This is a guest post from Paul Olsen, Media Specialist at Oak Hill Community School. Read more mini grant reports on our page.

Virtual Reality always felt a bit out of reach for me. Perhaps this is because my first exposure to something similar to VR was through science fiction movies when I was growing up, but more than likely it was more of a financial barrier. However, as technology has become more streamlined, some less expensive options have presented themselves.

For an entry-level VR experience I found that a relatively cheap cell phone and Google cardboard was going to be the route for my school. A grant from CMLE has allowed me to purchase twice as many devices as my original budget would have previously allowed. The early implementation of lesson plans has taken advantage of a free application called Google Expeditions.

Through Expeditions, a guide (teacher) is able to bring their students on virtual field trips. It feels pretty amazing to take students to parts of the world that are unreachable for the vast majority of people in general, let alone a young student.

However, the barriers that would prevent people from traveling to these locations are not always the first that comes to mind. I am especially interested in exploring the possibilities of helping some of our students that may have special needs to explore new areas that may otherwise be overwhelming or create high anxiety. A recent blog post on CMLE highlighted working with students with severe autism.

 I have highlighted a couple of the experiences that my students have had in the last couple of weeks below: