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Using Virtual Reality to Explore Science and Literacy Concepts
Author(s) -
Hutchison Amy
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
the reading teacher
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.642
H-Index - 50
eISSN - 1936-2714
pISSN - 0034-0561
DOI - 10.1002/trtr.1720
Subject(s) - virtual reality , reading (process) , literacy , motion (physics) , scientific literacy , action (physics) , psychology , multimedia , visual literacy , computer science , human–computer interaction , mathematics education , science education , pedagogy , linguistics , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics , artificial intelligence
Evolving digital technologies provide opportunities to engage students in activities that go beyond print‐based reading and writing and help them develop skills for reading, writing, and communicating with digital technology. Virtual reality apps are a rapidly emerging form of digital technology that provides immersive experiences in real or imagined environments. Virtual reality creates sensory experiences that involve sight, touch, hearing, and motion to allow users to feel as though they are physically present in that environment. These types of immersive experiences can be used to engage learners in multimodal literacy practices as well as scientific practices such as forming hypotheses and interpreting data to inform courses of action. The author provides a classroom example of using virtual reality in an integrated science and literacy lesson to engage students in discovering, answering, and writing about questions they developed as they explored a virtual environment.