Seoul Elementary School Introduces Virtual Reality Gym Class

Oksu Elementary School in Seoul is the first school in South Korea to introduce a virtual reality gym class and take physical education into the world of virtual technology.

Oksu Elementary School in Seoul, South Korea is the country's first school to establish a virtual reality gym class, engaging students in sports and fitness activities with compelling VR games and technologies. The school installed a VR platform this year to encourage students to take part in physical activity with more interest.

The Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), a Korean ICT institute dedicated to advancing technologies that introduce positive changes to people's everyday lives, helped turn one of the classrooms at the school into a VR Sports Room in June and has been keeping track of how the room is used to develop new VR content for the classroom. The institute will take into account the feedback it receives from teachers and students when considering future applications of the VR platform.

The VR Sports Room uses innovative VR technology and sensors to offer students a varied range of fun activities, as well as a way to track their performance and progress. Students can, for instance, throw balls, kick virtual objects on a screen and even learn to play soccer using a platform that works in a similar way to indoor golf simulators. The school tracks students' exercise level using a NFC (near-field communication) Fitness Management System, which uses students' location information, collected when they come into contact with any of the checkpoints around the school, to track their activity. The VR technology can potentially be used in a number of school subjects, including history and geography, but its greatest advantage is that it provides students with a variety of options for sports, exercise and games that are not dependent on weather.

Founded in 1976, ETRI is a government-funded research institute and a global ICT leader that has been at the forefront of technological innovation for the last 40 years. After receiving positive feedback from students at Oksu Elementary, the institute signed a business agreement with the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education to further develop and expand the use of the VR platform in schools.