We have officially launched our first (annual?) VR camp!! Here are the stated purposes of the camp:
- Spread the Gospel
- Teach
- Train
- Laugh
- Explore
- Envision
- Expand
To make it happen I hired three second-year Martin Luther College students. They came up with curriculum, themes, bought snacks, set up the equipment (the hardest part), bought the apps, and are running the camp, troubleshooting with the students, and monitoring what they see (okay... maybe that's been the hardest part... not the monitoring, but figuring out how to do it with multiple Quests). They've even been taking notes to make it better next year and all plan on coming back next year.
The Camp is running on the first four Sundays in October with the 5th being a play date. Five young people have signed up for the 5-7 p.m. sessions, with two more in a 1-3 p.m. session (we have only five headsets). The first week's focus was "Music," and the second was "Art" — VR Sculpting and (hopefully) 3D printing of their creations. Sunday the 15th is "Science" night. Sunday the 22nd is "Phy Ed."
You can click here to look at the Day #2 Lesson Plan devised by the MLC students.
Please comment or ask questions in the discussion forum below. All Camp leaders are available for more private consultation via email:
[Parents gave permission to use the pictures of the students.]
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Discussion
You have stated seven purposes for your camp. Were those purposes intentionally built into the planning materials?
How do you plan to take feedback from the participants to improve the next iteration of the camp?
Now the long answer: We did intentionally want 1) A gospel focus: How can we use this technology to teach God's Word? 2) An educational focus: How can we use this tool to help students grow in knowledge and become better servants in God's Kingdom? 3) A style of "edutainment": How can we make it fun for the kids to learn? And 4) Modeling/demonstrating: How can we show professors and teachers (and future teachers) some of the possibilities this tech contains for future classrooms?
So far, I think we've hit the first three objectives very well. We're hoping that next year we can get music teachers to come on day 1, art teachers to come on day 2, science teachers to come on day 3, and Phy Ed teachers to come on day 4, so we can showcase the potential use in classrooms moving forward.
To give you and ides of what we do, the current format/schedule is...
15 minute devotion with me based on a biblical location (Bethlehem, Nazareth, Jerusalem, Galilee)
15 minutes of exploring that location in "Wander." (Google Earth in VR)
30 minutes of an educational theme (For music we did an app called Maestro. For art we did "Sculpt VR," first playing virtual Pictionary, then they started sculpting something to print with a 3D printer. For science a Rube Goldberg machine app and "Mission:ISS" at the International Space Station. And this Sunday is Phy Ed. I forget what the app is.)
15 minute snack and social break.
15 more minutes of that week's educational theme.
25 minutes of "student's choice" of anything we'd done so far (and a few other games...)
5 minutes of recap (recharge headsets) and close with prayer.
Having only 5 headsets (and maybe internet bandwidth to only accommodate that many) we kept it low key this year. We also weren't entirely sure how smoothly things would run or how many snags we'd hit on the way. We hit a few so far, but quickly overcame them. And I'm honestly very impressed with how smoothly it's running, how great the student teachers are, and how quickly the campers pick up on the technology and jump right in. What took me hours to figure out, these guys have all done in minutes! Guess I'm getting old.) :)