Forest Learning | ForestVR

ForestLearning’s development of the virtual reality (VR) toolkit for schools, ForestVR, showcases various forest environments and processing mills for forest products. ForestVR helps Australian teachers provide students with virtual reality forest and mill experiences, 360-degree virtual tours and 360-degree photo environments. It also helps students to explore the timber processing journey and end uses of these renewable forest products in buildings, flooring and everyday items like paper and board.

Although not intended as a replacement for actual on-ground fieldwork, virtual excursions such as ForestVR can provide an engaging learning opportunity that delivers unique immersive learning experiences to students of places and sites could otherwise not be accessed.  The Australian forest and wood industry is dispersed around productive tree growing regions of Australia, with smaller forest management blocks called ‘coupes’ in rotation over long time frames of 30+ years. For these reasons and others, until the ForestVR toolkit, it has proved impossible for students to see, and fully appreciate, the complexity and breadth of these sustainable forest management systems. Manufacturing processes of timber in places like timber mills, are also high-risk work sites. Strict OH&S requirements on mill sites often prohibit visiting school tour groups.

Virtual reality therefore has the potential to visually immerse a student in environments and sites that they cannot otherwise couldn’t visit in person.