Milton State School students are exploring virtual words thanks to the Advance Queensland Engaging Science Grants program.

Head of eLearning at Milton State School Rob Read said the Engaging Science Grant helped them to incorporate some of the latest technology into multiple areas of the curriculum for years 5 and 6 students.

“Using a class set of virtual reality headsets and mobile devices, our first project involved Year 6 students ‘visiting’ various Roman ruins in Italy, France and England to see in more detail places and structures that they had previously studied in their language lessons,” he said.

Other areas that will be explored using the technology include space and the solar system, virtual museum tours as part of their science lessons, art gallery tours as well as to study landscapes and the environment.

“We’re even going to use virtual reality to explore the creative world of authors like Roald Dahl as part of our English lessons,” he said.

Rob said, “We are looking forward to bringing the world into the classroom in even more detail when Expeditions AR (Augmented Reality) using Google’s Tango AR technology is released in Australia.”

Rob emphasised that science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) is an important part of students’ lives, and will become even more so in coming years.

“In an ever-changing world being creative, innovative and having the ability to effectively solve problems will be key skills — these are the skills that are learnt in STEM activities, incorporating design thinking and computational thinking.

“Careers in science, technology, engineering and maths, that’s where people are going to be able to show their creativity and that’s where there’s going to be a lot of exciting opportunities in the future.

“In the future, when they leave school, they leave university, they’re going to be doing a range of jobs that don’t exist yet,” he said.

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