In partnership with the CESA Learning Technologies team and University of South Australia lecturer Dr Paul Unsworth, several CESA schools have been working to create Virtual Reality (VR) tours of community spaces.
An impressive example comes from two Year 8 students from Cabra Dominican College at Cumberland Park. Malavika and Klaudia created this tour of the Cabra college campus for Year 6 students at St Anthony’s School Edwardstown who will be transitioning to Year 7 at Cabra.
The aim was to assist students moving to secondary school with a Virtual Reality tour that could answer questions about their new school and familiarise them with their new surroundings.
In order to create an effective tour, the girls needed to empathise with new students to the school and think about the information that could help them feel assured and comfortable coming to a large new school with over 1200 new students and many new buildings.
The two students started by surveying the St Anthony’s Year 6 students about what they wanted in the tour and how they would use it, to investigate if a 360-degree VR tour of Cabra Dominican College would support and help them to feel more confident in their transition to Year 7 at Cabra.
Students then learnt new skills in Virtual Reality software and photography with a visit to the Samsung Smart School at the University of South Australia. Students then returned to school to plan, create and project manage their tour, with a final visit to the Smart School to complete the project.
To sequence, link and annotate the 360-degree photographs of their school, students used virtual tour software created by the Adelaide-based company Augment Space. This included adding hotspots to provide relevant information about each photograph.
With support from the CESA Learning Technologies team, Cabra students used Microsoft O365 software to collaborate with students from St Anthony’s. Live video conferencing via Teams enabled the girls to test their tour with St Anthony’s students. Conducting a pre and post tour survey of the students via Forms, Malavika and Klaudia then made recommendations to Principal Dr Helen Riekie around the implementation and future use of the Cabra VR tour.
“This project provided opportunities for students to experience an amazing amount of new technologies and to collaborate with our partner school St Anthony’s. They can hold live video conferences to take the Year 6 students through the VR tour and show new students the buildings they will utilise at their orientation days. It can really support their confidence when they arrive here”, said Cabra teacher Fiona Graff.
The students had the chance to learn from lecturer Dr Paul Unsworth from UniSA. Dr Unsworth has also been working with several other CESA schools to create their own Virtual Reality tours of community spaces. Kildare College recently received a state-winning ANZAC Day Schools’ Award for their interactive VR tour of the Army Museum of South Australia.
“Being able to work with Dr Unsworth allowed schools to access not just leading technology but also to learn how VR can be incorporated into a quality learning experience for students”, said Jarrod Carter, a Learning Technologies Consultant at CESA who worked with the students on the projects.
There are now multiple possible uses for the Cabra VR tour, including adding it to the college’s website to support not only new students but also new staff.
Catholic Education SA (CESA) through the South Australian Commission for Catholic Schools provides Catholic Country Teaching Scholarships to encourage and attract teaching students who are passionate about commencing a teaching career in Catholic country schools.
