We are thrilled to announce the release of the first instalment in a series of resources dedicated specifically to engaging and supporting learners with additional educational needs.
With over 40 years of combined classroom experience, our Educational Services team know first-hand the importance of effective engagement when teaching students with special educational needs. Through careful research and conversations with experts in the field, our team were able to create and release the first part of the ‘S.E.N.D’ category within ClassVR, accessible for all existing ClassVR customers.
This new S.E.N.D content has been broken down into seven playlists; Attention and Focus, Calming Down and Cooling Off, Life Skills, Neurotypical Empathy, Physical Experiences, Social Situations, and Sensory Experiences - all of which offer a unique way to support students using virtual reality.
Brand New S.E.N.D VR Playlists
Attention and Focus
The Attention and Focus playlist is designed to help students train and develop their ability to focus within lessons. Using tracks such as relaxing sea lagoons, rivers flowing through forests and even guided meditation, teachers can spend small chunks of time using ClassVR’s dynamic point of interest to set focus points within each track and ask students to hold their attention for an appropriate amount of time.
Calming Down and Cooling Off
Here, we have collected a selection of resources to help students take a moment and calm down. From experiences of sunsets to the Northern Lights, this playlist is not limited to supporting additional educational needs but any student who needs to ‘take five’ and cool down a short, time-limited way to reset to do so.
Life Skills
One of the most common challenges when teaching students with additional needs is understanding the importance of life skills outside of school or home environments. This playlist provides pictures, videos and VR scenes that give students a glimpse of the world outside of the classroom, including busy shopping malls, streets, tourist attractions and other locations that may otherwise seem intimidating or insurmountable. Using virtual reality, students can experience and become familiar with these environments from the classroom, helping them to build confidence for later visiting in person.
In particular, our brand-new fully explorable scenes mean students can virtually practice crossing the street, riding the bus and visiting the supermarket. These VR scenes give students the freedom to explore real-life situations and develop vital skills, all from a safe and secure environment.
Neurotypical Empathy
Often overlooked when we consider how best to teach our SEND students is the importance of understanding what the world feels like from their perspective. Within this playlist there are three videos (soon growing to ten!) that, when used with a ClassVR headset, will allow educators and even other students to step inside the mind of a child suffering from sensory overload, experience a birthday party as a young autistic girl and put yourself in the shoes of various people living with bipolar disorder.
Having a first-person experience from the point of view of your SEND students is an incredibly powerful way of empathising and understanding the difficulties they may face in the classroom, therefore helping teachers understand how to improve their learning experience.
Physical Experiences
The physical experiences playlist combines a group of resources designed to give students experiences that may not otherwise be possible due to limited mobility. From climbing Mount Everest, skiing in Canada or sailing a catamaran, these inaccessible or impractical experiences are all possible using ClassVR.
Social Situations
For many of us, social situations can be difficult to navigate, but it’s especially challenging for neurodivergent students with ASD, Asperger’s or ADHD. This playlist contains images and videos that have been compiled to help students think about how they would act and react in various social situations such as shopping centres, busy streets, museums or even football matches.
Sensory Experiences
Last, but not least, our brand-new Sensory Experiences playlist has been created specifically by the ClassVR team to give students explorable virtual sensory experiences using ClassVR, without the need for vastly expensive sensory rooms.
Students can explore three sensory rooms including bubbles, soundscape and light with complete freedom using a ClassVR headset and wired hand controller. Alternatively, students can be directed by the teachers using the Eduverse panel in the ClassVR Portal.
These explorable VR scenes have been created to give all students, regardless of abilities and differences, a place to relax - all from a virtual environment that immerses them with soothing lights and sounds. They have no objectives and no lesson plans and are simply designed to be used whenever anyone needs them.
Accessing S.E.N.D Virtual Reality Resources in ClassVR
This content is all ready to access for our ClassVR customers! To find these resources in the ClassVR Portal simply access “Search subscriptions” and search “SEN” in the search bar.
Here at ClassVR, we could not be more excited to bring this new VR content to all of our schools and we can't wait to hear how you use it.
Over the next 12 months our collection of S.E.N.D resources will be growing and, as always, we want to know what YOU would like to see there. Whether it’s a new explorable scene, video or image that would improve your students’ learning experiences, send any suggestions to our Educational Services team via email at community@avantiseducation.com
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