Associate Professor Erica Southgate has partnered with 360° company VRTY and NSW Maritime, the government agency responsible for marine safety and regulation, to develop a unique learning resource on boating safety for primary school aged students.
NSW Maritime currently undertake education programs on boating safety in schools and are now investing in the development of this digital learning resource to complement face-to-face delivery and promote mobile learning opportunities for students.
The 360° learning resource will cover areas such as the importance of life jackets, essential safety equipment on boats, and on-water awareness. It will include a child-centred narrative and interactive and informative multi-media pop-ups. Some of these pop-ups will be ‘easter eggs’ or fun findable content embedded in the resource for discovery learning. The learning affordances or special properties of 360° media are well suited to a learning resource on boating safety as students can be virtually transported out to a waterway to get a real feeling of what it is like to travel in vessel while maintaining awareness of safety. They can learn and practice this awareness in the security of the classroom or home. The project includes a participatory component where children will provide feedback on the design of the resource.
So far, we have brainstormed and storyboarded the resource with NSW Maritime staff. And, we have just returned from capturing 360° footage as the video illustrates. Throughout the rest of 2022, we will keep you updated on our progress on 360° Boating Safety Resource. Stay tuned.
Interested in students as virtual reality content creators? Check out this podcast from the VR School Study lead researcher A/Prof Erica Southgate. In the podcast, Erica discusses: selecting ‘sandbox’ applications that allow students to create virtual worlds without needing to code; pedagogical facilitation and curriculum development using this new media; and the evidence base for learning.
SEDA College in Adelaide launched its VR project on 16 March 2022. SEDA is a senior school with a focus on academics and sport with practical connections to industry. Classrooms are located in local sport, recreation, and community facilities and industry settings. It has a ‘one teacher, one classroom’ model that allows teachers to take on a mentoring approach to education.
SEDA’s VR project is part of an integrated (project-based) unit of work that addresses the driving question: How can 360° virtual reality be used to enhance stakeholder experience in sport? The project launch day was attended by representatives from Football South Australia, and saw students and teachers undertake individual and collaborative learning activities that were sequenced to develop initial knowledge and confidence.
Adrian Stenta (left), teacher and co-researcher on the VR project, developed a sequence of activities for the launch. The activities were designed to get students thinking about the learning objectives, using the technology for audience engagement, and familiarising themselves with the VRTY platform through guided play.
Adrian reflected on what it was like for a teacher who had never used VR before to take part in the research and what he hoped he and his students would get out of it:
We will keep you updated on Adrian and the student’s VR learning journey. Look out for more updates throughout 2022.
During 2022, the VR School Study will be reporting on research conducted in collaboration with the Association of Independent Schools of South Australia (AISSA) and their member schools — SEDA College, Pembroke School and Trinity College — located in Adelaide. The research is also a partnership with 360° VR company VRTY. The research will focus on students as VR content creators in junior secondary school STEM with occasional forays into primary (elementary) school. We will be exploring pedagogical approaches to leveraging VR in STEM classrooms for Deeper Learning and creativity, sharing curriculum ideas, and showcasing the 360° VR content students create for authentic audiences with their unique perspectives on learning through the technology. We will report on progress through numbered project updates from each school which will use the same cover image so that they will be easily identifiable as part of set. Look out for these as well as other posts that will pull together findings across schools. Let the VR School Study in 2022 begin!
This post reports on Athelstone School teachers’ views on using VRTY, a 360° content creation platform, for learning Italian with primary (elementary) school students. To catch-up on the research go here and here.
Language teachers Jo Romeo and Angelica Cardone provided extensive reflections in video and written form throughout the study. They noted that most students were engaged in the learning task of creating their virtual tour of Italy and incorporate the mandated Italian directional language and greetings. Teachers were particularly pleased to see less technologically confident students gain skills by collaborating with their peers either in pairs to create one virtual world or through peer-to-peer interaction more generally.
