To date virtual reality has been used in the teaching of modern foreign languages at Key Stage 3, providing pupils with the opportunity to practise their speaking skills whilst learning the parts of the body, colours, countries, buildings and counting in French.

Virtual Reality has also been used as a digital record of a recent summer school “seashore searches.” This involved the development of a website containing virtual seashore habitat hunts with linked fact-files, photographs and video clips.

Back To The Future

The learning lighthouse also has two history projects lined up for this coming year.

One will involve the development of a separate, long gallery used initially to teach twentieth century history as depicted through the Olympic Games. This will be a teaching resource for secondary history teachers and will include video, Olympic and historic facts, website links and an opportunity for pupils to develop their own themed room based on their experiences in the long gallery. It is hoped that the long gallery will also be used for other timelines.

The second history project will be a series of galleries looking at World War II on the Wirral. Content will be closely linked to the QCA primary history scheme of work and will include galleries on evacuation, rationing, aid raids etc. This project will be developed in conjunction with the Dark Horse Venture and five primary schools and will include interviews with local World War II veterans. Gallery textures will also be themed with images of bombed out Wirral on the walls, anti-aircraft fire and flood lights.

In-house expertise at the learning lighthouse will also enable the creation of 3-D objects to place in the rooms. Pupils will be able to walk up to these and examine them.

Art Attack

Next March a group of Year 11 and 12 students from Wallasey School will journey to London to visit the National Portrait Gallery. Prior to their visit they will be able to experience a virtual gallery tour to look at specific portraits, each with a website link to further information about the painting and artist. Whilst at the National Portrait Gallery students will interview curators and visitors to find out what they think about the portraits. These recordings will then be linked to the virtual portraits back at the Learning Lighthouse. Once the virtual galleries are complete the virtual tour will be made available for other schools to use prior to their visit to the London gallery. It is also hoped that Wallasey students will act as virtual guides within the galleries meeting other students who link directly with the project- a virtual video conference!

Science Week

Next March Liscard primary school is holding a science week and has asked the learning lighthouse to create two virtual science projects, one for each key stage. Each project will have 5 science galleries each closely linked to the science national curriculum. Curriculum consultants at the learning lighthouse will visit the school to record children’s voices to add to the images and video clips in the galleries. Each image will also link to a suitable website providing further information about each topic.