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Study Finds Visual Rhythms in Sign Language

A new study has found that patterns exist within the visual structure of sign language. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) by Geoffrey Brookshire, Jenny Lu, Howard C. Nusbaum, Susan Goldin-Meadow, and Daniel Casasanto and other researchers sought to find if sign language had similar patterns to that of auditory languages.

When people are listening to a language, they “entrain” or lock up with the speaker’s speaking patterns. The study states, “By showing similar entrainment of visual cortex to sign language, we establish that this phase-locking is not due to specific properties of auditory cortex or of oral speech perception. Rather, low-frequency entrainment is a generalized cortical strategy for boosting perceptual sensitivity to informational peaks in time-varying signals.” Essentially, this means that the way one speaks forms patterns, whether or not the language is spoken or visual.

These patterns serve a purpose, in that when people listen to conversations, their brains “phase lock” with the volume of the speaker. This means that even if a listener is distracted via outside stimuli, they can follow the volume of the speaker and anticipate when important information will be said.

The study looked at speakers of American Sign Language, German Sign Language, British Sign Language, and Australian Sign Language, as all of these languages are genetically unrelated. They created a metric to measure visual change over time and measured the fluctuations of periodic pattern fluctuation in sign language.

Prior results suggest that auditory and visual perception may be differently modulated by rhythms at different frequencies. In speech, listeners begin to phrase lock when phrases occur below 8Hz or 8 pulses per second. The researchers found that visual speech also has a frequency in which people begin to lock in, which is about 10Hz.

“By looking at sign, we’re learning something about how the brain processes language more generally. We’re solving a mystery we couldn’t crack by studying speech alone,” Casasanto said to Science Daily.

“This is an exciting finding because scientists have been theorizing for years about how adaptable or flexible entrainment may be, but we were never sure if it was specific to auditory processing or if it was more general purpose,” Brookshire added. “This study suggests that humans have the ability to follow perceptual rhythms and make temporal predictions in any of our senses.”

Mexico and Canada Collaborate Linguistically

Languages Canada and the Ministry of Education of the Mexican State of Guanajuato have signed a cooperation agreement to formalize and expand collaboration in English and French language education.
The signing took place during a visit to Ottawa by the secretary of the Ministry of Education of Guanajuato, Eusebio Vega Pérez, accompanied by senior representatives of EDUCAFIN—the state agency responsible for administering programming and funding on behalf of the Ministry of Education. “[To] educate is to transform people. [To] educate is to have a better society. Education is necessary and vital to the construction of a learning society; it simply cannot develop itself without knowledge,” said Vega Pérez.
The signing, held at the University of Ottawa, was followed by a roundtable meeting with twelve Languages Canada member programs to identify the tools and mechanisms necessary to operationalize the agreement and develop a program framework to strengthen English and French language education in the public school system of the state of Guanajuato, with the participation of Canadian language experts.
Jorge Hernández, EDUCAFIN’s director, stated that “My work (passion) is for the young population of Guanajuato to be brave, dream big, and transform their destinies forever with the strengths provided by education. An international and intercultural education allows them to find the affinities and differences that build agreements and promote peace, development, and sustainability for our society.”

Senate Considers Reclassification for ELL’s

Girl standing by chalkboard with GATO on itThe senate is considering updating the criteria for reclassification for English Language Learners (ELL’s) in the state of California with Senate bill 463. When ELL’s are deemed proficient in English, they are moved from being ELL’s to being Reclassified Fluent English Proficient (RFEP) students. These students move into English only classrooms and move away from needing resources to continue learning English.

The curricula in reclassifying ELL’s is disputed among researchers, educators, and language experts, with some rallying for earlier reclassification (since students who are reclassified tend to outperform ELL’s) while others are content with the current reclassification methods.

Because districts determines their own reclassification standard, the level of advancement demanded to reclassify depends on the district, and is disputed. The bill aims to create a more streamlined reclassification across the state, and would impost a state-mandated program. The bill would also aim to delete obsolete provisions related to reclassification for ELL’s.