Teacher written reflections suggested that throughout the unit of work students were developing the Deeper Learning capacities of effective communication and problem solving through self-directed learning and an academic mindset featuring persistence when confronted with a range of difficulties:
“(The project) has enabled aspects of learning as they (students) have designed and created their own (virtual) worlds without too much teacher input. They have explored the platform on their own and used it to showcase their language and IT skills. Students did their own research on well-known landmarks as well as using their prior knowledge to include in their VR worlds. This has enabled them to learn factual historical information about different Italian landmarks and has also improved their vocabulary on directional language.… Students enjoyed recording their voices for the sound markers (that were embedded in the 360° scenes) and some students also researched how to pronounce particular words. They became independent workers as most of the time they problem solved on their own trying different strategies to see if they worked or didn’t. This displayed determination and commitment to successfully complete their (virtual worlds).”
Throughout the research, teachers learnt about the potential of immersive storytelling for language learning and students learnt about this too, guided by a mix of instructional strategies and creative processes. Instructional strategies included explicit teaching, scaffolding of student independent research and student production of different types of interactive media in Italian and English to be embedded in the scenes of their virtual Italian tour. After students had created several interconnected 360° scenes, teachers encouraged them to make audio files of themselves (sometimes with peers) orally using the directional language central to the curriculum. These voice recordings were then embedded in appropriate places in 360° scenes along with other media students had sourced or created such as photo and text information pop-ups providing historical or cultural facts related to the scene.
Students exhibited joy when experiencing their 360° creations through a VR headset, as the teachers explain:
“Most students reacted (to the immersive experience) with expressions such as ‘This is amazing’, ‘This is so cool!’. They were actually able to experience firsthand by being engaged in their virtual world. … (T)hey were able to interact more with the world they created using the headsets because for them it felt like they were in Italy and experiencing the tour around Italy rather than just seeing it on the screen.”
“The students were excited and eager to view their worlds in VR using the headsets. It was fantastic to see their enthusiasm and wonder at being able to view what they had created on a screen using the VRTY platform into what felt like ‘real life’.”
Longitudinal, deep teacher reflection is a key source of data for the VR School Study. Teacher reflections over time provide important insights in to growth in teacher professional learning, student learning and the success of different pedagogical strategies and curriculum planning approaches when using VR real classrooms.
Cover picture: Our last real-life team selfie before the Covid pandemic hit – Front: A/Prof Erica Southgate; Rear (Left to Right): Athelstone School language teachers Angelica Cardone and Jo Romeo, and Principal (and language teacher) Gyllian Godfrey. The study was funded through the South Australian Department for Education Innovative Language Program Grant.
The VR School Study has featured in an interview published by the Independent Schools Association of NSW (AISNSW). The interview covers areas such as leveraging the learning affordances of VR to develop deeper understanding, problem-solving and creativity with students. You can read the interview here.
How do children go about planning the content and experiences of virtual environments that they are creating to demonstrate learning mastery? How do they think about creating virtual environments for their peers to learn in? What are the special learning outcomes related to this? Not much is known about these areas.
The VR School Study is interested in students as virtual environment content creators. As part of the research, we collected data on the approaches students take when creating their own virtual worlds to demonstrate mastery of learning. This blog reports on interesting findings from the Athelstone School Innovative Languages project where primary (elementary) aged children are building their own 360° virtual tours to demonstrate mastery of the Italian language.
The students are using VRTY, a platform that allows them to plan and create their virtual worlds without needed to code. The platform provides easy-to-use tools with built in tutorials and a fun guide so that students can independently learn to use the platform after a couple of formal training sessions. Previous blog posts describe the VRTY platform and how it is leveraged through the teacher’s curriculum design. The first step, after training, is for students to research and plan their virtual tour. The planning involves storyboarding through VRTY. Students need to:
Locate and choose the 360° photo scenes of Italy that best fit a tour narrative.
Locate cultural and historical images that could be embedded in each scene.
Create their own content to embed in the scene such as text and sound file that draw on the vocabulary mandated and reflect their research on cultural and historical information about Italy.
Design a narrative through storyboarding in VRTY that reflects the story they want to tell and consider whether the tour experience should be linear or non-linear (the image below is of one student’s storyboard).
Create each 360° scene and embed their content into it in an engaging way and place teleporter hotspots in the scenes so those experiencing the tour can move between scenes.
