As we see virtual reality taking off in education to strengthen the learning process, we find a whole lot of VR device and platforms introduced to help educators in their pedagogical approach.
These tools or platforms can be used across the curriculum to make learning immersive and to help students demonstrate their creative skills in projects assigned to them in different subjects. Truly VR devices are befitting; making hands on learning achievable and fulfilling the larger goal of 21’st century learning which is to make education a lifelong companion.
But with the growth of different products and tools, the question of easy accessibility for users always pops up to be an important element to consider. So today we would be discussing about one such creative platform called CoSpaces Edu which is developed for teachers and students to make VR easy and most importantly, accessible. Its benefits are two-way- for the teachers, it is an assistive tool to be used across the curriculum and for the students it is a user-friendly tool to model their thinking be it in liberal arts or scientific studies.
Overview on CoSpaces Edu
This platform is an extremely engaging and immersive way to create Virtual and 3D worlds. For pedagogical requirements, this tool can be used by the educators to create new assignments quickly. One needs to simply drag and drop objects from the library to create a simple VR world and to give life to the objects in the virtual world, educators can simply do it by coding in Blockly or JavaScript and TypeScript.
The platform provides the option to create a virtual museum that can be used for sharing student work. Students can actually build an elaborate project with the help of this platform. It is an ideal tool for project based learning classes as it is key to allow students to put their learning to best use.
For the students, this platform is helpful because it allows them to share their work in galleries and also remix other gallery projects. One of the standout feature of CoSpaces Edu is to view projects using the VR glasses which helps viewing of projects immersive.
For objective evaluation of students’ work, the platform’s slick dashboard allows instructors view projects in real-time.
Platform- This application can be used on all major iOS platforms, Android and Web.
Teachers Reviews on the Tool & How do They Make Use of CoSpaces Edu?
Man Choi– an elementary teacher who runs the Computing at School Gwangju Hub views this platform as one of the most beneficial tool and why he thinks so is better explained in his words, “Most virtual reality platforms just give you the content to look at. I think making something yourself as in the whole maker movement is very valuable especially for computer education, which is getting more and more important.”
Trixi DeRosa Davis– a Spanish instructor at the South Carolina Virtual School Program gives clear reasons as to why he chose CoSpaces as an assistive teaching tool. He said, “I’ve chosen to use CoSpaces because it offers so many different possibilities in developing virtual reality scenes for students. As an educator of future teachers, I am able to help them design lessons for all content areas and grade levels in CoSpaces. Its versatility is amazing.”
The Tweet shared by Maria Galanis– a Google certified Educator gives the feel of how educators make use of this product in their classroom to make project based learning more fruitful.
These students are about to create #VirtualReality exhibitions using @cospaces_edu including Spanish audio narrations using @vocaroo to make a complete museum-like experience. #appsmash#engage109#edtech#cospacesEDU#ARVRinEDUpic.twitter.com/4KDNJ7XqK2
— Maria Galanis ☮️ (@mariagalanis) January 4, 2018
In a piece written by Michael Drezek entitled “How I use CoSpaces to help Students create their dreams?” he begins by saying that, it is one of his favorite classroom tools for it is a creation platform. He mentions teachers make use of this platform differently because of the varying objective of the subjects. Say an Art teacher uses this platform for creating digital art galleries in a space, while a foreign language educator is seen to make use of this platform to create cultural scenes with audio narration to help students develop speaking skills. A computer teacher makes utmost use of the platform to teach the principles of developing computer programing concepts through Java script and blockly while a history teacher makes use of this platform to recreate scenes from a unit or historical figure of study.
Thus superbly creative tech outlets like CoSpaces Edu are extending their support to strengthen the learning experience of students and ushering new hope for a better tomorrow. It’s perhaps the time for teachers and students to take a dive in and discover what this tool has in its kitty. Students must definitely explore all their creative imaginations come to life in CoSpaces VR App on their mobile devices or web devices and also see what others too have created for reference purpose or to remix ideas for better work in future.
And before we leave you, we had like to help you further. For tutorial videos of CoSpaces Edu, click Here.
Please do not forget to share your feedback on the platform or point out any feature of the platform that’s important and we may have missed out in this piece.
