AR/VR in the Classroom
If you walked by my office this Friday you most likely had this thought:
Today I spent some time formatting our new virtual reality headsets from Class VR. If you are a regular reader of the blog you know that one of my areas of focus during my M.Ed was looking at ways that technology can increase educational opportunities for rural and remote schools. Whether it is decreased field trips and guests speakers due to geographical constraints or lack of lab and immersion activities due to limited budgets; rural and remote schools often face a more narrow scope of experiences due to their location. This is where augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) can play a role!
As part of our newly revamped Tech Kits, MVSD staff have access to two class sets of the Class VR system. Each set includes 8 headsets as well as access to the Class VR portal that allows teachers to:
- access hundreds of lessons, experiences, lesson plans, and student worksheets (K-12, all subject areas)
- ability to storyboard student viewing
- ability to see each student view from their own computer
- build in auto-prompts such as break time and auto shut-off
- and more!
The two videos below provide both a quick overview from Class VR as well as my initial review during set-up:
All of our Tech Kits are accompanied by teacher support guides to help ensure use of these tools are as accessible as possible. I decided to quickly make up the following graphic to accompany these guides as this type of tech will be brand new to our students and staff.
I can’t wait for teachers and students to begin exploring this resource! For those who are wanting further information, a dedicated page to AR/VR has been added to the ICT Resources Notebook (linked in a tab at the top of the screen).
Do you use AR/VR in your classroom? What has your experience been?