ThingLink offers an interactive virtual reality app for elementary school students
Interactive media platform ThingLink has launched a virtual reality content app called VR Lessons. The app is designed for elementary school students, their teachers and parents.
VR Lessons by ThingLink is a collection of high quality, interactive, 360° image and video journeys on a variety of topics including science, language, and arts. The first stories take students to visit different kinds of ecosystems from the French Alps to a jungle in the archipelago of northern Australia. As students turn their heads to look around, they can spot details and unlock additional information of each habitat in a narrated virtual reality environment.
“Virtual reality can take students to places they could only dream of visiting, but it is also an open canvas for students to imagine and build new worlds and experiences. We are making it possible for schools to use virtual reality as an engaging learning platform,” says ThingLink’s founder and CEO Ulla Engestrom.
VR Lessons by ThingLink utilizes three key feature additions to ThingLink’s core product, the image editor: audio annotations, background audio for 360° images, and the ability to connect several 360° images or videos into a one immersive story.
“Audio annotations work wonderfully in a mobile VR environment, adding depth to the overall experience of the space. For example, in VR Lessons we added the sound of the wind in the background of an image from the Norwegian tundra, and an owl howling in the image of a cold winter forest in Finland. In annotations we are using both human and computer voiced files, and students can vote which voice they like the best,” says Engestrom.
The first VR lessons have been created by ThingLink’s own content team using the company’s new VR editor. Later, educators from around the world will be able to publish their virtual reality lessons in ThingLink’s VR Lessons app.
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