Virtual reality can support and improve environmental education outdoors

The use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) for environmental education is controversial. Some are concerned that these technologies can replace or disrupt outdoor experiences outdoors who can mix the scholars with nature and develop environmental behavior.

However, learning through technology and being outdoors don’t rule out one another. If VR and AR are used effectively, they’ll support and improve environmental education and at the identical time contribute to the positive well -being of the scholars.

Access and connection to nature

Many natural locations are inaccessible to the scholars resulting from distance, security concerns, economic obstacles or skills.

Access to ecologically sensitive areas corresponding to coral reefs or wetlands is proscribed to keep up them. VR can offer an alternate technique to experience these locations.

Virtual technologies can even promote outdoor trips near home and help the scholars to mix with global and native environmental problems. For example, researching a virtual reality design expert Ana-Desspina Tudor with colleagues used a 360-degree tour from the Borneo Rainforest to show the scholars concerning the deforestation. The lessons were then applied to an area nature reserve that was affected by the railway construction. The students worked with an area charity to guard them.

Several perspectives

Such research guarantees to those that need to expand the connection between a sense of location and environmental behavior to regional, continental and global standards.

This means taking up environmentally friendly settings that may minimize hostile effects on the natural environment, wherever these effects occur.

The students require “evil” or complex environmental problems to take care of several places and points of view. Improved access through virtual simulations can promote empathy and overcome inactivity, that are most hardest resulting from the psychological distance that the scholars feel for nature.

Make the invisible visible

VR and AR lose a variety of their potential in the event that they are only used to simulate outdoor environments. Instead, these technologies will probably be transformative when students can experience environmental processes that may be invisible resulting from their scale or the time-frame.

Consider a virtual reality simulation that’s often called Stanford Ocean Sealification Experience. During this simulation, the pupils experience the results of the ocean acidification of a century on biodiversity by “in the course of corals the way it loses its vitality”, moves and observes how increasingly acidic water influences the ocean life.

When the researchers measure the effect of this simulation by comparing the test results of the scholars, they found that knowledge of the ocean acidification was increased by almost 150 percent and was maintained after several weeks.

Combination of sources of data

AR could be effective when combining different multimedia and data sources at environmental processes. Harvard researchers developed the AR tool Ökomobile in order that students can monitor water quality.

Students can play an augmented reality game to get students to learn water ecosystems on a smartphone while monitoring them outdoors.

The program led to a high level of commitment and significant profits for understanding and problem solving.

Critical environmental education

Compared to traditional varieties of education outdoors, VR and AR can offer the chance to involve various knowledge.

Practicers of critical approaches to environmental education can take this chance to take care of stories which are generated by marginalized communities about their experiences with nature and climate change.

Teachers can then involve pupils in self -reflection and at the identical time emphasize more extensive problems in reference to social and ecological justice.

Include local knowledge

Camosun Bog 360 is a virtual tour of an area wetland in Vancouver and an example of this approach.

Community interviews with volunteers who’re committed to the restoration of moor and videos of the Musqueam First Nation are embedded and linked during all the tour. This content can also be available to the scholars who’re personal from QR codes and their smartphones.

Micheal, considered one of the authors of this story, developed related resources in cooperation with the Pacific Spirit Park Society and the Camosun Bog Restoration Group to make use of in educational environments.

The aim of the tour is to introduce students in creatures and plants, to assist them take into consideration colonial stories by Camosun Moor and encourage them to guard moor through volunteer work.

However, care should be taken. As Métis/Otipemisiw anthropologist Zoe Todd explains, indigenous knowledge of know -leaves are too often filtered by white intermediaries. The game says that local voices could be lost or distorted. It is crucial that indigenous people tell their very own stories.

In the case of Camosun BOG 360, the Musqueam teaching kit offers the researcher instructions. This kit developed by the Musqueam First Nation encourages pupils and teachers to know their culture, language and stories. It offers links, videos and other teaching materials for parts with students.

Build environmental managers

Those who’re skeptical whether VR and AR can support personal outdoor formation should consider the necessary role that these technologies play for navigation within the equipment of scholars.

In fact, skills corresponding to digital competence, creative considering, communication, cooperation and problem solving are more necessary than ever before, because the students switch to the skilled world.

VR and AR can enable the scholars to participate in the answer to complex environmental problems, present and future. One drawback is the fast progress in hardware, software and implementation: schools can only slowly implement recent technologies, since each the time for the training of instructors in addition to economic and administrative obstacles are needed, and to evaluate how long an investment could also be worthwhile.

The environmental administrators of tomorrow must adapt to the brand new tools that researchers and specialists use to grasp, approach and communicate evil environmental problems. Without adequate training and practice with these technologies, the pupils might be disadvantaged on the drawback in the event that they enter the university formation and the workforce.

Educators play a job in strengthening students as stewards, e.g. B. find recent ways to involve emerging technologies in environmental education.