341: Virtual Reality – Immersive Educational Campus with Remio
Jos van der Westhuizen is the CEO and co-founder at Remio.
Remio is a VR app that provides an immersive educational campus in which students can learn, collaborate, and play.
Their educational use case enables you to turn a space into a virtual learning institution. The Remio platform is built for knowledge transfer and higher education use cases. Try a weekly class in VR and you’ll understand the power of an immersive virtual classroom.
Below we have details of how Hoquiam School Uses Remio’s VR Platform to Drive Social Emotional Learning Among Students
Website
Social Media Information
www.linkedin.com/in/josvdw/
www.twitter.com/JosvdWest
Resources Mentioned
The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
Show Sponsor – National Association for Primary Education (NAPE)
Primary Education Summit – ‘Visions for the Future’ – 2023
Get access NOW at www.nape.org.uk/summit
How Hoquiam School Uses Remio’s VR Platform to Drive Social Emotional Learning Among Students
As teachers and students have adapted to a post pandemic educational environment, the increasing importance of social emotional learning has emerged. Hoquiam School District is using Remio’s VR platform to drive social emotional learning among its students and reshape social connections impacted during the pandemic, and the positive impact is undeniable as students are eager to play and learn with each other in VR.
Hoquiam School District manages 1600 students across high school, middle school and elementary school in Washington state. Over the past year, the district has undergone major curriculum outreach to students with VR learning programs by working with Remio’s VR platform and VEDX Solutions offering ‘class packs’ that also provide training and 30 Quest 2 headsets so that educators can operate whole classrooms in VR at once.
Remio provides an all-in-one solution for remote learning environments and team collaboration in the metaverse. The platform enables students and teachers to onboard into VR in a fun, safe space where they can create their avatar, play, socialize and gain confidence engaging with their peers in a VR environment before moving into the school’s curriculum.
Chris Nitti, Digital Age Coordinator for Hoquiam School District, started the program and immediately over 100 students applied to join a small test group of 20 who participated this past summer in a Remio-based VR event. Nitti says he specifically looked for diversity, bringing in students across special education, students who are homeless, students who are transgender, football players, band geeks, the whole spectrum. The group played virtual paintball together for about 20 minutes, showing great communication, teamwork, collaboration, and engagement. Nitti then asked the students to remove their headsets and look around at their bonded group. One of the students said, “I don’t even know any of you before we put these headsets on, but now I feel like we’re real friends and I just want to get back into the world with you.” Nitti says that these social experiences in the VR environment ‘levels the playing field’ and produces equitable and inclusive experiences for students, so that constructs like appearance, class or cliques don’t matter in helping bring students socially together. Jay Schnoor, Co-founder and CEO of VEDX Solutions, “VR removes unconscious bias and perceived notions of whether someone will be ‘good’ on your virtual team.”
To get comfortable with VR environments, teachers and students engage in Remio’s VR onboarding program – they start with customizing their avatars, practice in training games and then coalesce on a custom island environment. Nitti said: “I love Remio’s onboarding system. It’s intuitive and doesn’t require a lot of guidance from me, and everyone ends up in the same game together. Once they understand the island, which the students have named ‘Grizzly Paradise’, they’re ready to go deeper into learning in VR.”
Nitti says that social emotional learning is a global issue right now because the pandemic has been so isolating for students over the past two years, which is a significant portion of their lives at this age. Kids are retracting or lacking social emotional skills, and those particularly impacted by the social isolation are students considered ACEs (adverse childhood experiences). Gaming and VR engagement with a purpose gives these students brave spaces for them to explore and address their adverse experiences. Schnoor said: “Online and distance learners don’t have the physical spaces that physical campuses do, like track fields, basketball courts, dorm rooms and quad spaces. VR brings this element of a physical space for students to socialize and engage in virtual learning.”
Nitti also runs educational simulations in VR using VEDX Solutions Class Packs, such as the combat simulator where he added modifications to the armor from realistic Greek and Roman shields and spears to teach 6th graders about ancient weapons and fighting styles. Students were hugely engaged in the material and able to more effectively understand the concepts through reenactments and even tournaments in VR.
Nitti says, “My goal is to position VR and AR as the centerpiece of our curriculum, so that data and content are taught using VR primarily, rather than as a supplement. And next year, to have a full time teacher at the high school teaching VR development skills. The biggest thing I’m excited about are the high paying job opportunities for these students post graduation in VR modeling and simulations within high risk/ high cost industries like space exploration and launching satellites. Nitti believes that education and skill development in VR is also helping students prepare for in demand jobs and future careers. He continued, “My kids are extremely ambitious and not scared of anything. They love Remio, and they want to be able to work within VR environments as well.”
