SUBTITLE: Virtual Reality in the time of a Global Pandemic Between Google doing away with Expeditions and COVID, our VR enthusiasts have been struggling! I wrote about this a few months back. Our district had some Lenovo headsets that had been sitting in their original delivery boxes since before I arrived in August - of 2020. During our office time before winter break, two of us worked on getting these suckers unboxed, charged (the headset AND the remote), and connected to the network - the latter was no easy task! Our network admin had some specific hoops we had to jump through. Then, the devices needed to update….sometimes that meant jumping though the connection hoops again. Then we could connect to YouTube, being sure to set up voice search - more on that later! We went in numerous circles, but we FINALLY got them connected! Since the YouTube app was pretty much all we could use with these outdated devices, I assembled a playlist of 360° videos on various Penguin colonies for the teacher to choose from. She selected the one that best aligned with the learning outcomes for the lesson and created the response questions students should be able to answer after viewing. Due to COVID, we made sure to add a few layers of precaution that were not done with previous virtual reality experiences.
Since there was no way to group start/stop, each device had to be queued up individually. Time consuming, but worth it! I mentioned the voice search we set up. Here is where it saved us huge amounts of time - to find the video, we called out the name, selected it, then all the kiddos had to do was use the remote to click the play button. THAT was enough of a challenge! Did I mention these were second graders? Even so - they did GREAT! In early January, I loaded up the little red wagon, grabbed hand sanitizer, Lysol spray, and wipes, and took this adventure to one of my schools right after winter break. A teacher and I I took her first graders to sit among the Adelie penguins in Antarctica. All of the hard work to get to this point was sooooo worth it. ♥ DISCLAIMER: Later that week, our district shifted the last two school days before the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday to workdays and reinstated the mask mandate due to rising COVID numbers….but those numbers did NOT include the kiddos or adults that went on our journey with us. On Monday, the last day of February 2022, I am loading up the wagon once again. This time, we are off to explore waterfalls, canyons, and volcanos to wrap up a unit on landforms. I can't wait!
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AuthorJeannie Timken Archives
March 2023
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