In late 2019, the Faculty embarked on a project to renovate its Geelong Waurn Ponds campus, with a view to creating a resource for the Faculty, the wider university, and the Geelong community. The Faculty wanted to integrate immersive technology, without the limitations of VR headsets - and chose Igloo Vision.
We consulted with the Faculty on an extension to an existing building that would house the new precinct, applying the circle design of the Igloo cylinder to a circular Think Tank and semi-circular editing suite.
Deakin Imaginarium is intended for use across a wide range of courses in the Faculty, including Journalism courses, Criminology, and to give trainee teachers experience of classrooms, before they head out into the professional world. And, it can also be used across the wider University by teachers in the Healthcare and Science and Engineering Schools.
The Igloo cylinder itself is highly-specced, equipped with:
Lecturers at the University have found plenty of uses for the Deaking Imaginarium. For example...
Students can be whisked away anywhere in the world thanks to our integration with Google Street View, whether it’s to the Roman Colosseum, followed by a trip to the middle of a football pitch, or to the spot of famous graffiti artwork
With 360-degree videos of classrooms, lecturers can give their pre-service student teachers a taste of what to expect before they go out into the field
And other departments anticipate making use of the space too – such as the Journalism department, as the industry moves towards more immersive storytelling techniques
And the University has set out on making plenty of its own content with Insta360 cameras – you can read more about that in this super-detailed blog from Insta360.
“So the tools that are provided by Igloo have been really easy for us to use, Google Street View has been an amazing one. In some of the subjects, our staff have been taking students on a journey to different places in the world, to get an experience of their culture and their society and their learning. There’s so much that’s applicable to what we teach here at the University.”
Matthew McDonough
General Manager of Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University
“The immersive environment like the one we have here is brilliant because we can put the students in the same room, they can look around, freeze the frames, see things they didn’t see before, see things that are hidden in plain sight, and that’s when they start to learn.”
Damian Blake
Head of School of Education, Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University
