Education Policy, Business and Technology

District sees massive STEM gains with VR

eSchool News: The students at Franklin Square Union Free School District in Nassau County, New York, had already studied the layers of the earth. They’d seen a video, discussed the concept, and even taken apart a physical class model. But when they worked with a virtual earth in zSpace, you could hear the “wows” and “whoahs” all over the classroom. They lifted the virtual earth from the screen and turned it around to see it from all sides. They peeled off the earth’s rocky crust, and used virtual tools to measure the depth of each layer.

“I could tell by their reactions and responses that they had a better understanding of layers,” said John Trotta, assistant principal at Polk Street School, one of the district’s three elementary schools. “It goes back to visualization. You can’t see the actual layers of the earth, but this is as close to a hands-on experience as possible. It brings the concept to life.”

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