Imagine if you could take your students to a museum to explore ancient history, but without the plane tickets and risk assessments and costs involved. Imagine if you could bring history to life in your own library space through immersive experiences curated to students’ learning. That’s what we’ve done for our year 7 students, using a mix of digital projection, augmented reality, virtual reality, mixed reality, 3D printed artefacts, resources and books.
Students have taken selfies with Roman soldiers, stood next to life-sized Terracotta warriors, lay down and looked out at expanses of the Great Wall of China and stood between the columns of the Greek acropolis. They’ve held King Tutankhamen’s funerary mask in their hands, flown over the pyramids of Gaza and examined ancient artefacts in digital form from all angles. All without leaving the school.
Creating the experience
Entrance Gallery
We are fortunate to have in our Innovation Precinct a digital projection space. We call it the Entrance Gallery and it is designed to be the entrance to our Innovation Precinct and library space. It has a number of projectors and white walls and floor and the result when you stand in it, is you are surrounded by digital projections on three walls and the floor. It’s an incredibly immersive experience. We have a number of beautifully designed settings, created by LittleBotStudios. These range from jungle scenes to a library space (a personal favourite). Franz at Little Bot Studios has also trained us in how to create graphics for this space. And so, for our Ancient Civilisations immersive experience we created two digital projections. The first was divided into the four civilisations and included artefacts and figures, with information. On the floor, we used an AI generated image of the four civilisations. It was amazing to see students standing next to the Terracotta Warrior, measuring their height against it. To see them writing down the information, talking about what they saw and making notes. The second display was of photos of the four civilisations in current time (obviously, because they didn’t have photographs back then), of the Great Wall and the Ancient pyramids.
Virtual Reality
We have four VR Meta Quest 3 headsets in our space. For this experience, my incredibly talented Innovation Precinct Assistant curated experiences for the students for each of the civilisations. We used YouTube VR and 360 videos, flying over the pyramids, walking around the Colosseum, and flying over a 3D rendered Greek acropolis.
Mixed Reality
The fourth VR headset was used to display mixed reality, where students could interact with roman statues and Chinese artefacts. The benefit of mixed reality and the headset is that students can interact with the objects, turning them and peering inside them.
Augmented Reality
On four iPads, we used augmented reality to overlay a Terracotta Warrior and Roman solider against the backdrop of their Possibility Hub. It was such fun to see students taking selfies with these ancient warriors, comparing heights and outfits and moving them around.
3D Printed artefacts.
We used our 3D printers to print a Greek solider’s helmet and a replica of King Tutankhamun’s funeral mask. Our Head of Year 7 also had two metal helmets that students could pick up and wear. These were placed on plinths we borrowed from the art department and lit with spotlights.
Resources and books
Around the space we placed posters and books on the ancient civilisations. These were all highly engaging and beautifully formatted non-fiction titles.
Activity
The students were provided with 4 pages, one for each civilisation, asking them to respond to Think, See, Wonder questions about their experiences. As they explored the immersive experiences, they responded to the prompts. Many would use the books to learn more about the places, people and artefacts they had discovered.
At the end of the session, a survey was sent to students around their engagement and enjoyment of the experience.
Acknowledgements
This immersive experience was created in collaboration with our the incredibly talented Innovation Precinct Assistant. It emerged through a collaboration with our Head of Year 7 and Year 7 history teacher and is also thanks to Franz at LittleBotStudio, for his work in the Entrance Gallery projection space.
