Introduction
In contemporary times, there has been a shift in teaching objectives and learning goals for the students. While the majority of the educational system is based on the score-based tests as an ultimate evaluation method, the contemporary education has started shifting on alternative methods of enhanced learning and cognitive development of the students through alternative approaches. One such approach is through the use of simulations and virtual reality within the classroom to enhance the student understanding, learning and cognitive abilities along with enhanced creative thinking skills. To adapt to this approach, one of the most efficient and latest technology is the Google Expedition.
Problem Statement
Upon research and debate of the three technologies Google Expedition, Chatbots, and Real Lives, I have selected Google Expeditions. Google Expeditions will best suit the school’s future and help advance the education of our students. It is expected that the implementation of Google Expedition will allow the students to better memorize, understand and critically evaluate their lessons. Furthermore, it is also being expected that the implementation of this technology will promote long-term memorization in a shorter span of time for average as well as below average students, or students with learning disabilities.
Technology Overview
In recent times, the Virtual Reality has become more portable, mobile and easier to implement in various contexts including classrooms for better student experiences. The presentation of Google Expedition demonstrated people in general out of the blue that any cell phone of this age can be transformed into a Virtual Reality machine with the help of a HEADGEAR. It contains two optical focal points for each eye to have the view of profundity and appropriate applications. Now any student with a cell phone and a VR HEADGEAR can appreciate the immersive experience of VR applications, share their thoughts and creative energy through a radically new medium. By re-enacting the experience, it urges them to rehearse their aptitudes in a sheltered domain (Howard 1).
VR offers numerous special advantages when utilized as a part of education. Above all else, by adjusting VR into advanced education, it offers another apparatus for educators and gives another method for connecting with more students (Spice 1). The objective of VR is to improve, rouse and animate students of specific occasions and in the meantime additionally takes into consideration students to encounter hands-on learning (Spice 1). But what is all the more engaging concerning VR in education is the way that it can be utilized to re-enact and enable learners to rehearse systems without the hazard included.
The rationale for Implementation: Virtual Technology for enhanced Class Learning
Now, we will depict the design of a model of virtual paradigm for learning. This model ought to be a helpful reference structure for planning and actualizing any academic program that requires the utilization of virtual reality as an educational innovation.
The emphasis here is to yield an all-inclusive model. Right off the bat, the likelihood of applying the proposed model to any learning program, regardless of its many-sided quality and its underlying freedom of variables (like the subjects or instructional substance to be educated, the physical or cognitive attributes of students, and the hidden academic strategies or learning hypotheses). Furthermore, the metaphor is the center of the model, and one of the fundamental preferences of metaphors is their potential all-inclusiveness. Metaphors ought to be utilized as a part of virtual situations as multisensory portrayals that can be experienced and interpreted by all students, independent of their dialect, consequently encouraging cooperation and interaction between members.
Real condition and source information Source learning speak to every one of the ideas, educational materials, abilities or potentially data identified with the subject to be learned by the student. The real condition can be characterized as the setting in which teaching happens. This setting must be considered when choosing and studying the source information. The educational condition can in some cases assume an essential part and decide the types of learning. Cases of real conditions are: a science research centre; a flying machine lodge, the air terminal and its offices for a learner pilot; the road, the region and the town for town planners or engineers; the scene, topography of the land and recorded information for archaeologists; or the school classroom for a student taking a geology, drawing or arithmetic lesson.
Metaphorical Projections
The key part of our model is metaphorical projection, which can be characterized as a mapping between the source learning of the real world and the virtual world. The primary objective of this procedure of metaphorical exchange is to manufacture a framework or system of metaphors equipped for characterizing the structure of the virtual world and sorting out how to learn, explore and interact with this. Along these lines, metaphorical projection happens on four unique, yet interdependent planes: the structural plane, the learning plane, the routing plane and the interaction plane.
The structural plane is made out of the metaphors that make the isomorphism between the source learning and the virtual world. These metaphors set up the hierarchical standards of the virtual situation, deciding its frame and its structure. The point is to base and structure the source learning in a natural space or circumstance that is as of now comprehended by students. The isomorphism or structural closeness will help them to find the focal highlights of the source information area.
