VR in the classroom

V.R in the Classroom

V.R has been making its way into classrooms for some time now with students using google cardboard to use it google earth V.R in geography lessons to taking tours of le louve in V.R. Students are getting a taste of V.R and have been slowly integrated into digital classrooms. We started with the inclusion of primary school children learning to code, using Minecraft to create an environment where schools are trying to encourage young students particularly young males into creative writing and enjoying English. We also have smaller technologies such as laser printers being used in design technology and art classrooms allowing students to get hands on with not only a new medium but a tool that is seeing more and more prevalence every day. The works of Seymore Papert is hugely influential and rings true with many practitioners such ideas as students need to be taught how a computer works, its parts, what they do and everything else. Constructivists agree with this view as by understanding the inner workings of something it makes the learner more aware to what they are using and why it works in the way that it does, this means children learn the biology of technology the human body works the way it does because of its parts and so does a computer. If a student can understand this then their level of understanding for working with and using technology would be vastly improved. The fact that Oblinger and Oblinger (2005) mas noted that this generation of students prefers to learn from hands on experience, watching videos and audio rather than just reading content however this may lead to shorter attention spans and a decline in literacy skills in terms of standard literacy where as the children could be gaining digital literacies skills which arguably are replacing the traditional formats, such as emails over letters and computerised systems for filing over binders and written paper. Raines (2002) also would agree with this idea of students needing more fulfilment and excitement in the classroom such as V.R a chance to explore a new way of storytelling, delivering content and engaging with the world. There are ethical concerns however with the impending change as ethically, many things have yet to be considered or discovered about the use of technology with it being so new and rapidly evolving. This is where the protectionist discourses come into play with filters on internet browsers to keep the students for accessing inappropriate or extreme content, such content is explored through the proper protected channels in the classroom as within the classroom the teacher controls the information passed on where as if students were to research on the open internet they may find less then suitable material. However sometimes protectionist discourse oversteps its boundary’s by external influences such as the media spinning stories into parents’ heads. This can include sexual predators in Habbo Hotel and other online games, online gambling in games seeded discreetly and violence in media. Now these messages are taken by schools as to quell outrage and moral panic and concerns mostly in announcements about such issues and tackling such things as cyber bullying and online awareness in special PSHE days and other methods but are not explicitly mentioned in lessons. This can have a strong impact on the integration of V.R into the classroom as when using a V.R headset the teacher would only be able to see the student wearing the headset and without a screen monitoring software or blockers onto the market place to stop students accessing content that is not appropriate for the school or themselves. There must also be a tutor watching or the student must have a secure and open environment to involve injury such as walking into a wall or table, but in more serious circumstances sexual harassment and other such things as the student has those risks open to them whilst wearing the headset not able to see the room around them. As many schools have a Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) which are integrated with the Web 2.0 technologies such as Kahoot and Frog where students have a forum and access to work tasks, (Savage and Barrnett 2015) with this system in place V.R could be integrated into tasks such as history homework having a tomb exercise where they use google cardboard to explore the tomb and record their findings in a physical journal, this activity could also have great use in English as most novels in secondary English lack visual aids and therefore could benefit from having a visual cue for students to use for exam revision as opposed to simply text. Children have been using games consoles and instant messaging outside of the classroom for quite some time now and because of their digital native status will often adapt to new technology quicker then some staff, meaning that the students could find features or uses for the technology faster than the institute could prepare for stunting the growth into the curriculum.