Arizona nonprofit provides students with ‘virtual’ field trips
Sep 12, 2024, 4:25 AM | Updated: 6:08 am
Act One is a nonprofit that aims to provide Arizona students with access to arts and cultural activities through virtual reality field trips. (Pexels Photo)
(Pexels Photo)
PHOENIX — An Arizona nonprofit is using virtual reality to help bring educational experiences to students in Title 1 schools.
“Act One” is a nonprofit that aims to provide Arizona students with access to arts and cultural activities throughout the state.
Their virtual reality field trips are one way they do that.
Act One Executive Director Beth Maloney said the idea was born out of the work they already do to assist low-income families and changes during the pandemic.
“During the pandemic we also realized geography is also a huge barrier, so we thought, how could we reach students that are outside Phoenix and Tucson?” Maloney said.
From there, Act One began the program in 2021 and have brought the VR headsets to more than 18,000 students throughout the state.
“We found a couple of truly amazing local indigenous artists, who share their art and culture on our VR cameras,” Maloney said.
Their new “season” of content is called “Weaving Our Story” and features Arizona artists Tyrrell Tapaha and Janelle Stanley. It also brings students into the homes and workspaces of these artists, offering a perspective that’s intimate, close and hard to replicate with a typical field trip.
“We watch him [Tapaha] dye the wool, it’s just an absolutely incredible experience that we could not provide to the students in person,” Maloney said.
She also said it’s something the kids themselves are generally receptive to, saying even students who have used VR before find the content to be engaging.
The nonprofit does borrow from a typical field trip in designing the VR trips, namely, students are debriefed on what they experienced in a Q&A style.
Maloney said they break up the content into “chapters,” adding that students learn better in broken-up chunks as opposed to one long lesson. Overall, the VR field trips last for an hour.
While the service is free for Title 1 schools, any school can request the VR field trip experience for their classrooms. It can also be brought to places outside the classroom with a fee, to places like senior centers or in work with other nonprofits.
“We really try to offer services to educators first and foremost, to students for and foremost. But we’d love to serve the whole community,” Maloney said.
Learn more at act1az.org/vr-field-trips/.
