Kardinia International College (Ages 5 -12)

Kardinia International College in Geelong, Victoria, has embraced immersive technology as a tool for supporting curiosity, creativity and deeper learning. With 12 headsets, the school has integrated virtual reality into every year group of their Junior School, from Foundation to Year 6, using it to enhance understanding across a wide range of inquiry units.

We spoke with Aisha Kristiansen, Director of Innovation and Technology K-12, about how they have implemented ClassVR in a way that encourages student collaboration, supports teacher confidence and makes immersive learning a regular part of classroom practice.

A Technological Tool for Deeper Thinking

When Aisha first joined Kardinia International College, the school was looking to advance its use of technology in more innovative ways. Drawing on her international experience in Germany and Singapore, Aisha brought a clear vision for how immersive technology could support inquiry-based learning. Her advocacy for ClassVR, grounded in proven applications, led to its introduction at Kardinia, starting with 12 headsets and a collaborative, school-wide approach to integration.

“Technological advancement in innovation is one of our cornerstones,” Aisha explains. The team have embedded ClassVR deeply into the curriculum. “We’re using it as a tool to support curiosity, to support creativity, to support conceptual understanding. It’s not just an add-on. It’s embedded and mapped across our Programme of Inquiry.”

To support meaningful implementation, Aisha and the team developed a structured virtual reality scope and sequence, closely aligned with the Programme of Inquiry. As two key priorities for the Junior School, VR and the design cycle were strategically embedded to ensure that every student from Foundation to Year 6 had access to consistent immersive learning experiences.

One example comes from Year 3 students exploring space, where students used ClassVR to experience the solar system in a fully immersive way. “It actually gives them the experience that they are in the solar system rather than in books where it’s two-dimensional,” Aisha explains. “When students first use the ClassVR headsets, it’s all about the ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’. It’s really magical but we also want them to move beyond that. The headsets are embedded in a learning cycle so students know what they’re looking for and can reflect on it afterwards.”

Connecting Students to Global Perspectives

Kardinia values engaging students with diverse cultures and perspectives. “Because we’re an International School, it’s essential our students experience different cultures. ClassVR allows them to travel to places they wouldn’t otherwise visit and understand the world from new viewpoints,” says Aisha.

“It enables us to experience different cultures, habitats and civilisations, and time periods in a way that feels authentic. It helps us be a true international school connected to the world.”

This immersive exposure broadens students’ global awareness and their empathy and understanding, preparing them to engage meaningfully with an interconnected world and become thoughtful global citizens.

Maximising Collaboration with Shared VR Experiences

In an effort to prioritise collaboration and meaningful peer interaction, Kardinia made a conscious choice when determining the number of headsets for the Junior School. “We chose 12 headsets, so students work in pairs, sharing the experience, reflecting in real time and building understanding together,” Aisha explains. This model supports classroom dialogue and inquiry while reinforcing the idea that technology is a shared tool for collective learning.

A Scalable Model Designed for Teachers

To ensure smooth adoption, Aisha and her team developed a school-wide virtual reality scope and sequence aligned with the Programme of Inquiry, carefully curating playlists to match the key ideas being explored. “We created playlists for every unit, so staff aren’t starting from scratch. That gave teachers the confidence to get started, and now they’re building their own,” she says.

Teachers across the Junior School regularly book and use the headsets, growing increasingly independent. “The real success is when a teacher says, ‘I have a unit coming up, can I book the headsets?’ That shows they can see the value; it’s part of their toolkit.”

Importantly, teachers have also noticed a significant shift in classroom energy. “I think one of the things that teachers have really noticed is that it has, for their lessons, provided an element of engagement that potentially wasn’t there when they were learning in traditional methods like putting a video on or reading a book. There’s a place for everything, but the VR elevates that and makes students feel like they really are there.”

Students Creating the Future

Students are moving from consumers to creators, embracing technology as a tool for active creation. As Aisha explains, “The shift we’re seeing is from students just consuming technology to actively creating it.” Using Delightex, an online platform that allows students to create 3D VR/AR content, enables students to bring their own ideas to life in virtual reality, making learning personal and immersive. Through collaboration and inquiry-based learning, virtual reality has become an integral part of the classroom, with student agency and innovation at its core.