Using geo browsers and VR platforms to empower students’ awareness of sustainability issues

Abstract

This paper explores the ways in which new information technologies, such as geobrowsers and VR platforms, can improve students’ awareness of sustainability issues. These means provide realistic experiences and opportunities for interaction in geography classes much easier than in the past, so that can be used to lead students to travel across time and space to better understand the complexity of the World. Starting from an overview of some current education issues regarding geography, it goes on to examine how new technologies and immersive tools may be used to help practice some geographical skills, especially those involved in the observation activity. The last part of the paper also focuses on what the advantages and disadvantages can be caused when these technologies are brought into classes. Although it has widely been examined how digital maps and virtual trips can improve the sense of spatial concept in geography and how realistically these can simulate a field trip experience, the present work aims to uncover the potentiality of these tools naming an actual experience carried on in a secondary school during 2020. It will exemplify how a simulated three-dimensional environment and a virtual tour could lead students to get a different perspective in learning about environmental issues, being able to explore and get data to build their own knowledge.