Short description

ClassVR is an award-winning product from Avantis Systems, a leading educational technology company, with a long history of developing innovative solutions for the education sector.

The ClassVR portal includes access to a huge library of pedagogically sound and engaging VR and AR content.

ClassVR was conceptualized in 2014 and launched at the Bett Show in London in January 2017 and has become the most awarded educational virtual reality solution. Every day, children around the world are experiencing things they may not, or could not, ever experience in their lifetimes, and are learning like never.

This publication addresses one of the biggest issues of teachers, namely, how to increase the engagement of the students in the classrooms.

Virtual Reality, by its pure definition, can deliver experiences and interactions for students that are either not practical or not possible in the ‘real world’, provides an unparalleled way to immerse and captivate students of all ages. Virtual Reality helps students feel immersed in an experience, gripping their imagination and stimulating thought in ways not possible with traditional books, pictures, or videos, and facilitates a far higher level of knowledge retention.

Enhancing and extending the learning experience is at the heart of what Virtual Reality can offer students and is possibly one of the most powerful of all technologies that could help change how we learn forever.

Virtual reality provides one of the most important aspects of learning that no other technology can match, that of experience. In his Cone of Experience, Edgar Dale theorized that we retain around 10% of what we read, yet 90% of what we experience ourselves. Virtual Reality facilitates knowledge retention at the highest possible level, through immersive and engaging personal experience. Bringing personal experience into the classroom, and engaging children in new activities not normally possible, holds the potential to truly transform knowledge retention.

Virtual reality has the potential to be a ground-breaking technology for the education of our children, but there are many barriers to classroom use. So how can we bring this incredible new technology to the classroom, and what things must we consider?

Before adopting a brand-new technology like Virtual Reality into the classroom, a number of key questions need to be considered:

• Why do we need Virtual Reality?
• What purpose and function will it fulfil?
• How will the technology be used and managed?
• How will these devices fit into our existing ICT resources and at what cost?
• How will we train our teachers to use VR?

Considering these questions and more, and fully understanding how virtual reality could be used in an educational institution, is essential.

This publication addresses the main issues before we start to use VR technology in the classroom:

• Do we need to know how this technology will help to enhance learning?
• Do we understand how to implement this ground-breaking technology within our classroom?
  1. how do we find the right equipment?
  2. how will we install and manage it?
  3. how do we integrate it into our lessons and curriculum?
  4. what training is required for our teachers to use it effectively?
  5. what ongoing support and training is available?
  6. how can we measure the success and outcomes from using it?

As with any technology purchase, understanding what options are available in the market, what each system can do, their advantages, limitations, and their costs, are the key aspects to helping guide you towards the most effective solution to implement. This publication offers the summary of the main, commercially available VR systems at the time of writing.

Target groups

• Teachers, students