Inclusion and Wellbeing Service Falkirk is a primary to secondary specialist provision and outreach service. We support young people and their families experiencing social, emotional and/or behavioural needs (SEBN) which affect their ability to access a mainstream provision.
We strive to provide the highest level of support to our pupils by offering a wide range of exciting learning opportunities. As a result, we are continuously researching different approaches and technology in order for us to engage our learners.
In 2022 we were grateful to be successful in our bid for a grant, where the purpose of the funding was to increase the use of physical computing to engage learners. We made the decision to use this funding to purchase four ClassVR sets and the associated software, as we felt that it would help us to engage learners across the curriculum, as well as help them to develop computing science skills through CoSpaces Edu.
Introducing ClassVR
When our ClassVR headsets arrived, we let pupils explore the preloaded experiences. Some pupils went diving with sharks while some explored New York City. Pupils were instantly hooked on these experiences and quickly learned how to navigate the headsets. Staff were equally impressed and were soon sharing all the ways they could use ClassVR to bring learning to life in their lessons.
Safe Spaces – Emotion Regulation with ClassVR & CoSpaces
I planned to use the ClassVR sets for the first time as part of a series of health lessons. My classes had been focusing on understanding emotions and increasing their emotional literacy. Part of this involves pupils learning about different regulation strategies and identifying strategies they feel would help them. We explored the idea of safe spaces; places pupils would like to go when they feel emotions such as being upset or overwhelmed. These would be places unique to them and places that would help them to regulate their emotions.
In the past I have had pupils visualise their safe spaces by drawing them, however this time I knew that ClassVR could really enhance the learning. After a quick demonstration of CoSpaces Edu, the pupils got to work creating their VR spaces specific to their needs. Some pupils created spaces with lots of animals, others replicated aspects of their favourite TV shows, while others included their special interests such as cars and trains. I was really impressed with how easy CoSpaces Edu was for our pupils to navigate and how quickly they could bring their safe spaces to life.
After creating their safe spaces, I was able to transfer their creations to our headsets. Pupils were impressed by how realistic their spaces looked and loved being able to “walk” through them. After exploring their own spaces, some pupils swapped headsets so that they could explore the spaces created by their peers. This was a good opportunity for pupils to further develop their communication skills by providing peer feedback to one another.
The Results – ClassVR's Positive Impact
The use of ClassVR had a positive impact on our pupils as it allowed them to bring their creations to life. They now have experience of exploring their safe spaces, and they can reflect on this and visualise it in the future as part of a regulation strategy.
