This story is part of a series on how we learn—from augmented reality to music-training devices.

I swear I learned this once in school. Something about fusion and explosions. Yet for the life of me, aside from a few Lady Gaga musical montages, I can't remember how a star is born. Luckily, I have Clio to help. She's a tiny particle that, thanks to the program built with Apple’s ARKit on the iPad I'm holding, is showing me all over the galaxy. She got chased out of her nebula by a bully named Lewis and needs help. "I want to be a star—a gorgeous celestial star that illuminates the universe with beauty," she says. "But Lewis says I'm too little." We go on an adventure to confront her bully, seek the wise counsel of Red Giant, and (spoiler alert!) she becomes a star. The whole thing takes about 8 minutes—and takes me right back to science class.

This is intentional. Clio's Cosmic Quest, the latest augmented reality experience from VR/AR company Within, is meant to help kids learn. It asks children questions and is designed to coax them into reading aloud. It turns any surface they're near—a dining room table, a bunk bed, a park bench—into another galaxy and then explains how it was formed. It might be the best 8-minute astronomy lesson out there. It's not alone.

Clio’s Cosmic Quest, released August 13, is the fourth experience for Within's Wonderscope app. The software, which the company debuted last November, is intended for kids to use at home or in school (it's already being used at after-school programs in Los Angeles), turning what otherwise might be brain-rotting screen time into a way to improve their reading skills and knowledge. Wonder's Land Ringmaster Wanted has kids interact with a rabbit as he's reminded why he loves his home; Little Red the Inventor flips the traditional Little Red Riding Hood story on its head, teaching them to use their smarts to avoid the Big Bad Wolf; and A Brief History of Amazing Stunts by Astonishing People is self-explanatory—the highlight is the tale of Helen Gibson, Hollywood's first stuntwoman.

"We launched with those [first three] to see if there was a signal that people were into augmented reality storytelling for children, since it was a totally foreign concept," says Chris Milk, Within's CEO and the driving force behind Wonderscope. "The signal came back that they were excited about it, so we started a new production cycle to make a bunch more stories."

Within isn’t the only team combining AR and learning. Earlier this month, a report from the organizers of the XRDC conference, polled 900 developers working in virtual, augmented, and mixed reality and found that 33 percent of them said their current projects were focused on education. (The previous year's report didn't track education work specifically, but suffice to say this number was a sizeable uptick.) As AR experiences—from smartphone games like Minecraft Earth to offerings from Magic Leap—gain traction, they'll become a go-to medium for myriad applications. Within's most recent project is right on time.

Wonderscope is just the latest big idea to emerge from Milk's brain—and a somewhat surprising one. He started his career as a director of music videos, making clips for the likes of Kanye West and Jack White. Over time, though, he turned his attention to interactive projects like The Wilderness Downtown, a partnership with Arcade Fire and Google to make an interactive HTML5 experience. (Remember those?) Soon, he moved on to virtual reality filmmaking, creating scores of experiences, and eventually launched Vrse, later renamed Within, working with his Wilderness Downtown collaborator Aaron Koblin. When Apple began previewing ARKit to developers before announcing it in 2017, Milk's team was among the first to get a chance to play with it, and Wonderscope was born.