VIRTUAL REALITY

Virtual reality (VR) is a 3D simulated environment, conveying realistic and imaginative events (Southgate, 2018). By wearing a head mounted display (HMD), VR tracks the user’s position and projects visuals from the scenario directly to their eyes, creating a sense of presence of being inside the virtual world with events occurring around them (Slater, 2009).

GOOGLE EXPEDITIONS

VR allows for multiple perspectives, and better understanding of concepts (Passig, 2015). A 3D learning environment has benefits for students, including experiencing the learning, increasing spatial knowledge, and transferring skills from VR to real life (Dalgarno and Lee, 2010). Hence, students can develop empathy through VR. The creativity of VR can motivate and engage students, positively impacting their learning. For example, the app ‘Google Expeditions’ (n.d) can be used to learn KLAs, through a 360 degree virtual tour of historical landmarks and visiting inaccessible places such as underwater and in space.

COSPACES EDU

VR can foster creativity as it allows for inquiry based learning. Students can experiment with open-ended options and role play (De Freitas and Veletsianos, 2010), such as creating their own VR world through ‘CoSpaces Edu’ (2019), as completed in week 7’s tutorial.

Through CoSpaces, students can create their own VR world by choosing and manipulating characters, objects and environments. Interactions can occur through block-based coding, and students can view their VR creation using a HMD. CoSpaces can foster digital literacy and creativity skills and be used in English through storytelling, and Geography through creating ecosystems. Constructivist learning is also developed as students have first-person experiences, develop an understanding of VR concepts before learning, such as angles and manipulating size and scale (Mikropoulous and Natsis, 2011).

ISSUES

Southgate (2018) provides considerations involving VR in the classroom. Using VR requires practice, thus teachers need time to set up and familiarise themselves with the equipment. Technical issues may also occur. Teachers also need to provide supervision when students are using VR. VR can make children vulnerable to the VR audio and visual stimuli and make them believe the experience has happened. It can also cause motion sickness and has legal issues such as collecting personal biometric data (Southgate, 2018).

References:

Cospaces. (2019). https://cospaces.io/edu/about.html

Dalgarno, B., & Lee, M. J. (2010). What are the learning affordances of 3‐D virtual environments? British Journal of Educational Technology, 41(1), 10-32. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2009.01038.x

De Freitas, S., & Veletsianos, G. (2010). Crossing boundaries: Learning and teaching in virtual worlds. British Journal of Educational Technology, 41(1), 3-9. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2009.01045.x

Google Expeditions. (n.d). https://edu.google.com/products/vr-ar/expeditions/?modal_active=none

Mikropoulos, T. A., & Natsis, A. (2011). Educational virtual environments: A ten-year review of empirical research (1999–2009). Computers & Education, 56(3), 769-780. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2010.10.020

Passig, D. (2015). Revisiting the Flynn effect through 3D immersive virtual reality (IVR). Computers & Education, 88, 327-342.

Slater, M. (2009). Place illusion and plausibility can lead to realistic behaviour in immersive virtual environments. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 364(1535), 3549-3557.

Southgate, E. (2018). Immersive virtual reality, children and school education: A literature review for teachers. Available at: https://ericasouthgateonline.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/southgate_2018_immersive_vr_literature_review_for_teachers.pdf