Quest In The Classroom
At ISTE 2018 I randomly attended the Facebook and Oculus party. I was there, like some, because of a friend and the promise of free food. However, I was unaware that Oculus was launching a new product: Oculus Go. The Go, a relatively inexpensive VR device, was aimed squarely at education. Do you want to take your students on a field trip? Do it virtually. I was excited by the idea and the $200 price tag.
However, I did not buy it right then. Instead I wait two years due to various other projects including going 1:1 with Chromebooks and building a Makerspace. Last Fall, I decided to start building out the school's VR capability. While writing the grants I had the Go in mind as our choice. We could buy a classroom set for a few thousand dollars and get students into VR quickly. However, like many, the Quest dropped and I aimed a bit higher. Students could not just visit locations, but create using Tilt Brush or Gravity Sketch. They would be able to move around a space and, now, use their hands instead of a controller. All of this sounded great. However, the money was a huge issue.
After a few encouraging conversations with my school’s admin, we decided that more money was needed and that if I got to a certain level, around $10,000, my admin would fill in the gaps. Well I wrote another pair of grants and was immediately funded. So after six months, a nationwide Quest shortage, and working all stakeholders, I am now at a point where we can deploy 30 Oculus Quest headsets to a classroom and have students in VR as a class.
That sounds amazing, doesn’t it? It certainly is pretty awesome; particularly when you hear students sharing out from the headsets and gasping, literally gasping, at what they are seeing. However, VR in schools has maintained its innovator place mostly due to the complications its brings to both the tech admin, the in building tech, the teacher, and sometimes the student. Over the next six months I hope to bring my own personal experience to the table on how these sets are being added to our curriculum, but also the problems that we face giving them out to our students. If I can help the next teacher who gears up to get a set of VR headsets, then it has all been worth it.
In the coming weeks, we will explore different apps, how to set up the headsets, casting, what it is like with 10-30 kids in the classroom all on at the same time. Also what is happening in educational VR and how to write the grants to get the money you need to make your program a success. Join me on this innovative journey as we Quest in the Classroom.
