The launch of the educational VR labs took place in a shared 3D virtual environment, called Metaverse. School Education Minister Anbil Mahesh Poyyamozhi, MLA Udhayanidhi Stalin and MP Dayanidhi Maran took part in the inaugural event.

Ganeshram, founder, Meynikara, said the experience of the immersive learning that VR brings would take education to a different level. “The biggest challenge in India is not teaching, it is about creating interest among the students. When the students enter the VR world, their interest level increases. The VR learning model in Tamil Nadu will be an example for the rest of the country; this will definitely reduce the dropout rates,” he said.

‘Meta Kalvi’ VR labs provides a virtual reality learning method (VRLM) for key topics in maths and science subjects from class 6-9 in the Tamil Nadu State Board Samacheer Kalvi syllabus in both English and Tamil. The initiative is likely to be extended to other schools under the Chennai corporation and later in other parts of the state as well.

Raghuraman Ravi, co-Founder and CEO of Meynikara, said the VR labs in schools are meant to provide a holistic and imaginative learning experience for students. He said ‘Meta Kalvi’ is set to bring in an educational revolution in the Indian education system.

“With the successful launch of ‘Meta Kalvi’, Tamil Nadu has set a new milestone of incorporating virtual reality labs within its education system. We are aiming to set up VR labs in all government schools in the state. We expect a quick and wide adoption of the technology by private schools as well,” he said.

The five schools will provide a room on their premises to the team to install close to 20 VR devices. A timetable is set up based on which the students would be coming to the lab similar to how it has been in the case of computer labs.

The teachers are set to be trained by the startup team for nearly two months. Raghuraman said that initially students can experience maths and science through VR and they plan to build a library for other subjects as well. The teachers can track the performance of the students and a scoring system is set to be maintained.

Source: https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/chennai/chennai-schools-tamil-nadus-first-virtual-reality-labs-education-8010601/