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In the rural village of St. Michaelisdonn, in Schleswig-Holstein, learning looks a little different. At Schule St. Michaelisdonn, a digital school, students take greater responsibility for their learning: they plan work in core subjects and choose themed ‘clubs’ in areas including Weltkunde, history, geography, and politics, as well as art and computing. The clubs are all aligned with the state curriculum.
Since 2023, 24 ClassVR headsets have been part of this approach giving students in Grade 5 to Grade 10 opportunities to explore places, events and environments that would otherwise be difficult to experience firsthand.
Anne Andresen, a teacher who leads several of the school’s clubs and is responsible for computing and IT, explains how ClassVR fits into the schools self-directed approach, and why some virtual experiences stay with students long after the lesson.
Everything in One Place (or Simple to Plan, Easy to Use)
When a colleague first suggested ClassVR, Anne admits she was a little sceptical, wondering whether an education focused headset could match the experience students expected from consumer VR. A training course on ClassVR changed her perspective.
“I was amazed at everything we can do with ClassVR that other providers can’t,” she says. “With other headsets, I’d need extra tools. With ClassVR, it’s all integrated.”
With ClassVR, everything is in one place. It works, I don’t need extra tools, and the materials are there, so I don’t have to create them myself or hunt for them. In a school context, it’s the perfect solution.
That all-in-one approach helps keep preparation manageable. Anne plans a unit on paper, searches the ClassVR library for relevant experiences, reviews the teacher materials, and then sets students a task. For example, they might explore how farming worked along the River Nile. “It’s very quick and easy,” she says.
Getting started is straightforward too “I press the button, and the children are in,” Anne explains. Colleagues who have tried the headsets have also found them easy to set up, with students engaging quickly.
From a Rural Classroom to the Pyramids
The very first session had no lesson plan at all. Anne simply handed the new headsets to a mixed class of fifth and sixth graders and asked them to explore. Within minutes, the students had sat on the floor, watching a sky full of stars, in silence for 15 minutes.
Today, every one of Anne’s clubs includes a VR experience, and each group uses the headsets. Weltkunde, particularly history, is where ClassVR is used most. Ancient Egypt is a student favourite, with experiences such as Pyramids of Giza and Banks of the Nile among the school’s most used content.
One student’s reaction has stayed with Anne: “Are camels really that big?”
“We’re a small rural school, and everything is far away. We can’t go to the zoo every time,” she says. “So, to say today we’re going to the pyramids, and you can walk through them yourselves – that’s always a highlight.”
Students have also stepped aboard Columbus’s ship, met penguins in Antarctica, and come face to face with a polar bear. When students asked why ships couldn’t simply sail across the North Pole, Anne used VR to help them explore the question for themselves. For students, the ability to move through an interactive environment is a major part of the appeal. “A 3D image is a nice way in, but the interactive part is always the highlight,” Anne says.
Recently, Anne’s groups have begun using programming to build their own virtual worlds and then explore them in the ClassVR headsets. The shift from experiencing someone else’ “That was an absolute highlight for the children,” she says, “when they were allowed to start creating the worlds themselves.”
Learning That Stays with Students
For Anne, one of the clearest signs that the immersive experiences make an impression is how well students remember them. On the school’s open day, Grade 4 students from local primary schools visit and try ClassVR. When some later join St Michaelisdonn, they still recall r what they saw.
“They always say, ‘When we visited, we looked at this in VR, and there was the great pyramid with the camel standing next to it,’” says Anne. “No matter how long ago it was, they know it. Interestingly, our leavers still remember it too.”
She believes that experiencing the scale of a place or object helps make it memorable. Anne also sees a motivational effect: students work harder when they know a VR experience is coming, whether it introduces a topic or reinforces learning later in a unit. Students who have built their own virtual worlds ask when they can do it again.
These are the teacher’s observations of student engagement and recall, rather than formal measurements of attainment, but they help explain why VR has become a regular feature of the school’s learning approach.
Seamless Control for Every Lesson
ClassVR is built specifically for education. Headsets are locked down by design, giving students access only to the curated content provided.
“It’s wonderfully easy to use and completely geared towards students,” Anne explains. “Nothing unsafe or scary happens, nothing comes at them that could frighten them. That helps those children enormously.”
Interest in ClassVR has spread among staff as more colleagues see it in action and ask to use it in their own classrooms or clubs. The school currently has one full class set, allowing an entire class to explore together, with no one left waiting for their turn. As interest continues to grow and more teachers look to bring immersive learning into their lessons, the school is increasingly seeing the potential to expand access further.
Asked whether she would recommend ClassVR to other schools, her answer is simple: “Definitely.”
Interested in Bringing ClassVR to Your School?
Discover how ClassVR can give every student in your class a window to the world, with curriculum-aligned content ready to use from day one. If you want to find out more about ClassVR, get in touch to book a demo.