Not a lot of high school students have the opportunity to visit the Louvre Museum or see what a red blood cell looks like up close and personal. Few designers have the ability to create something and then see it realized in 3D within moments.

Thanks to a recent technology upgrade at Fountain Hills High School, local students have those opportunities and more. In fact, virtual reality lets them do it all without even needing to leave the classroom.

In early 2017, High School Principal Cain Jagodzinski requested approval from the governing board to spend some of the school’s technology funds on a virtual reality lab. The school now has the hardware necessary to incorporate virtual reality into the learning environment, something that’s not offered on too many high school campuses across the country.

While the technology has a wide array of implementations, Jagodzinski said he’s especially excited for Autodesk Maya, a development program that will give local students a leg up in the world of 3D design.

“It’s the same software used by folks like Pixar and it’s usually a really expensive program to license,” Jagodzinski said. “But it can be used for education for free.”

Jagodzinski said students will be able to design in 3D with the software and, with the VR plugin, actually inspect their projects as if they were sitting directly in front of them. An art student may be able to look at a design idea from any angle, while a home designer may be able to take a virtual tour of their creation as if it were already built.

Those are big goals that the program will eventually build to but, for now, Jagodzinski said there’s still a lot of learning to do.

“We’re preparing the kids for things like a career in software development,” Jagodzinski said. “They’ll be learning learning the basic skills through our first level Digital Arts class, then the second year is more of a project-based, portfolio building program where the 3D animation and virtual reality can really come into play.”

Digital Arts I was introduced as a new class this semester. By next school year, a fresh group of students will be able to take that same course while those who have completed it can move onto Digital Arts II.

“The [students] who find a love of this, we can then help guide them into something like EVIT’s 3D animation program,” Jagodzinski added. “So basically a student could do four years of software development, 3D animation and things like that, and graduate with a certificate from EVIT that they can then use to go out there and get a job.”

Jagodzinski described the VR lab as a “sandbox” currently, with teachers and students set on tinkering with the software and hardware to determine how to best implement it in various ways.

“We have some talented kids who are already above the basic level,” Jagodzinski said. “They’ll help guide this and, by next year, we’ll have a better understanding of how we want to implement this. The Sports Medicine class and nursing students, for instance, can come in and utilize virtual body apps to enhance their understanding of their own subjects.”

Karla Primosch is in charge of the Digital Arts I class and will head up Digital Arts II when it gets implemented.

“Last year we were looking at funding and trying to figure out a way to invest in technology that’s of current interest to our students,” Primosch said. “The students – and the world, really – is moving toward virtual reality. So the students were interested in 3D animation, game design and things like that. We want to prepare them so they’re ready to hit the job market, so we decided this would be a really good skill for them to have.”

Primosch said that there are plenty of students on campus who have decided that these fields are going to be their focus.

“So they should be able to take that as far as possible while in high school,” Primosch added. “We always want our students engaged and thinking about things in different ways. Virtual reality lets them get involved and interact with things. Instead of just sitting in a room and talking about these things, they can interact with them.”

Primosch said her students are very excited to get their hands, and faces, on the technology.

“Once we dive into it, I think the possibilities of what we can do here are going to become very obvious to the students,” Primosch said. “Hopefully they’ll come up with some very creative ways to use virtual reality in their various projects. I’m hoping to see it expand across the curriculum.”

Primosch said the added bonus of working on the cutting edge of technology is that students are comfortable with this type of learning.

“They’re not afraid,” she said. “They’re going to dive right in and find all sorts of interesting ways to do things. Through that, their learning increases. I find that when students share with each other and learn from each other, they tend to achieve a lot more. That’s exactly what I’m expecting out of virtual reality.

“What we’re trying to do is give our students the best experience possible to help them excel after they leave high school and lead them into a career that they love.”