Virtual Plant Cell: Classroom VPC
Looking for the Virtual Plant Cell mobile app? It’s no longer available – tell us if you’d still use it. The PC VR version is still on the Meta store.
Virtual Plant Cell (VPC) is a unique, expanding suite of educational virtual reality and 360 degree video experiences. They let you explore and interact with the submicroscopic inner world of a plant.
We built VPC: Classroom for the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology (plantenergy.edu.au). It is a collaborative learning experience for schools.
Students explore, interact with and learn about the key organelles and structures found within a plant cell in this immersive, educational experience.
Virtual Plant Cell: Classroom is designed for two students at a time. One wears the headset; the other sees different, extra information on a screen, and the pair have to help each other to complete the tasks. It was first used in a classroom in May 2018, with a Year 8 biology class, and schools such as Mercedes College went on to use it the same way. It was also a finalist for the 2018 Western Australian Premier’s Science Awards (engagement), alongside the wider Virtual Plant Cell suite.
VPC was shortlisted for a 2018 TIGA Games Industry Award (Best Educational Game): https://tiga.org/awards/2018-categories-2
Watch the video below to find out more...
3D Modelling and Animations: Peter Ryan Development: Richard England, Jozef Pierlejewski Graphic and Logo Design: Chris Brown Music: Jim Kennedy, Audiosimian Voice Over: Glenn Hall Science from the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology and La Trobe University. Project led by Karina Price and the researchers of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology.
Looking for the Virtual Plant Cell mobile app?
The mobile version – for Gear VR, Google Daydream and Google Cardboard – is no longer distributed by the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology, and the links you'll find elsewhere are dead. (The PC VR version, Virtual Plant Cell: Classroom, is still on the Meta store.) If you'd use it – in a classroom or anywhere else – tell us below. We're gauging whether there's enough interest to bring it back.
Teaching something that's hard to show?
Virtual Plant Cell exists because some things are easier to understand from the inside. If you teach a subject where the model, the mechanism or the scale is the hard part, tell us what you'd want your students to walk around in – we'll come back with what's possible and what it would take.
