Example of game play

1. Each game starts with the children being given an object to find on the main screen before they enter the play area. The children in groups then have to find the given object.

2. Example of the object hidden in ball pit

3. Example of how the object will be embedded with the technology to play the game, each object will have a different game based on the object and age of the children. Games will contain maths and science questions based on their curriculum.

4. Once the object has been found – the first team to find the object will score a point. The team will dock the object into the docking station and the game will play on a large interactive touch screen, similar to the ones found in many primary school class rooms.

Science Primary School Curriculum

Aims

The aims of social, environmental and scientific education are:

• to enable the child to acquire knowledge, skills and attitudes so as to develop an informed and critical understanding of social, environmental and scientific issues
• to reinforce and stimulate curiosity and imagination about local and wider environments
• to enable the child to play a responsible role as an individual, as a family member and as a member of local, regional, national, European and global communities
• to foster an understanding of, and concern for, the total interdependence of all humans, all living things and the Earth on which they live
• to foster a sense of responsibility for the long-term care of the environment and a commitment to promote the sustainable use of the Earth’s resources through personal life-style and participation in collective environmental decision-making
• to cultivate humane and responsible attitudes and an appreciation of the world in accordance with beliefs and values.

Science Curriculum
Science encompasses knowledge and understanding of the biological and physical aspects of the world and the processes through which such knowledge and understanding are developed. Through science education, children construct, modify and develop a broad range of scientific concepts and ideas. Working scientifically involves them in observation, questioning, discussion, prediction, analysis, exploration, investigation, and experimentation, while the knowledge and skills they acquire may be applied in designing and making tasks. Thus, science education equips children to live in a world that is increasingly scientifically and technologically oriented. Science education fosters a respect for the evidence of scientific enquiry, while the collaborative nature of its activities can also help children to acquire social and co-operative skills.

Investigations and problem-solving tasks nurture the inventive and creative capacities of children. Science education plays a key role in promoting a sensitivity to, and a personal sense of responsibility for, local and wider environments. It helps to develop an appreciation of the interdependence of all living things and the Earth on which they live. It encourages the adoption of responsible attitudes and patterns of behaviour towards the environment and so fosters the concept of people as custodians of the Earth for future generations.

The science curriculum

Primary science involves helping children develop basic scientific ideas and understanding, which will enable them to explore and investigate their world. In well-planned, practical investigations children’s natural curiosity is channeled and they are equipped with the strategies and processes to develop scientific ideas and concepts. The teaching of science in the primary curriculum involves the development of two types of understanding: conceptual understanding and procedural understanding. Children’s conceptual understanding is concerned with the development of scientific knowledge and with their deepening understanding of fundamental scientific ideas. The four strands of the science programme are Living things, Materials, Energy and forces, and Environmental awareness and care. These outline the knowledge and understanding that children acquire and describe the scientific ideas that they will encounter. Knowledge of the scientific process is sometimes referred to as procedural understanding. The section of the science curriculum entitled ‘Working Science scientifically’ outlines how children may engage in scientific enquiry. It is a procedural model of how scientists work and includes statements of the various component skills that contribute to this methodology. Children’s conceptual understanding and their procedural understanding are not developed independently: pupils’ understanding and application of the scientific process enable them to construct and refine their own framework of fundamental ideas and concepts in science.

Learning in science

The development of children’s ideas is central to science education. Young children come to science activities with ideas that they have formed from previous experiences. They use these ideas to make sense of the things that happen around them. These ideas tend to be limited to concrete, observable features and may be inconsistent with the formal theories of conventional science. The focus of science education will be on helping children to modify their ideas and to develop more scientific understandings. As well as planning science lessons on the basis of knowledge, skills and understanding, it is essential to consider the children’s ideas as the starting points for science activities and education. To change these alternative ideas or misconceptions it is necessary for pupils to become consciously aware of their ideas and then to have these ideas challenged and debated. Meaningful learning occurs when the pupils construct their understanding by modifying their existing ideas in the light of new insights gained from scientific investigations. Thus, science may be seen as the active process of the personal construction of meaning and understanding.

