VR ELITE - Virtual Reality for English Language Innovative Teaching

<< Background >>The main reason why we started this project was to find an effective and attractive way of teaching English as foreign language in our schools and to give teachers clear instruction, how to follow it. One of the main challenges all teachers usually share irrespective of education level and the subject they teach is to mobilise students’ interest and engagement. Teaching based on VR games and apps, so attractive for students, was a way to address this challenge and facilitate the teaching and learning process in a way that respects the students’ cognitive, social and cultural backgrounds while addressing the curriculum standards that they need to attain. We identified also some significant obstacles that stop teachers from engaging in new technologies at school. The main are:- familiarity with this kind of technologies,- ability to find appropriate apps,- lack of dedicated materials for teachers,- costs and lack of the equipmentIn our case, the project helped us to overcome all these obstacles, and we also found solution to help other teachers to overcome at least the first three.<< Objectives >>Our first objective was to show how to exploit the opportunities offered by digital technologies, in this case especially Virtual Reality, for teaching in primary schools. Parallel objective was to develop specific key competences of students: multilingualism, digital skills, personal and social competences, cultural awareness and expression. They both served the main goal - effective language teaching, which can be beneficial for all the students, including those less motivated or facing specific personal or sociological obstacles. << Implementation >>The main project activities implemented by us were:- Extracurricular classes in Poland, Finland and Estonia for students from grades 5-9, where they could learn English as foreign language using VR technology supported by other digital and more traditional tools,- Students international meetings and workshops in all the partner countries,- Development of the pedagogical materials based on the project experience,- Final conference with practical workshops to promote the project results. << Results >>The main results of the project are:- Extracurricular activities divided in six one year long English programmes based on VR implemented in 3 EU countries,- Three international meetings and workshops for 30 students and their teachers, each based on six short term 5-days mobilities for 10 groups of 10 students,- Publication available in 4 languages (English, Polish, Swedish and Estonian) containing detailed description and concrete case studies presenting our experience of using VR tools in teaching English in a motivating way.