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FIRST IN WISCONSIN
STUDENTS TAKE CONTROL WITH VIRTUAL REALITY PROGRAM
Rubicon, WI – Saylesville School will be the first school in Wisconsin to join other schools from across Iowa, Ohio and Connecticut in the Virtual Reality Education Pathfinders (VREP) Consortium. On September 20, 2011, Dr. Trace Pickering, Coordinator for Innovation at the Grant-Wood Iowa Area Education Service Agency, and a current student from the VREP consortium will be training Saylesville School’s seventh and eighth graders and staff.
VREP first began in 2006 when the Mayo Clinic donated an advanced virtual reality imaging computer to East Marshall High School in Le Grand, Iowa. Principal Rex Kozak decided to have his students take the lead on figuring out how to use the new equipment.
“We just let them set up, show us what they’re going to do, watch them grow and then get out of the way,” Kozak said.
What makes the program unique is that it puts students in the driver’s seat of their own education by having them create virtual models teachers can then use in the classroom, according to Dr. Trace Pickering. It is this reason that a VREP student will be providing the training to Saylesville School’s students instead of Dr. Pickering, who will be training the staff in this new instructional model.
The Virtual Reality Education Pathfinder (VREP) is an educational initiative and partnership between government, education, and industry creating an ever-growing consortium of schools and businesses committed to bringing a new kind of learning and teaching to middle and high schools across the country. The program has grown by more than 172 percent in the last year. Despite missing out on federal grants, Pathfinders was successful in attracting the interest of business that use virtual reality, such as Rockwell Collins and John Deere, who have donated almost $3 million. Virtual reality is used in both engineering and medical science to create lifelike models of objects that are not accessible or do not exist yet.
VREP works by capturing student interest through the use of Virtual Reality and 3D. Students within the program gain valuable 21st Century skills such as: study, computer, and technical reading skills as well as the ability to research, communicate, problem solve, work in teams, collaborate, manage their time, and access resources from within the classroom and with other VREP students around the country to accomplish important goals and objectives.
VREP is self-directed, giving students the freedom to decide what areas are of interest to them and what technologies to use. Working with peers within their own school and across the VREP consortia, students complete projects, research and design their own virtual programs, and create 2D and 3D imaging that is then transferred into stereoscopic displays to create immersive virtual environments. Students and other viewers can then interact with the virtual environments, providing learning opportunities that engage today's learners.
Impressive results are emanating from the initial set of pilot schools – formerly disengaged or minimally engaged students re-engage and improve their GPA, take increasingly difficult courses, and begin to see themselves as learners and capable students. At-risk, special education, high and low achieving students have all benefited from participation in VREP.
“We see this [VREP] as a positive step forward towards in the Next Generation Schools model designed by CESA 6. The VREP program transforms schooling as we know it today,” stated Rubicon School District Superintendent Dan Hanrahan.
Hanrahan, along with other leaders from across the 42 school district CESA 6 region, was a member of the Next Generation Schools design team. In 2010, a group of educators from eastern Wisconsin’s CESA 6 region began to ask an important question: If we could redesign schools for the 21st Century, what would they look like? The answer was the Next Generation Schools model
Next Generation Schools (www.nextgenerationschools.org) will be built on: a new student learning experience; a new model of innovative knowledge assessment, data and personalized planning; new, collaborative learning structures; and, a sustainable business model.
Saylesville School is a small K-8 school in Rubicon, WI, whose students feed into the Hartford Union High School in Washington County. Saylesville has had two of its nine classroom teachers receive the Herb Kohl Fellowship and has received state and national awards for its character education program. Currently a remarkable 43% of its students enroll through Wisconsin’s school choice program.
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For more information:
Dan Hanrahan, Superintendent
Rubicon School District
262-673-2920
Hanrahan@saylesville.org
NOTE: Reporters and photographers/videographers are welcome to cover the first training session.
Training will span the entire school day; however, other administrators and teachers from schools districts across CESA 6 will also be observing the training and will meet with Dr. Pickering on September 20th at 1pm. Here, they will learn more about the VREP program and find out how it could be implemented in their district.
For more information on VREP, please see their website at http://www.vrep.org. There are also some informational YouTube videos about the program - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siWeIqoyros.
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