The learning plane metaphors serve to outline the instructive approach and systems: the exercises open to students in the virtual world, the part of student and teacher, the portrayal or symbolization of the instructional substance in the virtual situation, and so on. The most critical segments of the metaphorical projection are the structural and learning planes, which to a great extent decide the choice of the metaphors in the other two planes. The route plane depicts how clients peruse and move around in the virtual world. The metaphors of this plane additionally characterize the scale, and additionally the students’ perspective.
The metaphors of the interaction plane build up how students can interact with the virtual situation, how they control the items they run over and how they speak with other conceivable members.
These four planes make up what ought to be an efficient and steady set or system of metaphors. The metaphorical projection is an irreplaceable device for considering the preparatory plan of the two essential aspects of the virtual world. Right off the bat, the outline of the engineering of the virtual situation: the structural and learning planes characterize both the arrangement of the components that constitute the structure of the virtual world, for example, their emblematic significance (the encapsulation or metaphorical portrayal of the substance of learning in this physical space). Furthermore, the outline of how the student can `inhabit’ or utilize nature: the route and interaction plane depicts the distinctive structures in which the client can move around and interact with objects and other virtual world members.
Metaphor as a cognitive device
Contemporary studies on metaphor have dropped stylish or facetious inquiries to center around the impression of their cognitive capacity. All scientists now acknowledge the possibility of metaphor assuming a structural part in arranging our reasonable framework.
As indicated by Meyer (p. 23), metaphors can’t be managed only as verbal instruments, since they are additional instruments of thought. Metaphors are equipped for transmitting new cognitive substance and fill in as a cognitive key that can be connected all around over the limits of semantic regions, scientific disciplines and the area of life encounter.
The present analysts consider metaphors as cross-area mappings (Pilgrim & Pilgrim 91). Metaphor can be utilized to see something through another person’s eyes and, along these lines, structure and comprehend one area as far as another.
As per Parmaxi et al. (2017), all human learning is relationship based. Metaphors are to a great degree significant apparatus for enhancing learning: on the off chance that we need to find something new, we initially must have the capacity to envision this. Metaphors additionally have heuristic esteem, as they are a method for our creative energy to assemble clear thoughts instead of dubious ideas. Analogies and metaphors can modify our reasonable frameworks and change the shape in which students see the world.
Meyer (p. 24) further clarifies how the metaphor that he alludes to as instructive can make portrayals and scientific ideas less demanding to comprehend for students. Instructive metaphors can be utilized to relate and relate one area with another and, in the meantime, represent the critical thinking keys.
Virtual reality as the perception of cognition
As far back as it showed up on the scene, the point of virtual reality innovation has been to fabricate engineered universes equipped for mimicking, speaking to or reproducing the distinctive faces and sides of reality. The virtual situations created to date can be classed by the sort of perception they utilize:
- Visualization of things, objects, exercises, situations or people in virtual conditions going for mimicking reality; for instance, structures or compositional spaces for virtual walkthroughs, pilot test programs, frameworks of telepresence for long-remove vis-à-vis correspondences, and so forth.
- Visualization of data: content and reports, information and data bases; for instance, virtual conditions as data spaces, in which clients can investigate, recover, arrange and peruse a gathering of references to data sources, situated on the Web or somewhere else.
- Visualization of learning is worried about investigating data to pick up comprehension and understanding of the information. It can be utilized to comprehend and take care of scientific issues, search for regularities or associations, find concealed examples in information and make new models. Scientific representation in virtual situations is the speciality of making the inconspicuous obvious: torsion powers inside a body, warm conduction, streams, plasmas, quake systems, herbal structures or complex atomic models.
Schedule and Cost Projections
The aim of this proposal is to propose a model of virtual reality framework for the selected classroom. This model means to be widespread, as it offers a structure and free design of outer elements that can be utilized as a part of various situations.