The district plans to roll out the program to more students in the coming school year. Nitti is also working on a social emotional learning curriculum that he plans to pilot in VR with Remio next year, which will help even more kids build social and emotional skills in a fun and supportive environment. He says, “I want every kid who graduates from Hoquiam high school to have had some experience with social emotional learning in VR.” Nitti is confident that VR will play an important role in education for years to come as it is the future of education.
Schnoor added: “We see a bright future for Remio across school campuses. Educational VR programs will become widespread over time – it changes learning and increases the speed of learning to explain difficult concepts by two-fold because it supports both visual and auditory learners. Further, it offers distance learning with the next wrung of social emotional learning.”
340: BBC Teach with Andrew Tomlinson – Head of Content and Commissioning
Andrew Tomlinson is a former journalist and head of content and commissioning at BBC Education. In 2018, he launched BBC Teach, an online portal that provides teachers with free curriculum-based resources. Today, it is used by almost half of all teachers across the UK.
We discuss the role BBC Teach and BBC Bitesize has in supporting teachers and how they have become an important trustworthy go-to resource for educators.
Plus:
- bbc.co.uk & YouTube
- closer links for BBC Teach and Bitesize
- greater integration between BBC Education and other BBC programmes
- CBBC
- TV personalities and teacher presenters
- social mobility
Website
Social Media Information
Twitter: @BBC_Teach
Facebook: @BBCTeach
Resources Mentioned
Show Sponsor – National Association for Primary Education (NAPE)
Primary Education Summit – ‘Visions for the Future’ – 2023
Get access NOW at www.nape.org.uk/summit
339: Schools Consent Project with Luke Ramsden
Schools Consent Project send lawyers into schools to deliver hour-long workshops on consent, including the legal definition of consent, how to identify consent, the ages of consent, bystander intervention, the offences of rape, sexual assault and ‘sexting’, responding to disclosures and ways to obtain help.
Their work gives young people agency, enabling them to understand the law around sex and consent in order to make informed and sensible decisions.
Website
Social Media Information
Twitter: scpconsent
Facebook: TheSchoolsConsentProject
Instagram: scpconsent
Show Sponsor – National Association for Primary Education (NAPE)
Primary Education Summit – ‘Visions for the Future’ – 2023
Get access NOW at www.nape.org.uk/summit
338: eQuoo – emotional wellbeing app with Silja Litvin
eQuoo is a clinically proven emotional wellbeing app for schools and students. The aim is to improve student emotional health by tapping into skills to boost the 5 most important dimensions through digital gaming.
- Reduce anxiety
- Relationship skills
- Reduce depression
- Resilience
- Personal growth
Purpose-built for students and staff in education, eQuoo is a team of psychologists, mental health advocates and creatives with a shared passion for improving the mental wellbeing of all students. Mental health is more relevant than ever, especially in young adults but getting support is costly, with long waiting times and associated stigma. That’s why we’ve built a state-of-the-art app, accessible at any time, with the most robust reporting system so that every student and staff member can build the best versions of themselves.
SILJA LITVIN | Cofounder, CEO & Psychologist
A clinical psychologist with years of experience providing counselling and therapy, including in the NHS NELFT mood and eating disorder division. Silja’s speciality is clinical psychology (depression and anxiety) and systemic psychology, the science of relationships.
Website
Social Media Information
Twitter & Instagram @equoogame
www.linkedin.com/company/18382774
Resources Mentioned
The Power of Now – Eckhart Tolle
Show Sponsor – National Association for Primary Education (NAPE)
Primary Education Summit – ‘Visions for the Future’ – 2023
Get access NOW at www.nape.org.uk/summit
337: Nuance Hearing with Tami Harel
Tami Harel is the Chief Audiologist and Director of Clinical Research at Nuance Hearing. Tami is an Audiologist and Speech Pathologist with a Masters Degree in Communication Disorders and is currently working on her PhD in Gerontology. With more than 15 years of experience with hearing aids and auditory rehabilitation, in the public and private sector, she joined Nuance Hearing in the early stages of the company’s development.
Nuance Hearing was founded in 2015 with the fundamental goal of developing a technological solution for the ‘cocktail party problem’ – the difficulty of understanding speech in noisy environments.
Over the years the company has made significant technological developments and algorithmic advancements within the framework of acoustic beamforming, becoming a world-leader in directional hearing signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).
These developments have led to an impressive array of collaborations with business partners in the hearing aid and assistive technology industry, clinical researcher scientists, educators and EdTech advocates. This includes a table microphone, designed to be used with hearing aids and developed in partnership with hearing aid industry leader Starkey.
Website
Social Media Information
www.linkedin.com/company/nuancehearing
twitter.com/nuancehearing
www.facebook.com/NuanceHearing
Resources Mentioned
The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse
Show Sponsor – National Association for Primary Education (NAPE)
Primary Education Summit – ‘Visions for the Future’ – 2023
Get access NOW at www.nape.org.uk/summit