Summary
This professional development focuses on understanding how virtual reality (VR) can take teaching and learning to a higher level through real-world connections, 21st-century skills, and critical thinking. Participants will explore VR, and then use VR resources to enhance a current lesson or learning activity.
Essential Questions
How can an authentic, technology-enriched learning environment increase student engagement and academic performance?
Learning Goals
Experience VR Expeditions through a career exploration
Explore available expeditions and lessons
Apply understanding of VR expeditions in the creation of a classroom activity
Materials List
VR headsets
VR tablet connected to the headsets
Handouts
Agenda
Note Sheet
Chromebooks or Laptop
Engage
Using the attached Presentation Slides, display slide 2 and introduce the session and welcome participants. This session is about exploring and understanding how virtual reality (VR) can take teaching and learning to a higher level through real-world connections, 21st-century skills, and critical thinking the possibilities virtual reality brings to the classroom.Show slide 3 and share the following 360-degree video. You can either project the 360-degree video on the large screen and move the video around while it plays or provide a shortened link allowing participants to watch and manipulate the video on their own devices.
Ask participants how this experience was similar or different from a normal video.
Supply participants with a VR headset. Progress through slides 4-8 to briefly introduce participants to the basic and most relevant device features. (NOTE: these five slides are specifically designed to introduce the Lenovo VR headsets).
Slide 4: Instruct participants to look at their remote while reviewing the features highlighted on the slides. The front of the remote contains , a back button, a home button, and a track pad similar to a computer’s to help you navigate around the VR spaces.. The volume on the headset can be controlled by the two buttons on the side of the remote. On the back, there is a trigger for selecting options when the touchpad will not confirm a desired selection.
Display Slide 5 and have participants look at the outside of the headset. Help them identify the different parts of the headset. Turn on the headset by holding down the Power Button. When the device needs to be charged, plug in the charger next to the power button. The light will indicate when a headset is fully charged. An SD Card can be added to any headset to increase the storage available on a headset. Also, notice that the volume can be adjusted directly on the headset if needed. The Audio Plug is for earphones. Each headset can connect to wireless earphones by connecting via bluetooth through the device settings.
Display slide 6 and explain that the headset also contains the Back, Confirm, and Home buttons on the right side of the headset.
Show slide 7 and explain that each headset comes preloaded with a few free sample VR programs. To receive the full programs, sites must purchase the year subscription and download them to each device. VEATIVE contains content specific lessons that can be used to teach or extend a variety of lesson topics.
VICTAR (also known as Launch Your Career) is a program that allows students to explore different career pathways that are connected to their interests and strengths.
Wild Immersion, endorsed by Jane Goodall, is a series of 360-degree videos that create an immersive experience for learners.
Display slide 8 and explain that when participants put on the headset, they should see the image displayed on the slide. . While wearing the headset, if you need help locating the different functions on the remote, just hold the remote in front of the headset.
Transition to slide 9 and instruct participants to select the Wild Immersion program and one of the three videos provided (Amazon, Africa, or Asia). Have participants explore one of these 360-degree videos.
Move to slide 10 and have participants discuss the 360-degree video from the beginning of the session and the 360-degree video viewed through the VR device. With a partner or small group, have participants consider the following questions. How were the two experiences similar? How were they different? ?
What are some advantages of using VR in the classroom? Allow participants to share some of the things they discussed.
Transition to slide 11. This slide is hidden by default. Only display if presenting a GU PD.
Display slide 12 and share the essential question. Explain that this is the overarching question that you will address at the end of the session. As we continue to work with the VR headsets, keep this focus in mind.
Show slide 13 and briefly summarize the objectives for the session. Explain that participants are going to experience a model activity that could easily be integrated in any classroom. This activity is focused on Career Exploration.
Explore
Display slide 14 and pose the question, "Why is education beyond high school important to your future?" Have participants use the Think-Pair-Share strategy to engage with this question.
Display slide 15 and have participants use the two questions on the slide to brainstorm ideas.
Show slide 16. Participants will use the headsets and remotes to begin the career exploration through the program VICTAR/Launch Your Career. During the allotted time, participants will
Select the Launch Your Career application.
