Ранок з Україною

School museums+Nearpod VR

As you probably know, our school has become the winner of the Nearpod VR Grant. As a part of this grant we received Nearpod VR headsets. We started exploring virtual reality at the lessons by using 360 degrees images available at the Nearpod website, but then we decided to promote students' creativity. Why not make some VR content ourselves? There are two great museums in our school - The World War II Museum and Taras Shevchenko Museum. We made Photo Sphere images of these museums using Google Street View app and smartphones. On 17th September we celebrated the City Day. During this event the students of our school conducted virtual fieldtrips to our school museums for the city residents without leaving the main street of the city! They only used a smartphone and a pair of VR goggles! The effect was great. A lot of community members learned about our school museums where students act as guides and conduct excursions. People planned real trips to our museums. The best moment for me was when a child in a wheel-chair put on a VR headset. You should have seen his face! I'm afraid, it is difficult for this kid to visit museums in real life because not all places are equipped for handicapped people, but technology made it possible for him to be a part of his local community and visit interesting places. We are going to develop the idea of virtual fieldtrips and virtual museums. Follow my blog and welcome to the VR fieldtrips to Taras Shevchenko Himnazia in Kropyvnytskyi, Ukraine!

 The World War II Museum

Annual pre-school city conference for EFL teachers.

25/08/2016 about 40 EFL teachers from Kropyvnytskyi participated in the Annual Pre-school City EFL Teachers' Conference which took place in Kirovohrad Regional Universal Research Library named after D.I.Chizhevsky  Among the presenters were Svitlana Bondarenko, the local methodologist, Margaryta Kaliuzhna, a MIEExpert and Hanna Dudich, a MIEExpert and a PenPal Schools Global Ambassador.

Svitlana Bondarenko made the analysis of the work of foreign languages teachers in 2015-2016 school year and presented documents from the Ministry of Education for the new school year. Margaryta Kaliuzhna spoke about using Microsoft Office 365 for educational purposes.

Hanna Dudich spoke about developing 21st century skills through project-based learning, introduced ed-tech tools, such as Nearpod and VR kits and encouraged teachers to work with PenPal Schools website.

Please find attached the presentation and the PenPal Schools teachers' kit.

Developing 21st century skills through project based learning from Anna Dudich

http://www.slideshare.net/annadudich/developing-21st-century-skills-through-project-based-learning

https://learn.penpalschools.com/professional-development-kit

Nearpod webinar VR in the classroom.

I took part in a great Nearpod VR webinar today. Great tips on using VR in the classroom! You can sign up for their webinars on the Nearpod website: https://nearpod.com/

Here is the recording of the webinar

 

https://drive.google.com/a/gimnaziya-im-shevchenka.kr.ua/file/d/0B0776A9rhCKtaVFqRHNjOEw4MGc/view

 

Here is the link to the workshop plan:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BVy7ds64JI_VICIOVTcK71Q7l5W4ks7qAaO95w-ITMw/edit

 

All the materials were kindly shared by Bethany Marcusson and Andrea Vélez, two very pleasant members of the Nearpod team with whom I had a very interesting Skype conversation.

Google Expeditions

 

If you are keen on using technology in education and would like to take your class to an exciting adventure without leaving your classroom try using Google Expeditions! Google Expeditions enable teachers to bring students on virtual trips to places like museums, underwater, and outer space. Expeditions are collections of linked VR content and supporting materials that can be used alongside existing curriculum. These trips are collections of virtual reality panoramas — 360° panoramas and 3D images — annotated with details, points of interest, and questions that make them easy to integrate into curriculum already used in schools.

https://www.google.com/edu/expeditions/

 

Nearpod VR grant!

#NearpodVR grant arrived today! Looking forward to testing it in class! Thanks 2 #Nearpod !