The proposed bill would

  • Delete the provision requiring the department to establish procedures for the reclassification of a pupil from English learner to English proficient,
  • Require a local educational agency that has one or more pupils who are English learners in any of grades 3 to 12, and who do not have an individualized education program, that specifies the pupil requires assistance due to language proficiency issues, to determine whether to reclassify such a pupil as English proficient according to specified factors.
  • Authorize a local educational agency to determine whether to reclassify such a pupil in kindergarten, grade 1, or grade 2 according to similar specified factors.
  • Require the department, with the approval of the state board, to develop guidance for local educational agencies to implement those provisions.
  • Require the department, in consultation with the state board, to develop and submit recommendations to the Legislature regarding the appropriate reclassification criteria for ELL’s with individualized education that specify the pupil requires assistance due to language proficiency issues.
  • Determine minimum scores on specified assessments for reclassification of a pupil as English proficient, and would provide that an ELL is immediately eligible for reclassification if the pupil attains those minimum scores on the assessments, unless the local educational agency determines there is academic-related evidence the pupil will not be successful in a mainstream curriculum.
  • Require the department to develop a rubric to measure academic-related evidence.
  • Require a local educational agency that has a numerically significant pupil subgroup of English learners or that includes specific goals and actions for that pupil subgroup in its local control and accountability plan to complete specified actions for purposes of reclassifying pupils as English proficient.

 

 

Murals Teach Education is Not a Crime

Changing the World, One Wall at a Time is a new documentary on Education Is Not a Crime—the world’s largest street art and human rights campaign, which raises awareness about education apartheid by Iran’s government against tens of thousands of Bahá’ís in the country through murals.

The film, produced by Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari, features interviews with popular artists—such as Rone from Australia, Astro from France, Marthalicia Matarrita from New York, and Elle from Los Angeles—as well as activists with experience of the civil rights movement, the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, and human rights work on behalf of Iranians of all backgrounds. Iranian Bahá’ís with personal experience of being denied their right to higher education also share their stories.

Education Is Not a Crime raises awareness of the discrimination against the Bahá’ís, who believe in ideals such as the equality of men and women, peaceful nonviolence, and universal education. The campaign began in 2014, and since then street artists and human rights activists have teamed up to use art, social media, and community outreach to build a new audience for their message of education equality in Iran.

The Bahá’ís, Iran’s largest religious minority, are denied access to higher education. There are 74 Bahá’ís currently imprisoned, and more than 200 were executed in the early 1980s after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Thousands of Bahá’ís are currently studying through an underground education system known as the Bahá’í Institute for Higher Education (BIHE). Not a Crime is working to stop the human rights abuse of young people barred from studying because of their beliefs and is encouraging universities worldwide to admit Iranian Bahá’í students. The education campaign started in 2015 with an Education Is Not a Crime Day (the last Friday of February 2015) and screenings of a film Bahari made called To Light a Candle—and now it has grown into a movement. Mark Ruffalo of The Avengers, Rainn Wilson of The Office, Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and rights activist, and Shirin Ebadi, also a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, have spoken against the persecution of the Bahá’ís. Nearly 100 universities—including Stanford and Yale—currently accept the BIHE certificate.

Forty-one murals have been painted in U.S. and international cities as part of the project—Atlanta, Cape Town, Delhi, London, Nashville, Sao Paulo, Sydney, and two dozen in New York City. Nineteen of the New York murals were painted in the iconic Harlem neighborhood because of its long association with cultural innovation during the Harlem Renaissance and the 1960s civil rights movement.

www.notacrime.me/thefilm

Chinese Highlight of Dismal K–12 Enrollment Survey

Stressed college student for exam in classroomThe recently released National K–12 Foreign Language Enrollment Survey Report shows that a total of 10.6 million U.S. students ranging from kindergarten to twelfth grade are studying a world language, accounting for only about 20% of U.S. school children.

As this is a first-of-its-kind comprehensive study of world language enrollments across the formal U.S. education system, it is not possible to determine if the figures indicate growth in world language enrollments, but it does offer a closer look at language education in the country’s primary and secondary schools, from which a baseline can be established.

The survey shows that Spanish is by far the most widely taught language in all 50 U.S. states and Washington, DC, with 7.36 million students, while 1.29 million studied French and nearly 331,000 were enrolled in German courses.

In U.S. high schools, Romance languages are taught most often, with 46% of those classes focusing on Spanish and another 21% on French. Chinese, German, and Latin are the only other world languages that account for more than 5% of the courses offered to U.S. secondary school students.

As many as 227,086 students have enrolled in Chinese language courses, which are now available in primary and secondary schools in Washington, DC, and every U.S. state except South Dakota, ranking as the fourth-most-widely taught foreign language in the country’s education system.