Complete the online personality quiz so the system can identify key characteristics, likes, and dislikes of each individual. Participants will learn more about their personalities and view celebrities with the same characteristics and preferences.
The system will use responses to highlight specific careers that align with that individual. The system does not eliminate career choices based on responses.
Explore a variety of careers and watch interviews by professionals in those fields.
Display slide 17 . After finishing the exploration, have participants work with their partners or table groups to discuss their experience from the career tour. Ask a few participants or groups to share out to the whole group.
Explain
Display slide 18. Drawing on their experience with the VR headsets, have participants discuss the two questions on the slide with their partners or table groups and then share a few responses with the whole group.
Transition the conversation to extend to classroom content and career cafés. Highlight the Zoom into Your Career videos on K20’s YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-aUhEQeaZXIhi-ivvrQTrrEAlWvFWisR). Zoom into Your Career videos are previously recorded career talks with students. These videos provide an opportunity to hear directly from a professional in a variety of careers and their postsecondary journey. These videos can be used in conjunction with teacher lessons to connect coursework to future opportunities.
Show slide 19. Distribute the Window Notes Handout. Introduce the SAMR model as a resource to consider how all integrated technology can be used at different levels to provide students with an enhanced learning experience. While watching the video, participants fill out the first two boxes (facts and questions) of their Window Notes handout.
Have participants explain how VR headsets fit within the SAMR model. If additional explanation is needed, explain that virtual reality tools and resources shift integration to the Modification and Redefinition level because they take students places they aren’t otherwise able to go. Refer back to the career tour experience and the 360-degree videos and explain how these are examples of modification and redefinition.
Transition by telling the teachers they’re going to look at how they can incorporate VR programs and experiences into a content lesson.
Extend
Show slide 20 and Participants will begin to take what they have learned about virtual reality and apply this knowledge to their own lessons and activities. They will use the Additional VR Resources to identify websites and tools to enhance their own lessons. Have participants record at least three specific resources on the VR Expeditions Note Sheet. On this note sheet, they are listing the title of the resource, a summary of it, how it meets/addresses the standards they teach, and how they could incorporate it in a lesson or activity to enhance the student’s experience.
After participants work on the Note Sheet for 15 minutes, have them share out what they found.
Show slide 21 (optional if time allows). Have participants begin to construct or adapt lessons to integrate the virtual reality resources they found.
If the VR devices come with teacher/classroom software, have participants begin uploading the content to their VR classroom. Lenovo devices use LandSchool Air and Think Reality Portal. Both of these can be accessed through your school subscription account.
Allow at least 15 minutes for this portion of the activity.
Evaluate
Show slide 22: After at least 15 minutes of work time, review the session’s Essential Question. Ask participants to share what they plan to use and how it will increase student engagement and academic performance.
The end the session, have participants return to their window notes handout and fill out the feelings and ideas sections.
If the school is a K20 partner, show slide 23 and have participants complete a trek evaluation. If you are not a K20 partner school, then hide the slide.
Research Rationale
As with all technological innovations, the teacher and the pedagogical strategies are more important than the technology (Salmon and Nyhane, 2013). In the context of English Language Arts, virtual reality and augmented reality technologies can be used to support students both through visual and experiential scaffolding, as well as by helping to build background knowledge about content (Pilgrim and Pilgrim, 2016). These Technologies have been shown to improve student reading comprehension skills, perhaps because students find the technologies to be fun and motivational (Bursaliand Yilmaz, 2019). To be effective, the tech must be combined with pedagogically sound, well-designed learning tasks (Hockly, 2019). Finally, the tech is most effectively integrated into the curriculum when teachers are involved in a collaborative design process for new lessons, or when they customize extant lessons based on stated learning goals (Patterson and Han, 2019).
Resources
K20 Center. (n.d.). Zoom into your career. YouTube - Videos. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-aUhEQeaZXIhi-ivvrQTrrEAlWvFWisR
K20 Center. (n.d). Think-pair-share. Strategies. https://learn.k20center.ou.edu/strategy/139
K20 Center. (n.d). Elbow partners. Strategies. https://learn.k20center.ou.edu/strategy/116
Richard Colosi Media. (October 18, 2018). SAMR model explained by students (higher resolution). YouTube. https://youtu.be/7nSTnwbNM58