The St. Vrain Valley School District in Longmont, Colo., has become the first school district to adopt Avantis Education’s virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) content platform districtwide.
All 60 schools in the district – which serves 33,000 students – will now have access to a library of immersive VR and AR content and standards-aligned lessons.
“St. Vrain Valley Schools has been using Avantis’ ClassVR headsets since 2018. We have the headsets at 21 of our schools right now and love the rich library of content available to those students. We had been managing the licensing for these schools individually, and are pleased to be able to manage ClassVR at a district level,” said Eric Pierce, the district’s director of IT services and support.
With the districtwide adoption of the content platform, teachers in all district schools will be able to take advantage of the lessons even if they don’t have access to VR headsets.
“Additionally, with this district-wide Eduverse license, the content that’s available in ClassVR can also be accessed on devices that students already have, like iPads, which is exciting for us. We’re a 1:1 district and having this curated library of experiences available for all students on all devices is very valuable and a win for our students,” Pierce said.
The school district said it plans to pilot Eduverse content next semester to schools that don’t currently have it. The platform has been added to the district’s ClassLink platform which makes it easy for teachers to access the content with a single sign-on password.
Pierce said in a press release that he is especially excited to see what impact Avantis’ science and social studies content can deliver to the district’s schools. “We can virtually take students to other countries or have them explore the surface of Mars. We’re looking forward to bringing those unique experiences to all our schools,” he said.
