Exploring Rome With the Help of AR/VR Without Actually Going!

Hello, my dear reader, 💗

I wish you a great day! 

Today, I will tell you about my experiences in creating AR/VR-integrated teaching material. Do you know what AR and VR are? Let's learn about them before diving into my project. AR (augmented reality) is meant to improve and alter your environment by incorporating digitally produced elements into a live view. On the other hand, VR (virtual reality) includes a full environmental simulation that substitutes a completely virtual world for the user's real world.

Now let's talk about my task. The task was group work, so I worked with my friends Yağmur Kavak, Bilge Dilara Doğan, and Polat Öztürk. You can check their blogs by clicking on their names. We had two options: The first was to prepare a handout for students to explore a city with AR/VR video materials, and the second was to prepare a handout for students to explore a global issue with AR/VR video materials. We chose the first option because we thought that it was more interesting. For our material, we needed to decide on a city to be explored. Of many attractive options, we decided on Rome. After deciding on the city we chose two landmarks of the city: The Colosseum and the Trevi Fountain. As the next stop, we wanted students to see the magnificent art of Rome with the museum "Museo di Roma". We provided pictures and 360-degree videos of them to make students experience a real-life-like tour. To access the VR videos, we put QR codes on the handout. After exploring the landmarks and the museum, we thought that the students might get hungry and recommended a popular dish named "Cacio e Pepe" in the city to put on the feed bag😋. Finally, we assigned students a project on the last page of our handout. In the assignment, they were to write their journey to Rome, pretending like they really had been to Rome using the VR videos and instructions provided on the handout. After we completed the handout, we prepared a one-page lesson plan based on the ASSURE model. 

I really enjoyed the task. It was super fun to engage with VR videos. Also, thanks to this task, I learned about Rome's famous landmarks and traditional foods while searching about the city. The difficult part of this task was to decide on the city. We had many attractive options and we spent a long time until deciding on Rome. Preparing the lesson plan was not my favorite part of the task but it wasn't hard to do and didn't take too long to complete. 

Click here to see our AR/VR-integrated teaching material.

Click here to see our ASSURE lesson plan. 

I will be waiting for your precious comments!

Toodles!! 👋

nis