The soaring popularity of Chinese language learning across the U.S. is “remarkable” as one of the most interesting findings of the survey, Dr. Dan Davidson, president of American Councils for International Education, which implemented the survey, told China’s Xinhua news agency.

Of particular significance is the disparity of language-learning opportunity between different states. In Arkansas and Arizona, fewer than 10% of students are studying a language other than English, and in California, the figure is less than 14%, while New Jersey tops the list at just over 51%.

The report, sponsored by the Language Flagship at the Defense Language and National Security Education Office (DLNSEO), conducted and published by American Councils for International Education in partnership with the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL), and the Modern Language Association (MLA), and in collaboration with the National Council of State Supervisors for Languages (NCSSFL), found a striking “lack of knowledge about foreign-language teaching and learning” and concluded that “the sheer difficulty of collecting data is noteworthy.”

Cuba Educational Policy Reversal Condemned

President Trump has announced a new executive action restoring restrictions on travel and trade with Cuba, “I am canceling the previous administration’s completely one-sided deal,” he announced to an appreciative crowd of Cuban dissidents in Miami.

One of the major changes in the policy directive is that U.S. travelers making educational people-to-people trips can no longer go to Cuba individually but must travel in groups accompanied by a company representative.

However, despite the rhetoric, the order appears to be less far-reaching than the President claimed, for example, the embassies that opened in Havana and Washington will be maintained, Cuban Americans will be allowed to send money to their families and visit them, and U.S. companies will be allowed to continue commercial transportation, including flights between the two countries.

Jill Welch, NAFSA (Assn. for International Education) deputy executive director for Public Policy, criticized the move, “Regressing to past travel and trade restrictions with Cuba will only pull America back into a 50-year-old failed policy of isolation with the island nation and restrict our ability to learn from one another. For more than a decade, a diverse coalition that includes international educators has advocated for opening relations with Cuba. Harmful changes like these are a prime example of why Congress must act to codify the law and allow open trade and travel with Cuba and the Cuban people. Freeing Americans to travel and conduct education and business interactions with any nation as freely as we are permitted to do so with every other country in the world should not be a privilege for a few—it is a basic human right because after all, travel is inherently educational.”

“Today is a major setback for international relations, NAFSA, our allies and the Cuban and American people. We call on Congress to permanently remove restrictions on travel and trade to Cuba by enacting the bipartisan measures introduced in the House and the Senate, the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act of 2017 and the Cuba Trade Act of 2017, restoring the freedom to travel, trade and learn,” Welch concluded.

 

UCLA Brings Aztec From the Past into the Present


vector illustration sketch drawing aztec pattern cacao tree, mayans, cacao beans and decorative borders yellow, red, green, brown, grey colors on white background
aztec chocolate pattern

In an interesting combination of art and language, a UCLA professor is leading the research for an Aztec text.

UCLA historian, Kevin Terraciano, is working with art experts at the Getty Center in collaboration with Italy’s Laurentian Library in Florence to create an online, annotated version of the ancient Florentine Codex —an Aztec text written in Nahuatl dating from 1577. There is only one copy of the codex currently in existence, so the creation of an online version will make the text accessible to both the public, and also the very descendants of Aztecs living in Mexico.

Terrancino has been at the forefront of research in Nahuatl. As director of the Latin American Institute, he had a large part in bringing Nahuatl to classrooms in UCLA. According to the UCLA Newsroom, the historian says that most Mexicans consider Nahuatl the language of ancient Mexico.

Currently, varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by an estimate 1.5 million Nahua peoples, many of whom live in central Mexico. During the period before the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, the language was something of a coda franca of Mexico. The language also began to be used in literary instances, with many chronicles, grammars, works of poetry, administrative documents, and codices like the Florentine Codex. Generally the language was distributed orally, not visually. However, some researchers argue that the Aztecs had developed a sufficient means of visual representation of the language shortly before the Spanish Inquisition.

While the language is currently spoken widely in Mexico, and hints of it can be seen even in English (avocado, coyote, chili, coyote and tomoto all come from Nahuatl), it is not often studied or taught in Mexico or the United States. The move to digitize the codex is emblematic of a move to not only make ancient Nahuatl resources more accessible to speakers of the language, but also to move the indigenous language into academia.

