Digital Technologies for Learning Consultant, JJ Purton Jones has worked with Lumination over the past 12 months implementing VR/AR Education kits across primary and high schools in the Catholic Diocese of Lismore.
The Catholic Schools Office released a three year digital technologies strategy, and part of that strategy is looking at emerging technologies and increasing students’ exposure to them. They specifically wanted to focus on Virtual Reality and how that would influence student experience and outcome.
JJ was looking for a VR experience that worked for teachers to use in the classroom, that students could adopt easily, and also worked with curriculum links. She wanted to ensure that VR had a real purpose in the classroom, and wasn’t just the next shiny thing.
With this criteria in mind, JJ explored many different options and eventually landed on the VR/AR Education Kit by Lumination. The Catholic Schools Office, Diocese of Lismore now has a loan library where teachers can borrow the kit, try it out with their students and then purchase their own kit.
After buying the kit they gave teachers time to explore the applications and experiences, time to discuss curriculum links and time to plan for VR integration into their programs.
From visiting Ancient Rome to seeing the Seven Wonders of the World teachers loved the immersive experiences.
Rebecca Green, HSIE Teacher, St Joseph’s College, Banora Point
It’s really important to JJ that students empathise with other situations and other people. By using Virtual Reality, they’re able to experience different worlds, and put themselves into different scenes. This is really helping students with the Design Thinking process and their use of technology as they can empathise with something first, look for problems and help solve them.
Liam, Year 7 Student, St Joseph’s College, Banora Point.
Phil Crosby, Stage 3 Teacher, St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School, Alstonville
This is the first step in the Catholic Schools Office strategy where students in the consumption phase with virtual reality, the next phase is guiding students to become virtual and augmented reality creators. They now exploring tools to encourage students to develop their own content and solutions to real world problems.
