The VR School Study has embarked on a new adventure with Athelstone School, a South Australian primary (elementary) school. Athelstone School is interested in exploring 360° VR content creation for Italian language learning that is aligned with the Australian curriculum. Year 6 students will use the VRTY platform to create and share their own virtual worlds guided to demonstrate written and verbal language mastery. In my book, I provide a comprehensive discussion of how we might pedagogically think about immersive VR (iVR uses a headset). The diagram below is from the book and gives you some indications of conceptions of the pedagogical uses of VR. In the Athelstone School study we are investigating VR as a form of digital media that students can create and share with peers and others who can then experience something of Italian culture and language. Students in our study can create their own virtual environments, filled with multi-media they have generated themselves: They can demonstrate mastery of learning objectives through creative and non-linear narratives. Our progress will be blogged in real time via the VR School Study website here.
Erica Southgate PhD 