Beth-Center students will get a dose of virtual reality this year
Holly Tonini/Observer-Reporter
Bethlehem-Center Superintendent Chris Sefcheck explains what students at the school district can learn using Oculus Rift during a demonstration Thursday at the elementary center.
Holly Tonini/Observer-Reporter
Recent Beth-Center graduate Dominic Clutter tries out the Oculus Rift, a device that allows the user a virtual reality experience. Students as young as kindergarten age to those graduating will be able to benefit from the various learning tools it offers.
Holly Tonini/Observer-Reporter
Bethlehem-Center automated systems coordinator Brandy Sirianni helps Kaylen Cerett, 5, who will be starting kindergarten this year in the district, learn how to use Oculus Rift, a device that allows users to experience a virtual reality world.
FREDERICKTOWN-When students in Bethlehem-Center School District return to their classrooms later this month, they’ll be treated to readin’, writin’, ‘rithmetic, and reality.
Virtual reality, that is.
In a sign of how far we’ve come since the days of the McGuffey Readers, the district’s new virtual reality system was shown off for students, parents, teachers, school board and community members Thursday morning. Called Oculus Rift – a name, if there ever was one, that’s tailor-made for a science-fiction saga – it will immerse students in a variety of different experiences, from bouncing around on the surface of the moon to piloting a plane, cooking in a kitchen, performing in “Hamlet” and strolling down the streets of Rome.
Among those figuratively kicking the tires of the system Thursday was 5-year-old Kaylen Cerett, a soon-to-be-kindergartner from Fredericktown. She joyfully exclaimed, “I’m in New York!” after she slipped on the virtual reality goggles and was leaping from rooftops as Spider-Man.
Costing about $2,300 and paid for by a community sponsor, virtual reality systems are still fairly uncommon in area schools, according to Chris Sefcheck, the district’s new superintendent. In the 2018-19 academic year, Beth-Center’s virtual reality setup will go from building to building, and be used by teachers to augment their lessons. Sefcheck envisions a day when each building will be furnished with virtual reality equipment, and perhaps even a lab where virtual goggles can be accessed as readily as editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica once were from the library.
“The possibilities are endless, and this is the start of it,” Sefcheck said.
A 360-degree, enveloping experience, the virtual reality system puts users in a life-size, lifelike, boundary-free environment. The research firm Future Consulting forecasts that virtual reality systems will be in 15 percent of U.S. schools by 2021, and that 70 million students around the world will have a virtual reality experience in a classroom setting by that year.
The verdict of state Rep. Pam Snyder, D-Jefferson, who was at the demonstration Thursday? “I think this is amazing,” she said, noting how students now learn so much through hands-on, interactive activities.
While it will not supplant teaching of the old-fashioned variety, Sefcheck said the virtual reality system will be “a reference and a resource.”
“Technology doesn’t teach,” he added. “Teachers teach.”