US primary schools adopt green screen tech in lessons 
Wisconsin’s La Crosse School District’s three middle schools are using 34 green screen technology in classrooms, enabling  video, virtual and augmented reality to be brought into lessons to create interactive, dynamic educational content. They have also been used to create videos for presentations, boosting class engagement. The screens were purchased for $1,000 by the La Crosse Public Education Foundation, which also provided staff training and app research.

Dive Brief:

Wisconsin’s La Crosse School District has 34 green screens spread across its three middle schools thanks to a bulk purchase by its education foundation that has allowed students and teachers to incorporate the technology into projects and lessons.

The La Crosse Tribune reports one student made a comic book by taking photos with the green screen and then adding backgrounds and text on his iPad, while a group of students pitching the darkling beetle for a classroom insect zoo made a movie presentation that included themselves in the same frame as the beetles.

The La Crosse Public Education Foundation donation provided the green screens as well as staff training, and the district’s IT department researched apps that would help students do more with the new technology.

Dive Insight:

As districts continue to do more with project-based learning, green screen technology is another tool that can help bring projects to life. Especially for visual learners, the opportunity to collect video and incorporate it into classroom work can be helpful. In this area, virtual and augmented reality projects have also been a boon to classrooms.

Student scientists in Colorado’s Poudre District, in learning about the circulatory system, created a virtual reality tour of the inside of the body. Opportunities like this create memorable learning experiences for students that also ask them to become experts in a topic. The key is figuring out how to incorporate technology like this to make it educational and not just fun.