17th November 2017: Penybont Primary School, Bridgend, Wales
I’m Sarah, and I’m the (very) new Marketing Executive for ClassVR from Avantis. To help get me familiar with ClassVR, I was invited to attend the User Schools Teaching Event at Penybont School in Wales last Friday.
The training session, carried out by Hannah, one of the Educational Specialists who works at Avantis, was for Teachers from schools within Wales who are already using the headsets.
Even though all the teachers who attended the event had previously received training on how to use the headsets, Hannah did a re-cap session and ran through some of the newer features of the headsets, with an emphasis on how using the Community Playlists section on the portal can provide a wealth of new opportunities for teaching sessions. Hannah highlighted to the group about the Lesson Plan Worksheets, which can be found on the ClassVR portal page, with new ones released every month, providing teachers with a bank of excellent material ready and waiting to be used.
Hannah then discussed with the group the possibilities of how using the ClassVR headsets, in conjunction with Co-Spaces, could fulfil parts of the new Digital Competence Framework. Co-Spaces is an easy to use platform which enables students to create both 3D and Virtual Reality content, students can also apply coding to the content they create to bring their worlds to life, then view their experience using the ClassVR headset.
The group talked this over and felt that this could definitely cover all 4 strands of the Framework – Citizenship, Interacting and Collaborating, Producing, and Data and Computational Thinking.
There was an opportunity for a bit of play-time (for the teachers this time, rather than the students!) when Hannah explained a little more about Co-Spaces, and how students can create their own 3D worlds and experience them using the ClassVR. The creativity flowed, as the teachers produced their own 3D worlds using Co-Spaces, and shared these with the rest of the group – the perfect way to end the training session, and the perfect way to end the working week!
For me, the training session was a fantastic introduction to the ClassVR Headsets, and the world of AR and VR, and the incredibly exciting possibilities for teachers and schools for the future.
