Over the summer, Pine Crest School faculty had the opportunity to participate in specialized professional development workshops in virtual reality (VR).
“We are working toward the 2024-29 Strategic Plan goal to integrate immersive learning experiences,” said Dr. Lisa Ockerman, Vice President of Academics and Strategic Initiatives. “More than 60 faculty members participated in an introductory VR training this June as Pine Crest’s early adopters of this recently acquired technology.”
This recently acquired technology includes 150 VR Meta Quest 3 headsets to be distributed among all five Divisions across both campuses and specialized software developed specifically for educators and schools.
“We want our teachers to be able to create learning opportunities for students using the latest VR tools,” said Mr. Kris Swanson, Upper School Technology Specialist. “Traditional VR is a passive experience—just looking at things. However, with this software, teachers can set up classrooms and experiences in real and fictional places that promote learning for students. If students are learning about the Moon, we can go to the Moon, walk around and look at its features.”
“The ENGAGE VR environment is designed to be very social. If you walk up to a student or a table of students, you can hear each other because of your proximity to them, as you would in the real world, but you wouldn't hear others. You can fist bump each other and feel the controller vibrate—so there is also a tactile element to the experience.”
The faculty members who participated in the workshops in June learned the basics of how to move around in VR and how to control the virtual world. They learned to do things like give students objects to manipulate and look at and organize students into groups with whiteboards and shared recording materials. Students and teachers can record virtual versions of themselves giving presentations.
“The teachers who participated in the June workshop continued practicing and learning throughout the summer. Each teacher was challenged to create a mini-unit of study that could utilize the new VR resources. For example, Dr. Sara Edelman, an Upper School biology instructor, is designing a VR field experience where students will visit a natural Florida area and do an insect survey. She is designing the area and using published datasets to select the species of insects that live there for students to conduct surveys of.”
Teachers from every discipline will incorporate VR into their curricula this year. Several World Language teachers are setting up stores where one student is a shopkeeper and one is a shopper. The students will have to interact in these roles and converse in the language they are studying. Debra Blakely, Theater Teacher on the Boca Raton campus, is setting up the Globe Theater for her students to perform and serve as audience members.
“One thing Pine Crest does so well is use technology to give students experiences that they could not get in any other way,” said Mr. Swanson. “We use technology in a purposeful way to study concepts more deeply—and that is one of the goals of this project.”
Speaking about how faculty members have been using the equipment and the software, Mr. Swanson said it is like getting your “sea legs.”
“We have watched teachers get comfortable in this VR world,” Mr. Swanson continued. “Now that they have had some of these experiences, they are tapping into their areas of expertise and coming up with ideas that software developers wouldn’t necessarily come up with on their own. Subject area experts will use these new tools to do things no one else would have been able to think of and be a part of advancing what is possible in VR education.”
Looking to the future, Mrs. Jessie Metzger, Director of Educational Design and Technology and Upper School Dean of Faculty Services, said, “We are really excited to see how our teachers will be able to develop truly interactive experiences for students in spaces like the moon, or, thinking smaller, inside human cells, or perhaps transporting to a historical period. The future of this project could also put our students in the driver's seat in terms of creating interactive content to bring into the immersive space.”