Stupendous Adventures of Heroes and Villans

Kids love show off their work. Especially if its something they enjoyed doing. So you won't hear most of them say "Hey you want to read my essay for english class?" to their friends. On the other hand, if they made a movie on their computer using Virtual Reality technologies, you bet they would be showing it over and over. Everyone they know would see it. But what educational value is in a movie?

Before I go on let's suppose a structured educational environment, one with teachers of different subjects working together to facilitate a particular project. Though I risk losing 99% of my readership with the following very heinous words I must write them; Interdisciplinary Collaboration! Yuk. The concept is great don't mistake my feelings on this. It's just that the words are so ... boring and tedious and awful. Let's value the concept and strive towards it, but never speak the words again!

So what value is there in making a VR Movie?

Well lets start with imagination. The subject of the movie could be fiction, religious, history or the experiences of the student. Regardless of the topic the pupil will need to imagine what will happen. Decide on the setting and background. Plan for the dialog and the interaction between the characters.

All of this also sounds like organized thought.

As educators, teaching students writing skills can be challenging. Students know what they mean when they write but often it doesn't make sense to the reader. Their thoughts aren't always organized. Other disciplines, wood shop, for example, objectively shows students the value of organization. For example when building a bird house, forgetting to put a hole in it renders it a non bird house, while making it crooked with nails evilly sticking out of the split wood makes it a source of ridicule from the other students. It is obvious when the bird house was not made well because it's objective. Writing on the other hand is subjective and so students don't see what's wrong with what they wrote.

Turning their writing into a VR Movie will make it objective. Students will see why something they wrote doesn't make sense because it won't make sense in the movie. And what a learning experience it would be if their writing was poor but their movie was great. The educator could point out the differences between that which was written and that which appeared in the movie.

In the next part I'll expand on the values of Virtual Reality in Education.

Before I end for today, I bet you're wondering about the title. You may have guessed that the title referred to topics students in Middle School or High School would love to animate. Sure they might enjoy that but that guess would be wrong. Instead, you probably wouldn't have read this far had I called this piece "Benefits of Interdisciplinary Collaboration using Virtual Reality Software and Techniques." Would you have huh? Titles such as these make one feel as though one is working on homework assignment!

Stan Cerin
IvyDataSciences.com