Maths Curriculum Primary School

Overview infant to second classes

Skills development

• Applying and problem-solving
•  Communicating and expressing
• Integrating and connecting
• Reasoning
• Implementing
• Understanding and recalling

Early mathematical

• Classifying activities
• Matching
• Comparing
• Ordering
• Number
• Counting
• Counting and numeration
• Comparing and ordering
• Comparing and ordering
• Analysis of number
• Place value Combining
• Operations Partitioning Addition Numeration Subtraction
• Fractions
• Algebra
• Extending patterns
• Exploring and using patterns
• Shape and space
• Spatial awareness
• 3-D shapes
• Symmetry
• Angles
• Measures
• Length
• Weight
• Area
• Capacity
• Money
• Time
• Data
• Recognizing and Representing and interpreting data interpreting data

Overview third to sixth classes

Skills development

• Applying and problem-solving
• Communicating and expressing
• Integrating and connecting
• Reasoning
• Implementing
• Understanding and recalling

  Aims – The aims of the primary mathematics curriculum are

• to develop a positive attitude towards mathematics and an appreciation of both its practical and its aesthetic aspects
• to develop problem-solving abilities and a facility for the application of mathematics to everyday life
• to enable the child to use mathematical language effectively and accurately
• to enable the child to acquire an understanding of mathematical concepts and processes to his/her appropriate level of development and ability
• to enable the child to acquire proficiency in fundamental mathematical skills and in recalling basic number facts.

Broad objectives

When due account is taken of intrinsic abilities and varying circumstances, the mathematics curriculum should enable the child to

Skills development

• apply mathematical concepts and processes, and plan and implement solutions to problems, in a variety of contexts
• communicate and express mathematical ideas, processes and results in oral and written form
• make mathematical connections within mathematics itself, throughout other subjects, and in applications of mathematics in practical everyday contexts
• reason, investigate and hypothesise with patterns and relationships in mathematics
• implement suitable standard and non-standard procedures with a variety of tools and manipulatives
• recall and understand mathematical terminology, facts, definitions, and formulae
  12 Number
• understand, develop and apply place value in the denary system (including decimals)
• understand and use the properties of number
• understand the nature of the four number operations and apply them appropriately
• approximate, estimate, calculate mentally and recall basic number facts
• understand the links between fractions, percentages and decimals and state equivalent forms
• use acquired concepts, skills and processes in problem-solving

New Idea

Problems with old idea

Instead of having this be a VR based learning game for children, as there are problems with it being VR. Them being:

• It is expensive
• Need a person who is experienced in VR who can set it up and fix any issues with it
• Can cause nausea
• Age advice being for above 13
• Parents are wanting children to be spending less time on screens
• VR is a very individualized and can only be played with one person

For the reasons above I have decided to use the same idea, an educational interactive space game for primary school children, but to make it more tangible and group friendly experience.

New Idea

My idea now is to create an indoor soft play area of the likes in a warehouse, that is space themed. The children have to physically search in teams for planets and stars which will be located in ball pits or other places throughout the play area. The objects they are looking for will be made of a lightweight durable material and will be embedded with a microchip which will be connected to a USB outlet. Once they find the object they are searching for, they will bring it to the docking station and connect the USB. The game will then be loaded which will contain maths and science questions based on their curriculum for the students ages. This incorporates a more playful and group based approach.

Game Play

There will be two teams, equally split from the group and they will be racing against each other to find the given object. The game will start The play area will be sectioned off into different themes so they know where to look for the given object. It will be a race against teams to find the object, the team that finds the object first is given a point. Eg. they have to look for the planet Saturn – they will go and look in the Solar System ball pit.

