Tara Pepis, director of Field Experiences, and Thea Yurkewecz, assistant professor of reading and literacy, of the Ella Cline Shear School of Education have been awarded a TeachNY Implementation Fund grant of $49,850 in support of their project, "Testing the Efficacy of Using Virtual Reality (VR) Simulations to Prepare Pre-service Teachers for Diverse School Communities."
This one-year award will support the development and testing of virtual reality classroom applications which depicts student avatars enacting various teaching/learning scenarios and student misbehavior situations. The project builds on our existing relationship with Rochester City School District School #19 through our School Improvement Grant sub-award. Educators from School #19 will collaborate on the construction of the virtual experiences based on their practices with students in diverse schools and will also participate in professional development at Geneseo.