Page 8 - MAVR Newsletter Volume 2, Issue 1 (April 2018)

classroom activities in which students scan 360 degree environments with VR headsets
in order to locate or convey information, or share information about a place the students
themselves have documented. However, its power as a panoramic video camera is still
a bit problematic. Although videos shot with the SC can reach HD quality, once the
image is placed into VR mode (as opposed to viewing the video by swiping a
smartphone screen with your finger), the image quality suddenly drops. This was
apparent after uploading videos taken with the SC to sites like Facebook and YouTube

and noticing the loss of fidelity. This lack of clarity may affect its use in the classroom if
students are meant to recover written information from a panoramic video that turns out
to be fuzzy. On the whole, even as hardware that is still evolving (and several more
powerful versions already exist, such as the S and V models), the SC is still a useful
instrument for creating classroom VR content. But what type of classroom content could
be created with a device like this?

One idea for how to use the Theta Ricoh is to train learners how to use it and then have
them create a campus tour for incoming exchange students. VR is already being used
for this purpose, but having learners make the tour in the context of a communicative
task brings with it benefits such as language acquisition, skill development and a
learner-centred approach. Also, the communicative purpose of the task is clear (ie. to
inform exchange students in English about the university, campus or area) which will
hopefully assist in engaging learners to complete the task meaningfully. This idea could
be a final project for a course or a large task as part of a communicative-task syllabus.
Also, if you wanted to expand the project you could have some kind of dialogue
between the exchange students and your group of learners before they arrive.

Figure 1​: The Ricoh Theta SC camera

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