We’re making a 3D Virtual Reality Tour of our school! (Work in progress)
Smartphone/tablet : use the touch screen to navigate
P.C.: Click on the image once and then use the left/right/up/down arrows to navigate.
Virtual reality headset: Click here and enjoy your visit!
Why did we do it?
In the school in France where I teach English, we are currently working on written exchanges and Skype exchanges with a number of schools around the world as the article on the right from Le Progrès attests.
Pupils wanted to proudly show their school to students in partner schools, as if they were here. A virtual visit was therefore decided upon.
This was an opportunity to build vocabulary about school (people, spaces, places, verbs, activities and routines) whilst also building spacial awareness in English using prepositions of place and movement.
We’re used to using virtual reality in English lessons to visit town and cities around the world, and we have virtually walked around the towns and villages of our international partner schools but we could never walk around the interior of those schools. We wanted to be the first to do this.
A video conference with one of our partner schools in New Delhi
One of our HooToo #vr headsets used in class.
So, how did we do it?
First of all, students chose the most important, most interesting and most dynamic areas of the school. The spaces and places that they are proud of and that they want to show to the world. Once this brainstorm was completed, it was time to use the tech.
Our virtual tour was made using free applications on iPhone, iPad and PC.
We took 360° photos of the school on an iPhone using Google Streetview (as shown below).
We added text and labels to the images using Adobe Spark Post (iPhone, iPad, P.C.)
We then added these images to viar.live on iPhone, iPad and P.C. and joined them together with hotspots.
We are used to using virtual reality in class – as can be seen in our how to video below – and so we tested our tour using a virtual reality headset.
Preparing text in English
Pupils then used these preparation sheets to prepare a presentation text in English for each part of the school.
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Click here to open language work documents in GoogleDrive
This video presentation of a school in England helped us find ideas about school and using the 2nd person plural (our school… we… etc)
Check for understanding and retrieval
We used Plickers quizzes to reinforce vocabulary and to encourage spaced repetition and retrieval of the new vocabulary and structures.
Written expression leading to oral comprehension
Students also used this team game in class to practise listening comprehension of the new vocabulary and to enhance and enrich their own presentation texts.
It is best to open this as a fullscreen application with points scoring system for teams
Pupils used this worksheet to record
Our English assistant is currently re-recording these voice prompts, meanwhile this rather effective speech synthesiser was used.
Pupils typed up their presentations in order to cut and paste them into the viar.live virtual tour. This is an ongoing project.
And there you have it! We’re still adding in text but the ability and confidence of pupils talking about their school and their school life has been measurably improved and good fun was had by all.
Next steps
Other classrooms, laboratories and workshops will be added in due course. This will help pupils to build the vocabulary in English that they need to speak about the subjects and careers for which school prepares them.
Pupils are next going to create an online web-quest in GoogleForms for pupils in international partner schools to use as they explore our school in virtual reality.
When we next speak to our international partner schools by Skype, we will be ready to ask and answer questions about the spaces and places in other schools thanks to this preparation:
Upcoming video conferences :
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Furthermore, we are enriching this virtual representation of our classroom with videos and links to student work in order that pupils can access, at home, the notions, documents, projects and videos used and generated in class. Welcome to Room 212 !
Contacts
My professional email: paul.kirrage@ac-lyon.fr | Follow the project on twitter : http://www.twitter.com/pjkirrage