A few weeks before the first day of school in August 2022, Athens Academy received a shipment of 30 virtual reality (VR) headsets for use with teachers and students throughout the school. Media Production and Robotics Coordinator Ryder Crosby helped to lead the launch of this new program that is an element of the school’s strategic plan. Crosby has demonstrated its capabilities to teachers and encourages and supports its integration in all disciplines and grade levels.

“The new VR equipment we have obtained has the potential to change the way we deliver information to the students we teach every day,” Crosby says. “The software that we use for learning in VR consists of hundreds of hands-on modules and learning experiences ranging from mathematics to chemistry to history.”

Lower School World Languages teacher Julie Brown was one of the first teachers to use VR, integrating it into her third graders’ study of French: “We used the VR sets to take ‘field trips’ to various locations. We went skiing in the French Alps, scuba diving in the Seychelles, and riding on a train through the Swiss countryside. We also explored Notre Dame and Versailles. Then we traveled to Reunion Island and exotic Madagascar. We visited a gorilla preserve in the Congo, watched whales in Martinique, traveled through a Tunisian desert, and soared above Guadeloupe in a glider.”

According to Director of Academic Affairs Pat Cuneo, “Although this technology isn’t new to many of our students—quite a few already own equipment of their own for gaming and entertainment—identifying a product that would work effectively in an educational setting, one that enabled the school to manage the content to ensure appropriateness, and one that provided learning opportunities that are both challenging and relevant, required extensive research.” Cuneo worked with Crosby to acquire the VR headsets and begin integrating them into the curriculum for students in all grades.

Classes of all different grade levels have explored the rain forest, walked on the Great Wall of China, skied in the Alps, performed dissections, and toured the inside of a cell full of life-sized organelles. “Our main goal with this newly acquired tech is to give teachers an opportunity to teach children in a different way--a way that will hopefully help them retain the information and skills that they are learning more effectively, and perhaps make it even more fun at the same time,” says Pat Cuneo.

Perhaps the best feedback on the new VR program came from Julie Brown: “[My students] have begged me to reserve the VR sets for a future class, and I definitely will. Several students in each class said it was the best day they had ever had! They embraced the technology and the chance to explore our beautiful world!”

Athens Academy is an independent, co-educational school for students in K3 through 12th grade, located on a beautiful 152-acre campus in Northeast Georgia. Now in its 56th year, Athens Academy pursues its mission of “excellence with honor” through academics, athletics, fine arts, and service and leadership. Ranked the #1 private school in Athens, #9 college prep school in the state of Georgia, and #1 private school in Northeast Georgia (Niche.com).