Fourteen students from a mixed ability class chose to be part of the project with 11 virtual worlds in total created – some students chose to work in pairs. Equal numbers of boys and girls participated. On average student virtual worlds comprised six 360° scenes. Overall, students created 187 pieces of content to embed in scenes in their virtual worlds, including 50 sound files and 137 information markers. The cover image to this blog post is a screen shot from the student tour ‘Journey around Rome’ which shows student created information and sound markers embedded into the scene.
Interestingly, 7 of the 11 worlds were structured according to a non-linear narrative. Non-linear narratives allowed those experiencing the tour to move back and forth between all or most 360° scenes. Students who developed a non-linear narrative storyboard explained that this allowed have the freedom to go back and check out aspects of a scene they might have missed or enjoyed. The image below is of a non-linear narrative storyboard developed in VRTY. The virtual tour was created by a female student who called it ‘Journey around Rome’ and it allowed the traveler to move between a number of historic sites with all sorts of images, text and sound files in English and Italian embedded into them which used the mandated vocabulary and other Italian. Best still the traveler could return to a hotel room and decide which day trip they might take next or they could go back and visit somewhere they had already been.
The storyboard in VRTY for ‘Tour Around Rome’ illustrates the non-linear narrative created by the students with arrow indicating the direction of travel that was possible between 360° scenes.
This sophisticated non-linear narrative approach to constructing a user experience was premised on creating a sense of agency for those experiencing the tour (or other learners). In choosing non-linear narratives some children were tapping into the strength of developing learner agency when designing their virtual worlds. Non-linear narratives were not essential for developing agency but, in many cases, were important to this.
The significance of developing agency in learning cannot be underestimated, as Williams (2017) explains:
“Students with agency develop a self-perception that is based on their abilities as independent thinkers. Our task as educators is not to tell them what to think but to help reveal their thinking by reflecting back to them what we are observing and noticing and naming their acts of problem solving. This feedback builds a metacognitive awareness that reinforces their identities as capable thinkers who are able to construct their own understandings. This mode of learning shifts the locus of power from the teacher to the student, thus setting up students as the experts in their own learning.” (p. 11).
The Athelstone School VR project illustrates how many students themselves understand the significance of agency in creating engaging and efficacious 360° learning environments.
Reference
Williams, P. (2017). Student Agency for Powerful Learning. Knowledge Quest, 45(4), 8-15.
An essential part of scaffolding digital learning when using emerging technology in schools is the provision of developmentally appropriate training on using platforms to meet learning objectives. While there is a lot of talk about generations Y and Z being digital natives, there is great variability in the capability of children and young people in using digital tools for learning, especially when it is comes to creating rather than consuming products.
Throughout the Athelstone School project we have thought carefully about training and supporting primary school aged students (11 – 12years) in using the 360° VRTY platform or content creation. In 2019 we did a pilot study using VRTY with Year 5 students which helped us hone the training approach. In this phase of the study student training was conducted via teleconference and lasted 40 minutes. VRTY personnel delivered the training, while the teachers and researcher were on hand to assist. This initial training involved a general introduction to using the platform to create virtual worlds in screen mode. We used a ‘sticky note’ exercise to evaluate the training where students writing down their comments on a post-it note about the training so that we could gauge the class’s training experience. This exercise revealed most students enjoyed the training but that some found it challenging as the examples below show.
Some student feedback from the first training exercise.
In 2020, we expanded the training and support approach to include an additional teleconference session on how to save and share virtual content with others in screen and immersive modes. VRTY designed a special handbook for students on this step-by-step process. This handbook was printed out and put on each desk for easy referral. This supplemented to in-platform tutorials and information, providing an option for students who might prefer more conventional reference material to support learning. This in-class training was undertaken via conference which we already had practice with before the necessity of conducting such sessions due to COVID restrictions.
Training in action from the student perspective.
One of the learning objectives for the unit of work was that students could use the on-desk training handbook effectively for assistance to trouble-shoot issues as they arose. The evaluation indicated that all students met this learning objective.
Our experience shows that primary school students may need different training and resource approaches to build confidence and scaffolding them towards competence in using 360° content creation tools. The training response included provision of in-platform instructions and tutorials with a back-up paper-based manual available on student desks. Once confidence was developed, students played and learnt through this process too. Multi-pronged training approaches coupled with practice and play makes perfect.
