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ESTEVAN — Michael Graham, the co-ordinator of curriculum development for the South East Cornerstone Public School Division, led the division’s trustees down another new path of education exploration and experiences on during the recent school board meeting.
Graham was joined by Greg Martin, an educator at Carievale School and Chanda Henry, a teacher at Weldon School in Bienfait. The trio provided a large chunk of information regarding the most recent dives into virtual reality experiences by over 1,200 young students in the division.
“It’s better that you hear from the folks in the field so that’s why we invited Chanda and Greg here,” said Graham, who generally works from the division’s head office in Weyburn.
He said that at a recent virtual conference, Energy Safety Canada had provided an educational experience that he was happy to learn was available at the Energy Safety Canada offices in Weyburn in support of the regional energy sector, and they were happy to offer it to Cornerstone for their educational experiences.
With that program in hand and armed with virtual reality headsets, the program was launched.
“We made sure there was a curriculum alignment and the program included English and French versions, which was great for the French immersion programs,” he said.
Martin said he was excited about the program adding with a chuckle, “I’m always up for anything technology.”
He noted some boundaries were established prior to the headset use and the tech-savvy kids required about 100 square feet of space to explore the adventures the nine VR sets provided, so the students were deployed in the more spacious gymnasium for their experiences.
Martin said the discussions with the teacher(s) and each other following the experiences were educational and exciting, and since some of the youngsters had family members working in the energy sector, it meant even more to them.
“They discussed what they did and how they did it,” he said.
Henry said their first foray into the experience saw kids working with the VR headsets in the hallways but she discovered that was too distracting for others in classrooms, so gymnasium time had to be requested and allocated to proceed with the 32 kids who got involved in the program.
It was a challenge, she said, since they were restricted to just the nine head sets.
“Kids just wanted to jump right in,” she said, admitting that she too, waited and wanted to enjoy the experience.
“I’m looking forward to having more students and more time in the future,” she said.
Graham said this program focused on the oil and natural gas sector but there were many more fields to explore such as in the art world, Indigenous experiences and literature “down the road.” He explained that each program going forward will cost money and the headsets come with price tags of around $600 each.
“So, we add the software cost to that and we don’t want this just to be a fad and have them lose interest. Some have had the experiences in their high schools so more formal research will follow,” Graham said.
In responding to queries from the board members, Graham pointed out the cost factors and expanded uses, noting that, for instance, the oil and gas companies used these VR programs themselves for training.
He noted the energy resources programs, for example, led to careers in such sectors as energy and mines, environmental impact programming, exploration, extraction and distribution as well as career options that included environmental and earth sciences. He had introduced the three sectors students were going to experiment with so they could be aware of what to look for while using headsets.
Martin and Henry noted that on some occasions bandwidth limitations caused disruptions in the experiences and, on occasion, headsets had to be restarted following glitches that sometimes included the need to recharge batteries.
In total, during last school year, 1,224 students in 19 Cornerstone schools got to participate in the introduction to VR as an educational tool. A total of six educators were formally trained to deliver VR programming.
In closing, Graham said the partnership with Energy Safety Canada continues into this academic year.