 

Bilinguals May Recognize Voices Better

A new study in Bilingualism: Language and Cognition shows an advantage in bilingual children when determining voices of who is talking (talker-voice information).

Countless studies have proven that there are many benefits, in both cognitive and social tasks, so the new findings on recognition of voices by Dr. Susannah Levi add to the growing pile of research in support of bilingualism.

Research

Levi selected 41 children (22 monolinguals and 19 bilinguals) who were then separated into two groups by age. All of the students in both the younger and older groups were attending schools in New York City with English as the primary language of instruction. All students were tested on their abilities to distinguish vocal recognition in English and German (an unfamiliar language). The researchers told the children that they would be listening to either English or an unidentified language other than English. They then played pairs of words separated by a few moments of pause, and then asked the children whether the speakers were the same person or different people.

The children were also tested on talker-voice learning in English. First they completed five days of talker-voice training in which they learned to identify the voices of three talkers that were identified on a computer screen by cartoon characters. The children were then played a voice and instructed to decide which character’s voice was played.

Across both tasks, researchers found that both age and bilingualism were determining factors—older children performed better than younger children, and bilingual children performed better than monolingual children.

“Improved talker-voice processing by the bilingual children suggests that a bilingual advantage exists in a social aspect of speech perception,” Levi says, “where the focus is not on processing the linguistic information in the signal, but instead on processing information about who is talking.”

Why Do Bilinguals Perform Better?

One reason for this finding is that previous research has demonstrated that listeners perform worse when processing voices that have foreign and dialectal accents across the board. However, these findings indicated that those with nonstandard, or a less-spoken dialectal accent were better at understanding those with a standard accent since they are more likely to be exposed to those with a standard dialectal accent. This indicates that bilingual speakers in this study may outperform monolinguals because they have more experience with foreign accented speech.

Another explanation could be that bilinguals have better cognitive control and are able to focus on the task while suppressing the irrelevant information of accented speech. “Yet another possibility, the study says, “is that bilinguals have better social perception and perceiving the voice of a talker is highly relevant in social situations.”

“Taken together, Levi says, “the current study shows that bilingual children – here defined loosely as those children who speak, read, or understand another language or who have a family member who speaks another language living in the household – have a perceptual advantage when processing information about a talker’s voice. They are faster to learn the voices of unfamiliar talkers and also perform better overall. They are even better in an unfamiliar language, suggesting that the benefits found for the English stimuli are not attributable only to experience listening to foreign-accented speech.”

 

Drawing on Ideas for Language Learners

two children who are english learners backseat reading a mapMark Oronzio suggests concept-mapping strategies for language learners

For more than 40 years, education researchers have advocated the use of concept mapping as an effective approach to fostering higher-order thinking skills, moving students from mere knowledge acquisition to knowledge utilization and creation (Novak and Cañas, 2008). By specifying and linking concepts in a concept map, students and language learners create a visible structure of their understanding in a given domain that can be modified over time to assimilate new concepts and reflect new understanding.

In short, concept mapping can move learners toward more in-depth learning, i.e., more meaningful learning, by facilitating the process of linking new concepts with existing knowledge and experience. Concept mapping is an effective strategy for educators to use to support English language learners (ELLs) and prepare them for success in school and beyond.

There are several research-based methods for applying concept mapping to language learning. Here are some of the ways teachers can use concept mapping to differentiate instruction for ELL students:

Pre-Reading

• Invite students to share what they already know about a particular concept in a concept map prior to reading. This approach provides students with the concepts and words that they are about to encounter in the reading text as well as an overview of the content to be learned. Then, ask students to add information to their maps while reading to provide a visual aid for building on their prior knowledge. This could be an individual or whole-class assignment.

Pre-Writing

• Task students with brainstorming about a given topic by making connections among ideas and analyzing information in a concept map in preparation for writing. Allow students to discuss their maps in groups and share their ideas for writing so they can hone or expand their focus as needed. After researching their topic, students can modify their maps to capture new information and organize their thoughts before writing their compositions. Research has shown that this approach helps ELL students improve their writing.

Vocabulary Building

• Enable students to create concept maps to define and better understand key vocabulary terms. Students can access videos, text, and images to learn about a term and then build a map that visually links the term to its various meanings, uses, related words, synonyms, and more. This allows students to personalize their connections to the vocabulary words, improving their recall and comprehension. The map provided in this post is an example of this approach.

