How VR and AR can be used to help support students with Neurodiversity.

Ange Anderson M.Ed opened and led an innovative specialist school in North Wales for 10 years, introducing over 25 different therapeutic/technological interventions to support pupils with learning differences. She’s written a number of books focused on SEN (Special Educational Needs) on therapeutic and technological interventions including VR, AR & AI in SEN; Trampolining for Children & Young People with SEN; Music, Sound and Vibration in SEN; and Learning through Play for SEN, all published by Routledge. Ange also presents internationally on topics related to special education.

Transcript

Marsh Naidoo (00:14):

Hello and welcome to the Raising Kellan Podcast. My name is Marsh Naidoo. I am a physical therapist and parent sharing my perspective of raising Kellann. My son, who has cerebral palsy. I blog at raisingkellan.org where we curate resources for parents raising children with disabilities. Remember that the information provided on this podcast is educational, and if you are seeking information for your specific situation, to always contact a trained professional. In today's episode 75, we are joined by Angie Anderson, MEd and who is based out of North Wales, United Kingdom. Angie open and led an innovative specialist school in North Wales for 10 years, introducing over 25 different therapeutic and technological interventions to support students with learning differences. She is an author of several books published by Routledge, including VR, AR, and AI in SEN, which is the UK abbreviation for special educational needs. Angie has also presented internationally on topics related to special education. So grab a cup of coffee, put your feet up, and get ready for some awesome conversation. Angie Anderson, welcome to the Raising Kellan Show. We are so pleased to have you here with us this morning.

Ange Anderson (02:07):

Hi. It's great to be here as well. Thank you for inviting me.

Marsh Naidoo (02:11):

Angie, I really would like to discuss the applications of virtual reality when it comes to a neurodiverse population. But before we head into that, can you perhaps clarify what you consider neurodiversity to be?

Ange Anderson (02:34):

Well, neurodiversity is an umbrella term for learning differences, to be honest. So it can range from ADHD, autismcerebral palsyDown syndrome. It covers all of that. It's a vast, it's not, as, some people think that it's just about autism, being neurodiverse doesn't mean that you've got autism. It means that your brain learns differently to the neurotypical person. So within the education field, I tend to use the term learning differences more because when we talk about learning differences, there are then specific ways and specific therapies and technologies and so on that can support a particular learning difference.

Marsh Naidoo (03:33):

Angie, when we talk about virtual reality and it's application with regards to a neurodiverse population and to help support their learning needs, first of all, just to clarify for folks listening today, what would you consider virtual reality?

Ange Anderson (03:54):

Well, the term virtual reality was coined by Jaron Lanier in 1987. So he was part of the group that was working in Silicon Valley. He defined it at that time as a computer generated interactive, three-dimensional environment in which a person is immersed. And in his book, the Dawn of the New Everything, which is a great book, if you wanna find out even more about his ways of thinking. In his book, he goes on to give 47 different definitions for virtual reality. I would say myself on a very simplified way of saying it, VR takes a person to a different reality to the one that they're currently in. That's all. Augmented reality, on the other hand, allows the person to stay in touch with the real world whilst they're interacting with virtual objects around them. An augmented reality is used quite a lot now in education and in hospitals and so on and so forth. Because it's something you can use while you're doing something. Whereas virtual reality, as I've said is, is when you go to a different reality to the one that you are in at this point in time.

Marsh Naidoo (05:17):

What led you to explore how to use VR to support your students? And what problems were you trying to solve? Or what integrations are you looking at when you use virtual reality?

Ange Anderson (05:32):

Well, in the school where I was the head teacher, all of our students when you were diverse and they had diagnosis ranging from severe learning disabilities to complex and profound, and 5% of our students had a primary or secondary diagnosis of autism as well. So many of our students, regardless of their diagnosis, found transitions difficult. So some would have meltdowns going to the dentistcatching a train, crossing the road, going to the supermarket, and many were anxious and had fears or phobias. Well, VR can help reduce anxieties and prepare students for real life situations and the transitions that they fear. I would say that our own private inner worlds could be full of anxieties, hopes and desires that may not be met by traditional education, which is designed really to meet the needs of the economy. And the outside world, the traditional way of learning is often based on memorizing certain facts and formulas and regurgitating them for exams.

(06:46):

But in this technological age, we can access more information from the internet in an instant that we than we could ever memorize in a lifetime. So in many years as head teacher of a special school, a major concern for myself and staff with the communication difficulties and the mental health challenges students suffered as a result of their conditions and also because of the neurotypical world outside of themselves that they have to contend with. So what I suggested was that we use technology to help neuro divergence gain control in a neurotypical world, students with learning differences in my experience, have shown high levels of comfort with technology. For many reasons, computer programs are predictable, logical, they can provide an intellectual outlet for those who got specialized interests. And we found that our students born into this fourth industrial revolution were comfortable with technology. What they did find uncomfortable, however, was the actual real-life situations.

(07:57):

And I wanted to find out how we could use technology to make life easier for parents and staff, but obviously more important for the students themselves. So how could we use the technology that they seem to enjoy to make real life situations easier for these students who had learning differences? The technology in entails presenting our senses with a computer-generated virtual environment. VR activates the motor cortex in our sensory system in a way that's similar to real-life experiences because VR gives us the concept of presence, the feeling of being in that virtual environment, our brain's way of telling us that the experience is actually real. Multi-Centered rooms are already popular in special schools in the United Kingdom where students can go into a multi-sensory room and learn about colors by touching the wall numbers, just by touching the wall or the floor, and interact with these images.

