USING VIRTUAL REALITY IN SUPPORT STEAM APPROACH FOR GENERAL SCHOOL

The article considers the main possibilities of virtual reality tools to support the STEAM approach in general education institutions. The focus is on the benefi ts of virtual reality for the implementation of STEAM education. The statistics of the law fi rm Perkins Coie LLP and XR Association «Determining the role of industry in the future of immersive technologies» on the research of the implementation of augmented and virtual realities in 2019. The attitude of teachers of general education institutions of Ukraine to the use of virtual reality in the implementation of the STEAM approach is analyzed. Particular attention is paid to VR applications for the STEAM approach in general school. Some virtual reality applications for general education institutions are off ered, such as Google Expeditions, 3D Organon Anatomy, Lecture VR, StarTracker VR-Mobile Sky Map, Nano2d, VR Roller Coaster, Volumetric oscilloscope, Calcfl ow and others. We concluded that the use of virtual reality opens up many new opportunities in learning and STEAM education that are too complex, time consuming or expensive with traditional approaches. Virtual reality is able not only to provide information about the phenomenon itself, but also to demonstrate it with any degree of detail. A virtual educational environment is a creative environment in which learning is possible with the motivation of students, their emotional uplift and a positive, optimistic mood. A necessary condition for the use of a virtual educational environment is the implementation of a personality-oriented approach and the development and improvement of teaching methods, in particular in the fi elds of STEAM. Prospects for further research are the design of the STEAM model of oriented educational environment using virtual reality tools.


Introduction.
Information Communication Technology (ICT) signifi cantly aff ect various areas of human life, including education. Teachers and researchers focus on bridging the gap between formal and non-formal education, learning in a real classroom and distance or online. One of the ways to this process is to introduce augmented and virtual reality into the learning process, in particular to support STEAM approach in education.
In general, STEM-oriented education mostly technical competence [1]. However, innovative problem solving requires implementation creative thinking, a holistic approach that combines an artistic component with technical skills [2].
The STEAM approach is transdisciplinary pedagogical approach through which students are given the opportunity, through the use of the project method, and the relationship between exposure to the arts and performance in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) subjects, to independently solve the real problems, that may arise in the teaching tasks set by the teacher, during which the teacher carries out the role of facilitator [3].
Under the quarantine of 2020, introduced to stop the COVID-19 pandemic, distance learning has become an alternative to the traditional in educational institutions of various levels. This situation has signifi cantly aff ected the ways in which the STEAM approach is implemented in the general school.
A signifi cant problem is in the organizing practical, laboratories, science school expeditions for STEAM education. Therefore, the main task of our study is to replace real learning with virtual reality (VR) as an immersive technology and are the possible approaches in terms of distance learning and quarantine.
Although VR is typically associated with gaming and the overwhelming majority of VR users play such games, the platforms also off er applications VR education programs that are widely available to everyone and in any location.
VR does not change the fact that teaching is a function of the teacher. It can only complement the learning process, not completely replace the teacher. But it provides many tools to demonstrate 3D projections, encourage remote learners, use interactive whiteboards, organize hands-on activities, and more.
The research objective of this work was to investigate the use of VR in support of STEAM teaching.
The purpose of the article is to analyze the use of virtual reality in support of STEAM approach for general and to identify the basic requirements for supporting implementation and development of STEAM education in Ukraine. To achieve the purpose of our study we were used the following methods: systematic and comparative analysis of pedagogical, psychological, philosophical, sociological works, methodological and specialized literature; analysis of the pedagogical experience of using the VR for STEAM approach in general school; synthesis and generalization to formulate the main points of the study; interpretation of the research results.
Results. The vast majority -86 % -of respondents (the survey was completed by 200 respondents) to the 2019 Augmented and Virtual Reality Survey Report agreed that by 2025, VR and AR technologies will be as ubiquitous as mobile devices ( Fig. 1) It is also important to note the respondents' answers to the questions: «In which industries do you believe XR is most applicable at this time?» (Fig. 2) [4, p.13].
The answers in Diagram on fi gure 2 indicate that the most popular XR are for games (61%), medicine (41%) and education (41%).
It is probably no surprise that gaming is once again seen as most promising area of development. But respondents provided a fairly diversifi ed look at promise in other industries, especially with regard to healthcare and medical devices, education, manufacturing and automotive (23%), movies and television (21%), and military defense (15%). We conducted the surveys in 2020, distributed in online format among 24 teachers from a Primary Education school and 90 teachers from Secondary General Education three schools (Levels I-III N1 in Brovary, Semipolkivskyi Secondary School of the 1st-3rd Grade and Specialized school № 181 named after Ivan Kudrya (Ukraine), the data were collected and a statistical study was carried out among all the teachers surveyed.
The questions of the questionnaire concerned the attitude of teachers to the use of virtual reality for the implementation of the STEAM approach in teaching.
Therefore, the teachers' responses have computed and the percentage represented by each sentence represented in each of the educational centers has calculated and thus be able to make a comparison of the results in each of the educational environments (Table 1).
According to the survey results on teachers' understanding VR to be provided for supporting the STEAM approach in general school teaching process, the teachers are not highly interested in using VR in STEAM education. At the same time, the results were found out to show certain teachers' interest in the using VR in STEAM education. Despite not very high percentage of positive results, 72 teachers, who participated in the questionnaire, reported on their readiness to use VR technology in their lessons. This data gave us the impetus to create, organize and conduct a training project with using VR.
Discussion. Researchers [5; 6; 7] identify the following main benefi ts of using VR technology in education, in particular for supporting the STEAM -Focusing: the virtual world, which surrounds the viewer on all sides in all 360 degrees, will allow you to fully focus on the material and not be distracted by external stimuli; -Involvement: VR allows you to change scenarios, infl uence the course of the experiment or solve the problem in a game and understandable form, for example, during a virtual lesson you can see the world through the eyes of a historical character or go on a journey; -Virtual lessons: providing a sense of presence and participation in the virtual world.
We off er the following examples of VR applications for STEAM approach in general school in the table 2. It should be noted that teachers should use these VR applications according to the topics of the lessons, the goals of the educational projects, the wishes of the students and other impact factors.
Conclusions. The use of virtual reality opens up many new opportunities in learning and STEAM education that are too complex, time consuming or expensive with traditional approaches. Virtual reality is able not only to provide information about the phenomenon itself, but also to demonstrate it with any degree of detail. A virtual educational environment is a creative environment in which learning is possible with the motivation of students, their emotional uplift and a positive, optimistic mood. A necessary condition for the use of a virtual educational environment is the implementation of a personality-oriented approach and the development and improvement of teaching methods, in particular in the fi elds of STEAM. Prospects for further research are the design of the STEAM model of oriented educational environment using virtual reality tools. Список використаної літератури