CTE and Virtual Reality

"We have to think about the present so much in our work," says Dave Peloff. "Learning Games to Go presents a rare opportunity to think about the future. We couldn't be more excited about this grant."

Dave and his colleague Sam Abramovich are key members of the CTE team that's about to do truly groundbreaking work as part of the LG2G initiative. They're going to build Virtual Reality (VR) simulations that will teach pre-algebra to some extraordinarily lucky middle-schoolers. And if you think that sounds cool, they do too. "We're going to bring something to the classroom that kids would never experience otherwise," says Sam. "And it's going to be grounded in good pedagogy and good technology."

Like the other members of their CTE team, Dave and Sam share the goal of using technology to make learning accessible to all students, regardless of disability or economic disadvantage. And since they're both former teachers, they have a very strong sense about the kinds of educational tools that work in the classroom.

Until LG2G, says Dave, there’s been little use of VR technology in schools mostly because of the great expense involved. One of the primary users of VR has been the military, and many of their simulations have been built by another branch of Johns Hopkins, the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). Now Dave, Sam and CTE are partnering with APL to bring Virtual Reality technology to the classroom. "APL will help us apply what they've learned about VR in their military applications and use it in the schools," says Dave. And that means the simulations CTE builds for Learning Games to Go will use the very latest in cutting-edge VR technology. And that's going to mean a lot of fun and a lot of learning for students.

Dave and Sam are extremely enthusiastic about the opportunity that LG2G is affording them to impact the future of education. As Sam says, "we believe that gaming and simulations have a strong role to play in the classroom. We want to make sure that we find the right way to use them."

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