Training in progress 21st century style.
This post bought to you by A/Prof Erica Southgate, the VRTY team Kingston Lee-Young and Sarah Lee and the teachers of Athelstone School.
Developing units of work that allow for student VR content creation involves: (a) sequencing and scaffolding learning for curriculum-mandated content and skill acquisition; and, (b) allowing time for students to develop new technology expertise via problem-solving, creative experimentation and collaboration.
In the Athelstone School VR project, primary (elementary) school students use the 360° VRTY platform to create a travel journey that demonstrates Italian language acquisition and knowledge of Italian culture. The learning objectives derive directly from the Australian Curriculum.
Below is the unit of work ‘Persi in Citta’ (Lost in the City), developed for the VR project by Athelstone language teacher Angelica Cardone and Jo Romeo. The unit of work was implemented this term with primary school students in Year 6 (11-12 years of age).
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‘Persi in Citta’ (Lost in the City) unit of work
Learning Intention – to use and develop directional language in the VR platform whilst creating different scenes in Italian cities.
Lesson 1
Introduce the booklets and go through it as a class (VRTY student handbook)
Re – familiarize themselves with the platform and look at where students were in Term 1 in terms of importing 360 degree images, information markers, portal markers and importing pictures etc.
Allow time to work on their world.
Lesson 2
Students to work on their information markers, limit to at least 4 per picture or scene.
Information marker must have information about the landmark they have chosen to use, information must be in English and have the Italian translation.
Lesson 3
After information markers have been used and checked by the teacher students to use portal markers so they can move through scenes.
Once portal markers have been used to move in and out of scenes directions will need to be written in to allow others to use the world as a new traveller to Italy. E.g. – Excuse me where is the Colosseum? Scusa dov’e` il Colosseo?
Lesson 4
Use directional language learnt in lessons and put them in their scenes.
Portal markers will need to transport the visitors to the location.
Lesson 5
Proposal to use the headsets and phones to view the worlds they have created in the VRTY platform. Proposal to use the 360 camera for producing own images to import into the VRTY platform.
Informing – Gather information from a range of sources (ACLITC043) and represent information appropriately for different audiences using a variety of modes (ACLITC044).
Creating – Create imaginative texts for different audiences such as digital stories using characters, places, ideas and events (ACLITC046)
Translating – Create simple bi lingual texts and discuss what translates easily or not (ACLITC048)
Understanding
Systems of Language – Use grammatical knowledge to interpret and create meaning in Italian (ACLITU052)
Language variation and change – Recognise that language use varies according to the context of situation and culture (ACLITU054)
Success criteria
Yes
Developing
Can student import a 360 degree image correctly.
Can student import an information marker and use effectively.
Student can import a portal marker and use effectively.
Student can use directional language appropriately to navigate through the scene.
Was able to work collaboratively in pairs or small groups.
Used the student handbook effectively for assistance if required.
In addition to the Languages Curriculum outcomes the unit of work develops the following Level 4 General Capabilities from the Australian Curriculum:
ICT CAPABILITY
Investigating with ICT
Locate generate and access data and information: locate, retrieve or generate information using search engines and simple search functions and classify information in meaningful ways
Creating with ICT
Generate ideas plans and processes: use ICT effectively to record ideas, represent thinking and plan solutions
Generate solutions to challenges and learning area tasks: independently or collaboratively create and modify digital solutions, creative outputs or data representation/transformation for articular audiences and purposes
Communicating with ICT
Collaborate share and exchange: select and use appropriate ICT tools safely to share and exchange information and to safely collaborate with others
CRITICAL AND CREATIVE THINKING CAPABILITY
Inquiring – identifying, exploring and organising information and ideas
Identify and clarify information and ideas: identify and clarify relevant information and prioritise ideas
Organise and process information: analyse, condense and combine relevant information from multiple sources
Generating ideas, possibilities and actions
Imagine possibilities and connect ideas: combine ideas in a variety of ways and from a range of sources to create new possibilities
PERSONAL AND SOCIAL CAPABILITY
Self-management
Work independently and show initiative: assess the value of working independently, and taking initiative to do so where appropriate
Become confident resilient and adaptable: devise strategies and formulate plans to assist in the completion of challenging tasks and the maintenance of personal safety
Social management
Communicate effectively: identify and explain factors that influence effective communication in a variety of situations
Work collaboratively: contribute to groups and teams, suggesting improvements in methods used for group investigations and projects
Make decisions: identify factors that influence decision making and consider the usefulness of these in making their own decisions
The VR School Study has always been concerned with safe and ethical use of immersive technologies especially with children and young people, and in schools. We were the first to create safety resources and procedures for teachers and students and, in the age of the Covid-19 pandemic, we continue to make safety and hygiene the top priority.
