Virtual Reality specialist VR Voom is running courses for educators to learn about using VR technology in their classrooms.

• 1-December or 18 January: Virtual Reality (VR) Experience & Education. Full day of professional learning and development day for educators. Newmarket, Auckland
• 20-22 January: Teaching Teachers How to Code for Virtual Reality (VR). Three-day school holiday programme for educators. Newmarket, Auckland

“VR Voom is a specialist Virtual Reality education company based in Auckland that supports students at home and at its 400m2 Virtual Reality Centre’s classrooms for in-person interactive learning,” said Business Development Manager Andrew Allerby. “We provide support for teachers throughout New Zealand with proprietary courses, experienced teaching personnel, content, professional development days, and other resources.

“Over the last two years, VR Voom has worked with several schools and engaged with students directly to share the experience of learning with VR technology, teaching kids how to code and create for VR. School classes visited us in-person, we’ve gone into schools in-person, taught students through virtual classrooms, and run school holiday courses, which include 3D Modeling and Animation, and VR Game Design and Programming.”

Coding and playtesting

We’ve found that students are generally extremely motivated to learn how to programme their own creations for VR, because they get to learn the basics of how to think about and tackle the design aspects and then do the actual coding,
before playtesting what they have built. They get to experience the impact of what they’re building step by step, providing them with instant feedback, which stimulates new ideas or ways of doing what they’re trying to achieve.

“Because our approach to teaching with VR is very interactive, it can be challenging to cater to different skill levels of students in a given class (especially larger groups), some learn quickly and we want to keep these students highly
engaged, so they continue to progress. Therefore, we make sure we structure the class to cover critical content in a methodical way and sometimes need to leave out less important features from the general course outline – providing these as additional options to the more advanced students to keep them occupied – while still allowing the whole group to progress on the core goals. Students who learn how to create for VR tell us how proud they are to experience and interact with their creation.”

For more contact Andrew at andrew.a@vrvoom.co.nz or visit vrvoom.co.nz and vrvoom.online/for-teachers

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© INTERACE Magazine, November 2020