Virtual Reality English Class in a Museum

The more I build my experience as a VR English teacher, the more I realise the importance of what I believe to be the one key tenet of education in this medium: do in VR what you cannot achieve in the physical world.

What do I mean? As much as possible, make use of the range of tools available to stimulate you students' imagination as much as possible. The fact that everyone is embodying virtual avatars in real time from across the world is already reflecting the beauty of this medium, but that quickly wears off and an educator, in my view at least, needs to push harder to support a type of learning which can only be done in virtual reality.

That does not mean hours of slideshows on a big VR screen, nor watching videos together and talking about them. It means transporting ourselves, teachers and students, to places in VR which stimulates the imagination, conversation, and therefore academic or personal growth. Here is one example from one of yesterday's VR English classes in AltspaceVR - after discussing Carl Sagan quotes we crossed the space-time continuum to visit a space museum created by fellow Altspace user "stevenv".

It brought new words, new stories and new ideas to the fore and would not have been possible without our visit. In the words of Mr Sagan: “Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it we go nowhere.”

If you are interested in learning English in virtual reality through your Oculus Go, Oculus Quest, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift or any other headset then get in contact with us here or learn more about our VR English lessons on our page here.

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