Educators value the classroom as the central hub where they can create an engaging student experience and community. However, making the most of this environment doesn’t mean being restricted by the classroom’s four walls. Increasingly, educators are looking to transport students by designing an immersive learning experience. This is a key aspect of an experiential learning approach: a teaching strategy that focuses on the benefits of experimentation and practical, physical activities.
Edtech has always been an invaluable tool for opening up the boundaries of the classroom and providing opportunities for students to get hands-on with their learning. Here’s how edtech can be used to support immersive learning, and why it is an essential component for creating transportative, dynamic teaching experiences.
How does edtech benefit immersive learning?
Edtech can be used to enrich the learning experience beyond writing, reading, or processing static text and images, by seeing content come to life with multimedia. Educators can create an immersive learning experience which appeals to multiple senses, particularly visual and auditory. This is more stimulating for students. It also illustrates concepts in a way that makes them more real, so students can visualize something they might otherwise find abstract.
Edtech helps create immersive experiences by bringing students closer to their learning. They can practice skills or see processes and real-life scenarios up close on a device, with the changes and effects happening right in front of them. They become immersed in their learning through the interactivity of causing or influencing these factors, rather than just learning about them theoretically or conceptually.
Using, connecting, and mirroring student devices also helps them become a more active part of a particular world, activity, or experience, compared to the degree of separation from only reading or writing about content. Edtech provides the first-hand, direct connection between student and lesson material which defines an immersive learning experience.
Using a front-of-class display for immersive learning
The size of a front-of-class display, such as the ActivPanel, makes it one of the best edtech tools for creating immersive learning experiences. These panels allow educators to present videos, animations, and graphics with a more cinematic scale and perspective. This can also improve the sense of three-dimensionality in apps, games, and visuals.
Students can use a front-of-class display to run more expansive simulations, or for constructing more complex, intricate models and diagrams. In addition to large-format activities and visuals, educators can use these displays to provide simple static or animated backdrops that offer students a reference point for the landscape, environment, or setting they’re learning about. These can accompany storytelling sessions or a Biology lesson exploring a particular habitat.
Tools like the ActivPanel come with built-in, interactive features that students can use to freely experiment and learn in ways that suit them.
Find out how you can take your learning experiences to the next level with the ActivPanel by joining us for an online demo.