School offers lessons in virtual reality learning

Sean O’Riordan

Mobile Voyager Solutions (MVS) has teamed up with Glanmire Community College to design virtual reality learning systems, which are akin to interactive programme featured in many museums and galleries.

The project has been hailed by the college’s principle as stimulating learning for future generations, with the capability in the next five to 10 years of totally revolutionising teaching.

Principle John Fitzgibbons said students and teachers had already developed a virtual Brian Boru and early Christian monk to guide pupils through history lessons. In addition, a talking fish is also being developed as an aid to geography, taking children around the world’s seas and rivers.

“We have to wake up to where the kids are coming from. Their culture consists of Playstations and mobile phones. We aim to develop the technology to stimulate and develop learning,” said Mr Fitzgibbons.

The school aims to initially develop 10-minute learning segments with virtual reality characters for history and geography. But similar programmes are to be developed for such subjects as for science, maths and English, Irish etc.

“Our commitment with MVS is for five years. They have supplied the school with 70 wireless laptops and 20 wireless PDA’s (Personal Digital Assistants),” said Mr Fitzgibbons.

Glanmire Community College is the first school in the country and one of the few in Europe with a full dedicated wireless network (Wifi) serving all classrooms, which has been provided in partnership with MVS.

The chief executive officer of MVS, Jonathan O’Shea, is set to visit the school today to view progress.

“This is fourth generation technology. If it kicks off the way we envisage it could be in all schools in Ireland in the next five years,” he said.

Mr O’Shea, originally from Carrignavar, started the Norwegian-based company in 2002 and currently employs 26 scientists, programmers and 3D animators on the project.

A former psycho-analyst with the FBI, he said it was hoped to develop six virtual reality lessons for seven different subjects by September, at which stage they will be officially launched. “The feedback we’re getting is that children are taking in more from this method of learning,” said Mr O’Shea.