The focal segment of the model is the metaphorical projection, which gives the rules to the whole virtual world plan. The objective of the metaphorical plan is to make a semantic space6. Every one of its components are arranged emblematically to understand a counterfeit situation that students can imagine and involvement with their faculties. The virtual condition consequently turns into the physical portrayal of the information to be educated.
Students must see, absorb and understand the boosts from this condition. It is an issue of interpreting or perusing and not simply detecting or encountering the earth. This is the trademark, which, as we would like to think, recognizes virtual reality as an educational innovation: the likelihood of making emblematic spaces fit for typifying information.
Success Measurement and Criteria
The model that we exhibit here is just a preparatory approach and ought to be added to, confirmed and adjusted by future research. Underneath, we propose a short research motivation with a portion of the conceivable research territories:
- Outline and execute a full model, a virtual reality framework fit for showing the educational potential and conceivable outcomes of our model.
- Explore assessment methods. In what manner can the metaphorical plan of a virtual reality framework be assessed? How might we see if the picked metaphors are most appropriate for enhancing learning?
- Check whether other created frameworks fit the model we propose. This analysis, execution of an outline a posteriori, would serve to confirm and measure the all-inclusiveness the model in actualized frameworks.
- Build up a full approach to building educational virtual reality frameworks in light of metaphorical plan.
Research in the case of learning with immersive virtual reality frameworks is subjectively not the same as different types of learning, similar to individual encounters (an aftereffect of our ordinary interaction with the world) or formal schooling. Does virtual reality proclaim another educational worldview, another type of learning, or is it only an educational guide for students?
Other measurement criteria for the proposed implementation will include following factors:
- Difference student scores before and after the implementation of the system.
- Improved cognitive test scores of the students.
- Increased efficiency of students in critical thinking
- Better memorization and understanding of the complex concepts.
Schedule
To completely implement the above-presented idea, following is a tentative schedule:
| Implementation Phase | Duration | Personnel |
| Plan Infrastructure | 3 days | Instructors and technical administrators |
| Design Infrastructure | 3 days | Technical Administrators |
| Purchase Equipment | 1 week | Technical Administrators |
| Implement the Design | 1 week | Technical Administrators |
| Implement Theoretical Model on the VR Infrastructure | 5 days | Instructors, Academic Specialists and Technical Team |
| Testing and Maintenance | 1 week | Technical Management Team |
| Fully Functional for Academic Use | 2 days | Instructors and Technician |
| Post Maintenance and Management/ Feedback | 2 weeks | Instructor, Students and School Administration |
Cost Projections
For the implementation of the above-recommended system, following are the cost projections for which we seek the grant. The following projections are extremely optimal and feasible considering the short-term and long-term benefits of the project:
| Equipment | Quantity | Cost |
| Custom Android student devices | 20 | $175 * 20 = $3500 |
| VR headsets (Google OEM Daydream View) | 20 | $100 * 20 = $2000 |
| Router | 1 | $120 |
| Charging Devices (Hub) | 2 | $50 * 2 = $100 |
| Storage Case (Aluminum) | 1 | $100 |
| Total | $5820 |
The above presented cost projections are based on the recent most prices of high quality equipment.
Works Cited
Howard, N. R. “Come along and ride on a Google expedition. edutopia.” (2016).
Meyer, Leila. “Students explore the earth and beyond with virtual field trips.” THE Journal 43.3 (2016): 22-25.
Parmaxi, Antigoni, Kostas Stylianou, and Panayiotis Zaphiris. “Enabling Social Exploration Through Virtual Guidance in Google Expeditions: An Exploratory Study.” Interactive Mobile Communication, Technologies and Learning. Springer, Cham, 2017.
Pilgrim, J. Michael, and Jodi Pilgrim. “The Use of Virtual Reality Tools in the Reading-Language Arts Classroom.” Texas Journal of Literacy Education 4.2 (2016): 90-97.
Spice, B. “Cmu leads Google expedition to create technology for “internet of things” campus will be living lab for interconnected sensors, gadgets.” (2017).
