Tim Gentle took an auditorium of agricultural educators in Launceston into a virtual world to show them how they could do the same in their classrooms throughout Australia.
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Speaking at the National Association of Agricultural Educators conference on Tuesday morning, Mr Gentle showed how a digital classroom could immerse students in an environment where they learned how their food was produced or experienced working on a farm.
Armed with their mobile phones, tablets and Google Cardboard virtual reality head pieces, the conference delegates set about photographing various locations around the Tramsheds Function Centre at Inveresk.
They viewed the 360-degree results before uploading the images to Google StreetView under Mr Gentle’s instruction.
“My ambition is that you’ll be able to have the skills and confidence to be able to go back to your schools and start to use some of this,” Mr Gentle said.
“Being able to adopt that in your classroom will make you cutting edge, make you innovative and it’s going to make the classroom exciting. It’s going to push you as well,” he said.
Explaining how immersive education works in an agricultural setting, Mr Gentle said the teachers would be able to help their students feel like they were standing in a paddock, a dairy or shearing shed.
“I’m going to be teaching you how to surround your students in a digital world,” he said.
The finished 360-degree photos showed the teachers standing within the image, taking the educational opportunities to a new level.
“A lot of your students may have iPads. This is very dramatic with an iPad and they do love it,” Mr Gentle said.
Queensland school Burnett State College teachers asked students to photograph the school using this technology and then upload it to Google.
“So when I go into Google now and do a search on Burnett State College, I can click on these images and it goes straight down into the school and I can check out that facility,” Mr Gentle said.
“You might have an agricultural school where you’ve got some pretty cool things you want to showcase and you’ll be able to showcase these on Google Maps and Google StreetView,” he said.
As part of his Think.Digital and Farm VR programs, Mr Gentle travels throughout Australia in his 14-metre ‘classroom on wheels’ and shows how 360-degree video and photography can be used in digital education.
“I’ve been all over Australia and had many 360-degree tours. In total I’ve had over 11 million views,” he said.
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