming to introduce their work to a wider audience; both nationally and internationally.

The judges' response was overwhelmingly positive. They saw the tool for what it was: an innovation that was easy to access, easy to understand, and genuinely useful for helping communities preserve their own culture. The result: a Gold Medal, the team's first-ever international competition, and their first taste of international recognition.

A Teacher's Pride, and What Comes Next

Mrs. Novia was there for every step, from the first classroom discussion, through expert consultations and the HAKI registration process, all the way to the final presentation in front of judges.

"It was a very meaningful achievement, especially since this was the students' first experience at an international event," she shares. "As the teacher who accompanied them from the very beginning, I felt incredibly proud."

Looking ahead, Mrs. Novia hopes this experience becomes a starting point—not an endpoint. For her students, she hopes it's the first of many projects to come, with Assemblr EDU continuing to be a tool they explore and build with.

The judges shared a similar hope: that the cultural learning tool could be developed further and reach an even wider audience, helping more communities reconnect with the heritage around them.

Got an interesting experience using Assemblr EDU in your classroom? Send us a DM through our Instagram—we'd love to hear it, and maybe feature it next.