Exploring the world of Virtual Reality in the classroom
- Nadine Dunstone
- Feb 17, 2021
- 2 min read
For this lesson, the task of exploring quadratics has been completely redefined using Virtual Reality (VR) (Henderson et al., 2015). Students are immersed in a virtual world, and travel to locations around the globe to experience architecture they would otherwise only be able to see in pictures. Parabolic sights around the globe is the Google Expedition explored in this lesson. The affordances of VR must be weighed up against the potential negatives, and the relative advantage of the technology assessed (Roblyer & Doering, 2014).
Despite the benefits of VR, allowing the exploration of places previously inaccessible from the classroom, there are potential pitfalls to consider. Safety and student agency is a major concern in any lesson using VR goggles. While immersing students in a Virtual World, the goggles essentially act as a blindfold, blocking out real-world vision. This masking of sensory input places the students in a vulnerable position. It is vitally important to respect this vulnerability and ensure that it is not abused or students' trust compromised. It is recommended that time spent exploring the google expedition is limited and controlled, and that teachers are vigilant (Redmond et al., 2018). Furthermore, it is vital that clear expectations of student behaviour are communicated.
The VR exploration is time-limited, and followed by consolidation and extension of understandings using a Desmos inquiry task: Desmos graph: Quadratic with sliders . Knowledge of the effects of various parameters in quadratic functions is constructed. Together, these tasks are innovative and engaging, and redefine how these concepts can be explored without the use of digital technologies.
Unfortunately Wix does not allow me to embed a word document in the same way that I have done when using Weebly. Therefore, I have included a link below where the lesson plan, including hyperlinks can be downloaded. For ease of viewing, I have also included an image of the document.
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