Developing Critical Thinking

• Encourage students to create a concept map of a unit or topic with key terms and essential questions during and after a series of lessons. Help them to see the big picture of the topic as well as build a scaffolding of meaning, a governing framework for future success, by emphasizing the main ideas, key concepts, and principles.

By visually expressing the association of related concepts, concept maps help learners to find unseen connections between ideas, organize information easily, and create new knowledge, which in turn clarifies their thinking. This process of making knowledge explicit fosters the understanding of complex information for ELL students without elaborative written explanations. The concept maps are also useful visual aids that make later study and recall easier for language learners than with linear notes.

Assessment

• Use concept maps to ascertain student understanding of a concept or unit taught. By making students’ thinking and learning visible, concept maps reveal to teachers, and to the students themselves, the gaps in understanding at any given moment. After reteaching or employing interventions, have students adjust their concept maps to assess their knowledge development over time.

Reading Comprehension

• Ask students to build a concept map as they read a book or text, identifying main ideas, finding subconcepts, and linking related ideas together. An earlier post on close reading strategies shows how this method can help all learners, particularly ELL/ESL students, improve reading comprehension. Try any of these methods with ELL students to help them develop content-area knowledge, literacy skills, and critical thinking, as well as to evaluate their learning needs and progress.

Additional Background 

The Ideaphora concept-mapping environment is the latest and most comprehensive tool for facilitating critical thinking through web-based concept mapping. It builds on decades of research investigating the use of concept mapping as an effective approach to fostering meaningful learning (Hilbert and Renkl, 2008; Novak and Cañas, 2008). In addition, it benefits from years of research experience designing and integrating technology-supported concept mapping in the classroom (Anderson-Inman and Ditson, 1999; Anderson-Inman and Horney, 1996/1997; Liu et al., 2010; Muirhead, 2006).

For more than 40 years, Novak and colleagues have advocated the use of concept mapping as an effective approach to fostering higher-order thinking skills, moving students from mere knowledge acquisition to knowledge utilization and creation (Novak and Cañas, 2008). By specifying and linking concepts in a concept map, students create a visible structure of their understanding in a given domain that can be modified over time to assimilate new concepts and reflect new understanding.

In short, concept mapping can move learners toward more in-depth learning, i.e., more meaningful learning, by facilitating the process of linking new concepts with existing knowledge and experience. Research on concept mapping reveals the process can have a powerful effect on learning. For example, Brullo (2012) found that students who created concept maps while taking notes had better test recall, could access information more quickly during tests, and scored better on content post-tests than students who did not have the concept-mapping experience.

According to Brullo, students who created concept maps were thinking on a deeper level about the text prior to taking the post-test, as these students quickly recalled information and answered the questions. Research also reveals that technology can play an important role in simplifying and supporting the creation, modification, and management of learners’ concept maps (Chang et al., 2002; Liu et al., 2006; Liu and Lee, 2013).

In 1956, Bloom proposed a taxonomy of intellectual behavior important for learning, with acquisition of knowledge at the bottom and evaluation of knowledge at the top. Decades of research on how to promote higher-order thinking skills has led to a revision of Bloom’s taxonomy and closer alignment with 21st-century learning goals (Anderson and Krathwohl et al., 2001). The lowest level of learning in the revised taxonomy is “remembering” existing knowledge, and the highest is “creating” new knowledge—a differentiation in skill level also found in the Common Core State Standards.

In response to the revised taxonomy, Mayer (2002) advocated moving from instruction that focuses on retention of learning (remembering and understanding) toward instruction that fosters transfer of learning (applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating)—in other words, “meaningful learning.” Key to the concept of meaningful learning is the learner’s ability to link new ideas and information to prior experience and existing knowledge (Anderson-Inman and Ditson, 1999).

Mark Oronzio is CEO and co-founder of Ideaphora, a concept-mapping platform for students to improve their comprehension of digital content while building higher-order thinking skills. Oronzio’s insight and leadership is based on more than 20 years of experience in executive-level positions for education technology companies, including Inspiration Software.

Get Real, Teacher! -Virtual Reality Teaching

Vector artwork depicts automation, future concept, artificial intelligence, and robot replacing mankind.Rene Gadelha believes that only careful implementation will realize the promise of virtual reality in education

Revolutionizing Education

Virtual reality (VR) has the potential to revolutionize education as we know it. Specifically, it immerses students in their learning more than any other available medium. It blocks out both visual and auditory distractions in the classroom and has the ability to deeply connect students with the material they are learning in a way that has never been possible before.

