Stetson economics professor awarded virtual reality grant
Green, Ph.D., assistant professor and chair of Stetson’s Economics Department, is one of just 50 instructors at elementary, secondary and post-secondary schools around the world to be awarded as part of the inaugural Virtual Reality Grant Program founded by Nearpod. The education technology company develops digital learning tools, virtual reality and interactive content for use in classrooms.
Green, who also is director of Africana Studies at Stetson, will have access to Nearpod VR headsets and more than 25 VR-based lesson plans. The grant also includes professional development, one-on-one support services and a Nearpod license for the university.
As a teacher and research economist, Green focuses on international development, trade and poverty, but he also conducts research on effective pedagogy. That research led him to use a Nearpod teaching app this past year.
“I can use their app and put questions in it and build in presentations, quizzes, activities, all sorts of things,” Green said. “During class I’ll be lecturing, but then I’ll mix in questions that students answer on their phones, laptops or whatever. Rather than them passively sitting there, they’re being forced to hear something and answer a question about it. So they have to think about it, process it and hopefully understand it.”
My field research is in economic development, studying poor countries around the world and how they can grow. So we can take a trip to a country in sub-Saharan Africa and get a really strong visual of a village, what people live like, what their houses are like. That makes a lot stronger impression than me just giving students numbers on GDP per capita.”
More than 300 schools applied for the Nearpod grants, which were awarded to schools across the United States as well as in Nigeria, Japan and Spain.
see the full story here: http://www.stetson.edu/today/2016/05/stetson-economics-professor-awarded-virtual-reality-grant/