Becky Csizmesia is a VILS Instructional Technology Coach at Henry Lord Community School - Fall River Public Schools. She has been using the VR Expeditions 2.0 kit with her students since the beginning of the school year! This is her story.
Becky Csizmesia previously had 4 ClassVR headsets from a grant and saw the value that VR has for her students. She decided to start writing grants for a class set and she decided to choose VR Expedition 2.0 by RobotLAB as they became the best alternative with Google Expeditions shutting down.
"We love the versatility of the VR headsets from Expedition 2.0! their content can be used in every grade of our Pk-8 community school and in every area," said Becky.
Becky and her students use the VR content for many different learning opportunities such as supporting vocabulary instruction, building background knowledge, virtual field trips, PBIS incentives, career exploration, etc.
For Becky, virtual reality is used to meet an instructional objective rather than just a cool piece of technology to explore (even though it is!)
Video provided by Becky of her students enjoying VR Expeditions 2.0
Currently, Becky and her students have been using the VR expeditions during one class period for an experience. Next year they will be adding an immersive media elective class in which students will not only be consumers but creators of content as well.
According to Becky, as an urban school within a low socio-economic community, the students face many challenges and inequities. The VR expeditions 2.0 open up a whole new world of opportunity for them!
"They are able to "visit" famous landmarks when some have never been outside of Fall River before. VR helps our MLL students envision content when they may be struggling with language barriers, " said Becky.
It is too soon to say what's the impact on the community now that schools are beginning to get back to normal after the pandemic.
"We love the versatility of being able to use both the library of resources provided by RobotLAB as well as other VR apps and capabilities on the phones within the headsets. This allows for more options in all of the various content areas to support our students and freedom to support different learning models" Said Becky.
Other teachers from the building have used VR Expeditions 2.0 with their students and these are their comments about the platform:
Lauren Colman 6th Grade ELA Teacher: "VR has allowed my students to gain a deeper understanding of settings and environments that I would otherwise be unable to show them. It has literally opened up the whole world to my students in a way I couldn't have done without this technology."
Julie Boardman K-4 PLTW Teacher: "Having a VR experience was a huge asset to my classes! The students were captivated by the journey they took to the moon, and it helped clear up any misconceptions they had."
Kate McGraw 3rd Grade Teacher: "Virtual reality brought excitement and significantly increased discourse between students. It brought our vocabulary words to life and created immediate engagement for the text we were about to read."
A special thanks to the Greater Fall River Development Corporation. The school was able to acquire a class set up of 30 headsets thanks to their generosity.
What an awesome job Becky! We are so happy that you, your students, and the teachers in the building are enjoying our app!
Let's keep going places!
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