Virtual Reality - An Immersive Experience

There is so much that you can do with virtual reality technology and there are a multitude of reasons for why the inclusion of this technology can be beneficial within the classroom. For me, I think that two things are important to teaching, and learning: (1)fascination and (2)relatability.

Fascination

As an educator, if you are interested in what you are teaching then students’ interest for your subject matter will rise.—Students can sense your passion and they feed off of it! When I taught “Hamlet” throughout my first practicum, I began by reintroducing students to what going to the theatre would be like during the Elizabethan era. I showed them pictures I took of The Globe Theatre when I went to London and students who had traveled their themselves, began to discuss their own experiences there. While these anecdotes enthused the class, with the assistance of virtual reality, my whole class could have visited The Globe and shared in the experience. When I taught “To Kill a Mockingbird,” I retold accounts of my time in Maycomb, Alabama. If I had been able to utilize virtual reality technology, my students and I could have walked the streets of Maycomb together!

Relatability

Relatability is perhaps the most powerful tool that teachers have at their disposal in their attempt to engage students in their learning: students’ “understanding and skills will grow as they explore their world and engage in activities, for their own purposes, that involve reading [and] writing.” (“The Ontario Curriculum Grades 9 and 10 English.” 2007, p.5.) By making the classroom content they are learning relatable to them, students then become personally invested in the course and their learning. Using virtual reality within the classroom can assist educators with making the material they are teaching more relatable to students because they can provide students with a visually interactive, as well as immersive, experience—This technology allows students to plunge head first into each lesson, dive into their own learning as they soak up the material in a new and exciting way.

Check Out:

TED TALKS: Designing for Virtual Reality and the Impact on Education | Alex Faaborg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQMA5NNhN58