Lobaki, Inc. and Painted Desert Montessori Academy in Buckeye, Ariz., announce the installation of Lobaki’s Immersive Institute: a proprietary offering from the company that provides a turnkey hardware and software solution for live immersive education in Virtual Reality, or VR.
PD Virtual Academy, or PDVA, will be rolled out to all 225 students and teachers in grades 4-8 (3rd graders will get introduced in a lab setting) in time for the fall term of 2020.
“We had been wanting to add virtual reality to our curriculum for quite some time because of the enhanced learning opportunities—twice the learning in half the time—and then COVID hit,” says Cynthia Gonzalez, executive director of Painted Desert. “At that time, we began looking for something that could support distance learning to limit the exposure of our students, staff, and community to the pandemic. We are incredibly pleased to have found Lobaki with its Immersive Institute which provides a solution for both needs. Our teachers and assistants are overly excited to have this incredible technology to use when school starts on August 17.”
She went on to say, “While many schools have a problematic plan based on video conferencing, we believe we have used this crisis to make us better. We think that with the Immersive Institute our academic results will improve, students will be more engaged, and the entire community will improve.”
“Painted Desert is the first school in the US to introduce virtual reality-based education as a 1:1 ratio device,” says Angela Hansen, chairman of Mana 7 Charities Inc. “We are very pleased to partner with Lobaki in using VR to improve education and have plans to roll it out to all our other schools in a similar fashion. We believe VR is the learning instrument of the future and we plan to lead the way.”
“It has been a complete pleasure working with such a progressive school organization as Painted Desert and Mana 7,” said Vince Jordan, chairman and founder of Lobaki. “They knew want they wanted, demanded the best, and didn’t let politics get in the way of making the best decision for their community.”
He continued, “They have a well thought out curriculum using the best of the technology and we can’t wait to work alongside PDMA to see how this one decision has improved their entire community.”
