“When designing a school for the 21st century, surely there should be spaces like this to bring learning to life for young people.”
Mrs J Kemp
Assistant Headteacher
The Hardware – The Fitzalan Immersion Studio is a three-walled immersive room powered by eight Optoma projectors and an Igloo Immersive Media Player (IMP). The visual experience is enriched by further sensory controls including dynamic lighting, surround sound, wind machines and scent diffusers, all controlled by Aurora’s command delivery application.
The Software – The immersive classroom runs using Igloo Core Engine (ICE), the operating system for immersive spaces by Igloo Vision which makes it easy for educators to incorporate immersive learning into their teaching.
The Content – One of the big advantages of ICE is the flexibility of the software, which is designed to display almost any type of immersive or traditional content on any display – including 360° video and specialist VR learning content. Fitzalan staff have been making use of Igloo’s native integrations for YouTube 360° and Google Streetview, and have also been creating their own immersive learning content using 360° video and presentations in Microsoft Sway.
After one term in its new premises, Fitzalan has already found plenty of ways to incorporate immersive learning into the curriculum and the large, visually impactful space can easily accommodate up to 35 students with plenty of room to move around and interact with the display.
Here are some of the ways the immersive classroom is being used:
Immersive films exploring local history
Fitzalan is located in one of Cardiff’s most diverse areas and many of its students are descendants of seafarers who came to work in Cardiff Docks and Tiger Bay. The first piece of bespoke content Fitzalan made for the Immersion Studio was a 360° film combining archive footage, images and text to explore the history of the local community.
Virtual field trips to the United States Supreme Court
When learning about American politics, Sixth-Form students have the opportunity to speak via video call with a member of the supreme court. And now with the immersion studio, students can also take a virtual tour of the courtrooms.
Exploring different ecologies in biology
One of the great things about an immersive classroom like Fitzalan’s is that it’s so easy to enhance the current curriculum with immersive content and bring difficult spatial concepts to life. For example, teachers have used the space to explore the ecology of aquatic environments in biology or different landscapes in geography.
Bringing history to life
History students have been learning about life in the trenches during the First World War by experiencing CGI and reenacted 360° content about trench warfare.
Fitzalan High School are just getting started with their new premises and, over the following year, staff will be looking to roll out use of the Immersion Studio across the curriculum so that every student benefits from immersive learning.
“You can read about a topic, you can look at it on a small screen, but actually being in the room and experiencing it just makes things more memorable, more understandable and we're going to really benefit.”
“Staff have been really pleasantly surprised with how easy the system is to use"
