$30,000 grant helping MCS gifted students explore the world of virtual reality

MADISON – Madison City Schools recently won a $30,000 grant from the Alabama Department of Education for their gifted classrooms.

Madison Elementary School Gifted Specialist Beth Woodard said the grant was used to purchase ClassVR headsets and charging units for their classrooms. Each of the nine elementary and middle schools within the district received 8 headsets.

The grant was written by gifted teachers within the district and was awarded in December.

ClassVR is being used to bring innovative Virtual Reality lessons and experiences to the students. They are standalone headsets that delivers a fully immersive VR experience while being remotely managed and controlled by an innovative Teacher Portal.

“We are incredibly excited about this new way for our students to discover enriching and engaging content. Our students can now travel across the world, hold a heart in their hands, or be immersed in a busy beehive while simply sitting within the walls of our classrooms,” Woodard said. “We are tearing down classroom walls in Madison City Schools and taking our students global.”

The new ClassVR headsets are a hit among students. Lauryn, a 4th grader at Madison Elementary Schools said, “I love the VR headsets because they let me enter a different world than the one I live in.”

After traveling to Mexico to watch the monarch butterfly migration, Paxton, another 4th grader at MES, said, “Wow, VR takes me places that I would never get to go. It would cost a lot of money for our class to travel to all those places.”