Over the past year, Optima Academy enrolled over more than 170 full-time students across Florida. That number could double this fall as Optima expands its virtual reality services to Arizona and parts of Michigan, The New Yorker reported.The school instructs students through a combination of virtual reality sessions and online classes. Those from third to eighth grade are given Meta Quest 2 headsets that they wear for 30 to 40-minute sessions up to five times a day, the publication reported.
Outside these sessions, students spend their days completing coursework independently and correspond with teachers online. Instruction for kindergarten through second grade is more similar to virtual school where classes are both live and pre-recorded,Optima Academy offers about 250 custom virtual environments, and also sells access to these environments to other independent schools, The New Yorker reported.
In one episode recounted in the report, students in a sixth grade science class were taken on a virtual field trip to a Everest base camp. While the virtual environment was "elaborately staged" with gray tents, sleeping bags, and sounds of wind in the background, the trip didn't go as planned, the New Yorker reported. The students struggled with the lesson, and had difficulties coordinating with each other through various activities.similar to motion sickness.
Optima's co-founder Adam Mangana told The New Yorker: "The schoolhouse is expected to provide so much. A good life for a student is more decentralized."
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