Get # Tablets and Tech: Transforming Education in St. Vrain Valley Schools with Avantis' Eduverse

Avantis’ Eduverse products are being rolled out across the St Vrain Valley Schools in Colorado, paving the way for a new era of education when instruction transpires in an immersive hyper-reality wherever time, distance or physical location should impose obstacles. And don’t worry, the future isn’t just for those with the luxury of a dedicated virtual reality (VR) rig or augmented reality (AR) kit at home. In a further stroke of generosity, Eduverse is cross-platform compatible, so all the future-learning is beaming down on our children’s laptops, Chromebooks, tablets and smartphones.

The Dawn of a New Educational Era

Bringing Virtual Reality to Every Student

St Vrain Valley Schools have been pioneers in the adoption of Avantis’ ClassVR headsets, which combine a VR experience with a library of curated VR content custom-built for address the needs of the classroom. In this grand new collaboration, the district’s students gain access to Eduverse’s entire suite of offerings on a district-wide level, with each and every student in the district, be it in a ClassVR-enabled or not, gaining access to a comprehensive suite of VR-based learning through their tablets.

A Seamless Integration for Teachers and Students

Eduverse will be incorporated into the district as part of next semester’s curriculum through a technology centre called ClassLink where all teachers will have a single sign-on and access to immersive VR and AR content. Educational tech doesn’t get any easier than that.

TABLETS at the Heart of Learning

As well as being the relevant device for this digital educational revolution, tablets were already ubiquitous in the district’s schools and easy to distribute. ‘We’re a 1:1 district,’ says Eric Pierce, director of IT Services and Support for the district. ‘We wanted people to have access to a platform of learning that wasn’t tethered to their desk or their computer, and not everybody has a computer to get this kind of experience on. It was important both to make this stuff available on devices that the kids already have, and that in many cases our kids are taking home… Then this could be a part of their homework. It’s not just part of this extracurricular thing any more – it can be part of the normal curriculum because it’s on the things the kids have.’ Designing for mobile devices also dovetailed with the way schools were already engaging with their students.

Eduverse: A Gateway to Immersive Learning

Eduverse, based in the UK, holds the distinction of being the first Metaverse to explicitly describe itself as a learning platform – a Metaverse of learning, if you will. Students in St Vrain Valley Schools will find themselves exploring distant planets in virtual reality classrooms. Or they’ll be able to view their school’s lunch menu and make uneatable choices visualised in edible delight.

Avantis: Pioneering Digital Education

Avantis’s contract with St Vrain Valley Schools to provide its system for the entire district marks it as a means to improve educational outcomes through technology. Now a well-established player in the marketplace (it also menaedged an almost complete incursion into the processes of the Saint Louis Public Schools), Avantis is poised to bring its technology into classrooms across the US through federal funding streams including ESSER.

TABLETS: The Cornerstone of Modern Education

Tablets are no longer just for surfing the web or watching videos, they are becoming one of the most innovative fields of education. With potential to carry AR and VR apps, tablets are the perfect fusion of convenience, portability and functionality that today’s classrooms need.

The Future is Here

Edtech is one of the most common buzzwords because, as we enter this new future for education, technology – and, more specifically, tablets – will continue to define the environments in which educational content is created and consumed. The St Vrain Valley Schools/Avantis partnership signifies a future of learning beyond the classroom, on a screen that can be accessed by anyone anywhere in the world – with just the tap of their tablet.

Tablets: A Brief Overview

Tablets are the digital learning graveyard to which all tools converge: easy to carry, easy to bring to varying locations, easy to use and easy to drop. They sit at the intersection of a great number of digital education tools, from VR and AR experiences to the generic touch-screen interface that has reinvented the ‘page’ for a new generation of students. Tablets facilitate manipulation of materials that push children to the wrong kind of thinking in ways that the static phrase ‘pick up your book’ is no match for.

Courtesy St Vrain Valley SchoolsToday’s educational innovators are less and less likely to view tablets as supplements to standard learning; rather, as Avantis’s adoption in St Vrain Valley Schools illustrates, they are core to either the delivery or the experience of new learning environments.

Therefore, the migration of Eduverse’s Avantis to a real-world school district holds an immense promise for educational technology by ushering a new era of learning mediated by tablets and other devices that will make schooling more fun and engaging, more accessible and equitable, and best prepare our kids for a world that is increasingly digital.