St Mark's Anglican Community School

Located in Perth’s northern suburb of Hillarys, St Mark’s Anglican Community School has grown from humble beginnings as the first ASC school in 1986, to become a thriving educational community of approximately 1,800 students from Kindergarten to Year 12.

As an independent, co-educational K-12 private school, St Mark’s has given deep thought to campus design. Adopting a holistic approach, St Mark’s maximises the student experience by considering physical, emotional, and social development, in addition to academic needs. This ethos underpinned the introduction of ClassVR, with the school pioneering its use both inside, and outside of the classroom.

SEEING IS BELIEVING

Having worked hard to establish first-class facilities, St Mark’s strives for continuous improvement and innovation. When longstanding technology partner, Solutions IT, introduced ClassVR to the school, its potential to enhance education delivery and give students rich experiences was immediately clear.

“As soon as I put a headset on, I saw for myself how ClassVR could enhance and transform learning,” explains Kelly Curran, Head of Digital Learning at the school. “Right before my eyes I could see exciting and multimodal experiences that would ultimately increase student engagement.”

It wasn’t just experiencing the student perspective that convinced Kelly ClassVR would be an ideal solution for the school. “During the initial demonstration, I saw how quick and easy it was to prepare, deliver, and manage lessons. There are literally thousands of resources curated for you, plus the ClassVR Portal is so easy to use and puts the teacher in complete control,” continues Kelly.

Based on the ClassVR demonstration, Kelly introduced 16 headsets with charging case and found this set-up to be an incredibly practical solution: “Our vision was to make ClassVR accessible throughout the school. It’s super practical having a storage case that makes the headsets easy to move between classrooms and charges them at the same time – they are always ready to go!”

IMMERSING STUDENTS IN LEARNING

By sharing ClassVR across the school, all teachers have access to its powerful AR and VR capabilities. Its flexibility for cross-curricular use has also proven a valuable benefit: “Without exception, ClassVR can be used in every subject throughout the school,” says Kelly.

“French. Mandarin. History. Science. There are ClassVR resources for everything! We can use AR or VR content as a stimulus in any lesson, then create class quizzes about what is viewed.”

While using the headsets naturally sparks student excitement, Kelly believes ClassVR fundamentally supports most steps in the guided inquiry process: “When using content from the ClassVR content library it’s great for open and immerse, explore and gather visual information. But if you bring student content creation into the mix, you can also cover ‘present’. For example, students can take and upload their own 360 photos and videos, or create content to demonstrate learning in CoSpaces.”

ClassVR is also proving an excellent resource for teaching topics. “We often use ClassVR to introduce students to a topic. VR gets them interested, wondering and excited about it, in a way that no other method can. We then go ahead with teaching the topic as normal, and bring ClassVR back in towards the end,” explains Kelly. “It’s valuable for students to see as connecting learning content to the VR scenes reinforces their learning.”

GLOBAL VR COMMUNITY, LOCAL SUPPORT

ClassVR is used in more than 90 countries and in over 200,000 classrooms around the world.

As one of the teachers forming part of this global community, Kelly shares why St Mark’s wouldn’t be without ClassVR now: “Students love it! They are just so positive about the learning experiences ClassVR brings. From my perspective as a teacher, ClassVR gives students deeper understanding of so many things – especially ones they cannot visit. Take the solar system. We can’t go on a trip to space, but we can take them there with ClassVR.”

Designed specifically for education, ClassVR has been developed to meet the needs of local education systems. This includes access to training and support from a local partner, and more recently ClassVR content has been mapped to the Australian curriculum.

“When you use ClassVR, it’s abundantly clear that it’s been made for the classroom. Headsets get dropped, but they don’t break. Content is created for the curriculum. And above all, you feel like the teacher has been thought about. Minimal training and you’re good to go. Although having access to a local partner for any questions and support does give you peace of mind!”