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Virtual Reality Changing the Way We Teach
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Thursday, May 24, 2018
 

STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

The assignment was simple: to write an essay describing what it’s like to ride a rollercoaster.

There was only one problem. Some of the students had never ridden a rollercoaster before.

That’s when the Blaine County School District’s technology innovator Paul Zimmerman came to the rescue.

He outfitted each of the Bellevue Elementary School students with virtual reality sets that he had made from recycled phones and Google Expeditions software earlier this year. And, in minutes, the children were giggling and shrieking as the technology put themselves in a rollercoaster as it chugged up the tracks and then plunged.

“I saw the model last year, but it cost $10,000 for the software and premade kit. So I asked myself: How can I do this without asking my boss for that kind of money?” said Zimmerman.

He bought a Wi-Fi router at the Building Materials Thrift Store and, using old cellphones donated by school teachers and community, built a set of 30. The cost? $28 each.

One recent morning he took the kit to Heather Guy’s class at Hemingway STEAM School.

“Who likes volcanoes?” Zimmerman asked the students.

“Ohmigosh!” one of the girls chortled as she twisted and turned, tilting her head up and down for different views of the fireworks coming out of steaming cauldrons.

“When you look at volcano, what’s coming out? Zimmerman asked.

“Lava!” the students chorused.

“What’s it made out of?”

“Rock,” they answered.

“That’s right. It’s liquid rock. So, it’s not fair to say that liquid is just water. There are a lot of other things that can turn into liquid,” Zimmerman said. “And when it cools, down it becomes a solid.”

After a few minutes of watching the volcano, Zimmerman shifted gears.

“Let’s come out of the volcano and let’s talk about the periodic table of elements. Everything in the entire universe—your table, your dog—is made of things in these charts.”

He took them into a carbon molecule.

“You are mostly made of carbon. Everything that lives on earth is mostly made of that—peanut butter, salmon….”

He bought up a microscope that allowed them to see the chemical equation of what happens to gas in fire.

“This is what hydrogen looks like before fire,” he said as they watched red, white and orange dots floating around.

As fire erupted, blue dots began to pop up.

“Who wants to tell me what the blue is? Blue is water. When something’s on fire, you’ll find water around it,” he said.

After 45 minutes of zooming to landmarks around the world, through the period table of elements and more, Zimmerman had the students take the phone out of the viewers, fold them and put them into a box.

“It’s pretty cool to look at places not in our town, things we’ve never seen before,” said Wyatt Gilmour.

“It was cool getting to go to Russia, Greenland and Spain—all while in our classroom added Ruby Thurston.

School teacher Heather Guy said using virtual reality to augment school lessons heightens the enthusiasm for technology and science.

But Zimmerman said he has learned that many school teachers are unaware of the technology as he’s presented it before educators and school technology directors throughout Idaho and even in places like Portland and Seattle.

The Idaho STEM Action Center has awarded grants to eight rural school districts to build their own using his design.

“Everybody should have this,” said Zimmerman. “All it takes is some old phones or iPads and a few other pieces. It’s allowing the students to find new answers to old questions. It makes things more realistic than a book. And the students are doing it together, which increases their attention.”

So far, Zimmerman has shown youngsters photosynthesis by taking them into a plant cell. He’s taken them into Outer Space, to Gettysburg, to the Galapagos Islands, to Pearl Harbor and into Independence Hall. He’s taken them on a virtual reality tour of a zoo and allowed them to see and hear animals performing their mating rituals.

“When I was in school, we had nothing like this. But virtual reality is going to be normal for these kids,” he added. “And when they’re older, when they’re doctors and nurses, they will already know what this is and how they can use in their work.”

GOT OLD CELLPHONES?

As you can imagine, the virtual reality kits are in high demand.

The Blaine County School District is accepting donations of I-phone 5 or newer or Android phones that are four years old or newer to build more kits. Donations can be dropped off at schools or school libraries.

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