Moving forward with new idea

• Research math and science primary school curriculum, what are the aims and learning outcomes of these so I can know what the games need to incorporate
• Put together how I intend the play area to look, how the objects will look, how the docking station will look, how the games will be played

 

Moving forward

• Download the curriculum for primary schools / age group and see how that can be incorporated into this
• mainly maths / science based games
• maybe move away from VR as parents and teachers are trying to make a move away from screens as children are already spending so much time on them.
• VR is also very expensive and there are issues with it

 

 

Questions for teachers

1. Do you think this would be a valuable learning experience for your students?
2. Do you have any concerns so far?
3. Do you think you would be able to comfortably operate and set up the technology?
4. Would you prefer if this was provided and overseen by a third party source that would come in to the school and set up?

 

I asked my sons primary school teacher the above questions, her answers were as follows:

1. Do you think this would be a valuable learning experience for your students? Yes, I think it would be an exciting and engaging way for the students to learn
2. Do you have any concerns so far? Expense
3. Do you think you would be able to comfortably operate and set up the technology? No I have never used anything like that before and I wouldn’t know how to fix it if it went wrong.
4. Would you prefer if this was provided and overseen by a third party source that would come in to the school and set up? Yes that sounds like a much more viable option, that would suit us better.

I asked my sister to bring in the above questions to her secondary school to ask her class tutor, his answers were as follows:

• Do you think this would be a valuable learning experience for your students? Yes, although I think the content suggested would be more suited to a younger audience.
• Do you have any concerns so far? we wouldn’t be able to provide a headset to every student as that would just be too expensive
• Do you think you would be able to comfortably operate and set up the technology? yes but I wouldn’t want that responsibility
• Would you prefer if this was provided and overseen by a third party source that would come in to the school and set up? Yeah that’s a better idea

Software & Hardware Used

Leap Motion

Leap Motion is a hand controller that is used in conjunction with a VR headset, it allows the user to use their hands within the VR environment to control objects and interact with their surroundings.

Research into children’s vision & VR

VR and vision

One of the biggest concerns is the impact VR tech could have on kids’ eyes. Parents have long told children that staring at a screen will make their eyes go square, but the American Academy of Ophthalmology says there is no evidence that long exposure to screens can cause permanent damage.

However, Howarth said there is good evidence to suggest that only those with already weak eye movement and control are likely to experience adverse effects such as headaches and eyestrain. For children, these symptoms are good indicators that these kids need to get their eyes checked, so VR headsets may actually help catch existing problems, he added.

Michael Madary, a postdoctoral research assistant at the University of Mainz in Germany, who in February co-authored the first code of ethics on the use of VR, said the dearth of research on VR’s effects on children is unlikely to improve.

“For obvious ethical reasons, it’s very difficult to do research using children as subjects,” he told Live Science. Madary studies the ethics of emerging technologies, incorporating results from psychology and neuroscience, and he thinks the biggest concern with VR is its effect on children’s psychological development.

“I suspect that if parents are doing a good job as parents, that’s pretty much the most important factor,” he said. “It’s just exercising extreme caution and knowing that the experiments have not been done, so you’re experimenting on your kids.”

https://www.livescience.com/56346-are-virtual-reality-headsets-safe-for-kids.html

Easy ways to combat this ocular stress include having your child’s vision checked before school starts, encouraging 20-second breaks from screens every 20 minutes and making longer breaks where they perform physical activities mandatory.

A company called Vivid Vision is taking advantage of this self-correction behavior by releasing a new system for eye clinics called Vivid Vision for Amblyopia. Their setup melds their specially built games with a powerful computer, touchscreen monitor, Oculus Rift VR headset, and a Leap Motion and Xbox controller to fix amblyopia, a condition where the vision in one eye is compromised because the eye and brain aren’t communicating properly, and strabismus, or crossed eyes.

With all of the possible negative effects VR might wreak on our vision, the fine-tuning and further development of virtual reality systems and headsets could actually make our eyes stronger. Who knows what other interesting and groundbreaking applications VR might come up with to enhance vision down the road? Special attention should be paid to the time spend in virtual reality for younger enthusiasts, similar to the restrictions already recommended for kids’ screen time.

https://essilorusa.com/newsroom/virtual-reality-bad-fo-the-eye