Educators in VR is proud to announce that the Virtual Schooling Team Project is off to a great start this year with new energy and a new team leader joining the Team Founder, Keely Canniff.
The team is a welcoming community created for educators, home educators, students, parents and enthusiasts with the purpose of exploring the exciting opportunities for learning outside of the traditional boundaries of the classroom. We come together to creatively and collaboratively explore the opportunities that different media, platforms and XR technologies and apps offer to achieve rich learning experiences and outcomes. Topics include accessibility, digital divide, fostering safe online learning environments, challenges in adoption, experiences with virtual schooling, and more.
Keely Canniff is the Digital Projects Manager at University of the Pacific and founded the Virtual Schooling Team under Educators in VR. She believes education and technology are transformative and actively integrates technology into the classroom. Keely is also a talented world builder and has created some amazing worlds for EDVR and team events.
Nic Matthews is a home educator based in the U.K. She is passionate about the experiential learning opportunities available through XR technologies. She is also excited about the ways that remote learners can work independently or collaborate with others in real time from around the world, from the comfort of their home or other place of study. She joins the leadership of the team with Keely and Dragoness.
Dragoness runs a small business that specializes in research and education. She is currently focused on animation in Unity as well as 3D modeling. She is passionate about home education and the terrific opportunities that it brings.
Last year, the Virtual Schooling Team presented a series called “Bring It Home,” workshops and sessions that explored teaching from home during the pandemic lockdown, helping many parents and teachers improve their skills and expand educational possibilities through immersive education.
This year, the Team is excited to announce their “Bring Learning to Life” series. This week their first social event was “Back to the Future,” exploring the hypothetical questions of what would learning have been like if you had had XR technologies like VR and AR in your classes when you were young, and what we can take from this in terms of applying those ideas with learners today and in the future. It was a fascinating discussion covering the differences between learning with online conferencing tools like Zoom and the interactive presence of learning in VR. It was fascinating to consider how VR and AR might have impacted your schooling had it been available.
Each month they host a workshop and social event. October 21, they are participating in the 3rd Annual Educators in VR Cyberbullying Month activities by hosting a special event in ENGAGE XR focused on cyberbullying in virtual schooling and homeschooling. They will present this interactive workshop exploring different fictitious cyberbullying scenarios to establish practical strategies and solutions for how to recognize, respond, and report harassment, intimidation, harm, and cyberbullying should it occur in your virtual schooling environment with distance and remove learning and homeschooling.
If you are a distance and remote learning educator or parent homeschooling, this group provides a warm welcome of support and the information you need to know about the potential and benefits for immersive education. Join our Educators in VR Discord and look for the Team Projects list of channels for the Virtual Schooling channel to join the discussion and learn more.