When it comes to virtual reality in education, the landscape will continue to evolve. Whether with online VR resources like Floreo or the flexible yet very immersive RobotLAB VR Expeditions 2.0 platform, virtual reality can check many of the boxes for 21st century engagement. Plus, it can also positively influence engagement, retention, and SEL skills, like empathy, in students.
With SEL in the classroom, ensuring that every student feels heard, valued, respected, and advocated for are each among the biggest drivers as we all aim to collectively increase equity in education. When teachers meet these conditions, kids often feel more comfortable in their learning environments, which can spark added achievement when their emotional state is strong.
Educational leaders can leverage esports to help create lots of worthwhile experiences for students, including on both the social and academic sides of things. Since it’s now a varsity sport in many high schools, students can combine their interests and skills in team-centered competitions, find their place in school communities, and maybe even earn a college scholarship.
Students have dealt with a slew of varying emotions and all-new stressors since learning went remote amid the pandemic and plenty are still working back from that. Infusing MakerEd tools into new types of instruction is one solution that could help children restore some of that emotional balance so they can keep learning, express ideas, and share feelings comfortably.
Besides opportunities to participate in something they are truly passionate about, kids can also learn more about things like how esports has become this popular and some of its potential benefits and drawbacks. Also, some of the cons of esports in schools might be fairly obvious but in connecting them to their own personal experiences, students can learn a lot.
Summarized as “a growth-oriented perspective through which individuals promote flexibility, creativity, innovation, and renewal,” the entrepreneurial mindset means believing in the possibility of improvement. While research continues to show benefits associated with this kind of learning, more and more educators are implementing it. But, what exactly does this mean?
Just as they would participate in traditional school sports, like football and basketball, establishing school esports programs has become much more common with students even leading the charges in many cases. Similar to receiving athletic scholarships to play sports in college, students can now also do the same with esports—just one of the benefits it provides.
So much goes into creating a school esports program, especially if you are trying to quickly start competing against other teams. If you’re interested in jumping in to interscholastic gaming competitions as opposed to students just playing with their classmates, the High School Esports League serves as a great resource for athletic directors, tech directors, and even coaches.
The esports industry, beyond the high school and college levels, has been popularized via a number of different outlets. One of those is certainly live streaming top matches on platforms like YouTube or Twitch. And, while this excitement may seem unnecessary to casual observers, there are actually millions of people who follow these gamers, including the next generation.
Equipping students with the job skills for the future is a challenge because we don’t necessarily know what life in the future workforce will be like. We can make an educated guess though and, with added assistance from our partners at UBTECH Education, we’re exploring some of the most relevant skills and how UBTECH’s STEM products can help students acquire them.