To say it is revolutionary may be underselling VR learning. It is no secret that schools are striving to create technology-rich environments, but these must be deliberate, with focus on learning and the curriculum; it is not enough to simply equip schools with computers and tablets. Most kids are exposed to technology, mainly for entertainment and communication purposes; it has changed the landscape of how they view the world.

Schools should embrace kids’ enthusiasm for the technology used for entertainment and leverage that into technology used for infotainment… enter VR. In order to be successful in a traditional learning setting, however, the VR content must be meaningful, engaging, and navigable so that the learning sticks.

Why Change?

Education pedagogy needs to evolve to meet students where they are—individualized instruction for each learner is the ultimate goal. Yet in many schools across the country, we are still applying the old factory model of schooling that has been around for nearly a century: students in rows, content disseminated homogeneously, and the “sage on stage” mode of teaching that promotes memorization, recitation, and regurgitation on tests.

Demands on workforce readiness and post-education expectations require education to embrace a change. VR has the potential to dramatically shift how teachers teach, but more importantly how learners learn.For years now, schools have employed whiteboards, projectors, computers, tablets, gaming devices, and the like not only to deliver curriculum but also to advance it.

VR is appropriate for all students and specifically would benefit English language learners and those with ADHD, learning disabilities, or other learning challenges because of its immersive qualities and engaging content. The sheer fact that many school districts now have a dedicated technology budget is proof that tech is here to stay.

A Seismic Shift

As a former teacher, curriculum writer, education consultant, school board director, and parent, I have seen much of what surfaces in schools—successes and failures. Without a doubt, when done properly, I believe VR will seismically shift education going forward. It is not enough, however, to simply put students in front of a computer and have them perform the same tasks. If we are viewing students as individual learners—which we should—then we need to allow these learners flexibility in educational pace, path, and content control, which can be accomplished through a robust VR curriculum.

Quality VR

How do you judge quality in VR content? It is important to consider the following elements: Curriculum rooted in standards to ensure learning is not occurring in a vacuum and aligns with the district’s existing pedagogy.

Diversity in topics—students should recognize what they are seeing in VR to establish a comfort level, but also they should experience new things to deepen their knowledge and broaden their horizons. Assessments that gauge students’ learning based on what they are experiencing in VR settings; learners should be able to demonstrate newly acquired or effectively reinforced skills; an integrated feedback loop so that teachers have access to their pupils’ results is important, too.

A variety of programming types (e.g., animation, video, interactive games, etc.) that stretch learners’ imaginations and stave off predictability; students’ senses should be stimulated so that they are fully engaged and immersed in the lessons by compelling auditory and visual components Functionality that allows users to interact by rewinding, pausing, skipping, etc., so that they are learning at their own pace and are in control of the content delivery—this is student-centered learning in action.

Highly capable, reputable platforms so that production pieces are well supported and can be viewed seamlessly.

Incorporating VRA newer trend in schools is the use of flexible learning environments. For instance, a typical classroom might have students divided into several groups, each one working on something different, though all activities have been planned by the teacher and tie into the curriculum; often, one of the groups is working with computers.

VR fits this flexible learning model well in that it can easily satisfy the technology-driven portion of the lesson. More ideal would be the resource of a STEM or computer lab outfitted with VR to support an entire class simultaneously.

The benefit in this scenario is exponential: while students work on their lesson in VR, the teacher is freed up to use her expertise and training in a more targeted manner with individual pupils as a facilitator, tutor, counselor, mentor, planner, or evaluator. This flexibility is priceless, as schools already recognize that many of the biggest gains in students’ progress are based on customizable, student-centered learning.

Quality VR content supports this goal because it will help further instruction and interest in the lesson content, while allowing teachers to pinpoint students’ needs and address them with more individualized attention—this is optimal for both students and teachers. The VR revolution is on the horizon.

 

Rene Gadelha is the curriculum director at VictoryVR, a creator of virtual reality curriculum for K–12 schools. She is a former classroom teacher and has worked with Pearson Prentice Hall, CTB McGraw Hill, and ETS in the areas of curriculum development, item writing, and assessment scoring.

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