Hence, we have developed a safety protocol and set of related resources to address hygiene and safety for VR headsets that use mobile phones – this is the type of equipment we are using for the 360° VR content creation that is the basis of the Athelstone Italian language learning study. The resources were developed for training primary (elementary) school aged children in Year 6 (11-12 years old).
Context always matters when assessing and addressing risk including VR use in classrooms, especially during a pandemic. When undertaking risk assessment and development of protocols and resources to mitigate risk for VR (or any equipment digital or otherwise), each school must address their local conditions, follow expert advice on hygiene and safety, and develop their own risk assessment, protocols and resources.
Here is a summary of the risks identified and the proposed mitigation strategies developed in relation to context:
Potential risk
Mitigation strategy
Covid-19 transmission through student sharing of VR headsets and phones
– Assign each student their own headset, box for headset storage and phone – Label headsets, storage box and phone with the name of the student to allow students and teachers to monitor the use of personally assigned equipment. – Teachers train students in not sharing headsets, storage box or phones and to always return headset to its assigned box. – Reinforce safety and hygiene messages and procedure in class at the beginning of the lesson and with a poster displayed at the front of the classroom and with a laminated version on each desk. – Teachers in-class monitoring that students use their assign headset and pack headset into assigned box. – For the duration of the research no other students or classes use equipment.
Lack of compliance with Education Department Covid-19 advice for schools
– Principal does daily online checks of Department’s Covid-19 advice for schools to ensure compliance and that the project’s risk mitigation strategies do not contravene advice.
Poor VR headset and phone hygiene
– At the beginning and end of each lesson students wash/sanitise their hands. – At the end of each lesson students use disposable sanitiser wipes to clean their assigned headset (except for lenses) and phone at the end of each lesson and return VR headset to its assigned box.
Teacher handling of phone after it’s been sanitised may put them at risk
– Teachers use disposable gloves to collect phones from students and connect these to charging station.
Desk contamination with from VR headset
– At the end of the lesson and after wiping their headsets and phones, students use sanitiser wipes to clean their desk and the laminated safety poster which is on their desk.
Improper disposal of used sanitiser wipes and gloves
– At the end of each lesson students dispose of used disinfectant/alcohol cloths in plastic bag that has no tears or holes in it and this is tied shut by teachers who dispose of it directly into school skip bin. – Teachers dispose of used gloves in plastic bag that has no tears or holes in it and this is tied shut by teachers who dispose of it directly in to school skip bin.
Students experience cybersickness
– Students trained to recognise signs of cybersickness or discomfort and to immediately take headset off and tell teacher. – The training message is reinforced on safety poster displayed in classroom with a laminated version on each desk. – Students buddy-up to check on each other during use of headset. – Limit of 15 minutes per lesson in headset monitored by teacher and student-buddy.
Students move out of seat with VR headset on and injury themselves or others
– Students receive training on staying seated while they have the headset on. – The training message is reinforced on safety poster displayed in classroom with a laminated version on each desk. – Students buddy up to make sure each remains seated and teachers monitor this in class.
Here are the teacher-delivered safety and hygiene training script for students:
Here is the teacher safety and hygiene classroom procedure:
The ‘Be VR Safe’ poster for display in classrooms and on student’s desks is a child-friendly version of the safety and hygiene procedure outlined in the training script.
All these resources can be downloaded from the resources section of this website.
Adrian Stenta (left), teacher and co-researcher on the VR project, developed a 
VR School 