(09:03):

In the spring of 2016, I asked the innovative technology firm in the UK called OMI to install their 360 degree multi-sensory room births. I wanted it with a difference. I didn't want the mass and literacy and things like that, the backgrounds they had because we already had interactive whiteboards in the classroom that would allow all of that. I did want to keep the beach scenes that they had and similar scenes that children could benefit from and meditate on by going into an emergency room. But I also wanted background scenes that I discussed with parents that they wanted. So Army agreed to try and in the summer recess they installed a multi-sensory room and some 3D interactive background scenes, but these scenes were German shopping malls French underground stations and so on. But, and so we felt that these needed to be more personalized for, for our locality and for our students. So agreed because I wasn't very happy with what they'd given us to train our staff. Could you seen our own 360 degree scenes, which they did. So that's what they did is they trained our staff within half an hour. To be honest, I was also trained, I had loads of staff trained cuz if somebody's off, I don't want students suffering from an opportunity. What

Marsh Naidoo (10:29):

What are the benefits of using VR with students in your school to support their social emotional and mental health needs?

Ange Anderson (10:39):

Well, it's been a huge benefit because it's enabled students to go to places that they couldn't go to before. So we've all experienced a student who rewinds a video time and time again to help them make sense of a confusing world. We've seen students not willing to let go of an incident until it has the outcome that they expected it to have. So why not use that knowledge to recreate virtual sit virtual reality situations where they can actually play back a scene time and time again as often as they need to until they feel comfortable enough to visit its real-life counterpart. So it's extremely helpful with mental health issues and social and emotional issues because you are allowing them to keep going over that situation that in a real-life situation would actually be too dangerous to do. And if you've ever been a situation some of these children who suddenly been taken on a train for the first time and they didn't realize, oh, what was going on?

(11:47):

And suddenly it's just too much and they have a massive meltdown. And I know of one father who was hurt so severely on the train because of this that he ended up in hospital. I know many more incidences in supermarkets and all the rest of it where these children were in a situation that they found stressful for whatever reason. So by preparing them beforehand, by giving them this experience and they actually feel they're there in a virtual reality experienceyou're preparing them beforehand and it's repetition. It's creating these schemas in their brain that they can go to. It's like creating a kind of computer program that's there for them when they know that they're gonna go somewhere. It's like, for instance, when you go to a restaurant, so you went to a restaurant last night and it was a different restaurant to the one you normally go to.

(12:36):

It was a Thai instead of a Chinese. And so it was different. You add the difference to the schema you've already got in your head of what happens when you go to a restaurant and you know that that's a little addition now for when you go to that type of restaurant. This is what happens. What you are doing with virtual reality is you are giving a child a schema that they can have by practicing and practicing it. And going back to that virtual reality scene time and time again, you're giving them a schema for their brain, a computer program, if you want schema, if you want call it what you want, you give it to them so that when they need that information it's they're in their brain and they haven't gotta get in the panic about it.

Marsh Naidoo (13:16):

Wellyour book Angie you talk about VR helping children with real-world social skills. Now, initially that could sound a bit counterintuitive because when you imagine someone using VR, you picture someone with a headset on effectively locking away from the outside world. So how can VR work to help students develop social skills?

Ange Anderson (13:47):

Well, there are many virtual reality apps now that will help students understand emotions, for example and you can just go on YouTube to sample some of those. One that springs to mind from YouTube is Meeting Strangers in the Metaverse, which is directed at teenagers and you wear a headset for that. But VR hasn't got to mean wearing a headset. VR enables a student to practice an experience with not be possible in real life, as I've already said. And by having an immersive room, which I'll go into in a little while, you don't need a headset if you've got an immersive room and we set, set up an immersive room with Omni, it cost us 12,000 pounds for the immersive room that parents contributed towards. So we had the funding given to us that was set up and then I would give staff time to go and create the scene that was needed and go and video it take pictures and so on so that they could go back then and recreate it and they would be given time outta their classroom to create those scenes.

(14:51):

So there are many apps, as I've said, VR enables a student to practice an experience that wouldn't be possible in real life. I know for instance of a college currently using VR for students to practice work experience situations before they actually go into those work experiences, the whole of the shot floor can be experienced in the safety of school before they go there. We used the v VR room for transition for those who couldn't face leave in our school to go onto the secondary school. But by visiting that school and its staff in our VR room, their anxiety levels were reduced. And once they became familiar with the school, with the staff, the bus ride, they felt able to visit and we had a hundred percent success for transition that we hadn't had before. We used VR, a research team at Texas University that I've been working with a, currently using my book is a guide for their work in developing social skills through VR for students with special needs at the university. So there's a lot a lot of work going on with regard to social skills and you don't need headsets

Marsh Naidoo (16:09):

When you talk about a virtual reality room. Can you kind of walk us through what this room looks like?

Ange Anderson (16:26):

Yes, that's a good idea because then you get an idea of what it really is about the staff and parents, as I've said, voted for several experiences that they were finding difficult with their children that they wanted us to introduce into the VR room. And the one that was voted for the most was actually learning to cross the road. So our students had experienced great difficulties when they were expected to wait at the local pedestrian crossing because they had a waiting time of three minutes. Now three minutes is quite a long time to wait if students are already anxious. So one of our LTAs h teaching assistants, Helen visited the local crossing, took 360 degree photos using the omi cameras and so on, and made recordings of all the sounds that were encountered there. Samantha, our technology lead transferred these onto a program on the VR computer that was connected to the rest of the VR equipment in the multi-sensory room.

(17:28):

This produced a seamless 3D version of the crossing with relevant senses and actions projected onto the three walls surrounding a student so that they were surrounded by a real -life situation, but they were in the safety of school. It was decided that 30 students age from seven to 11 would benefit from this opportunity and consent forms plus useful information was sent home to the parents. All parents consented to the trial. The panoramic view of the junction was projected onto the three walls. There were colored spots on the floor that were beams of light projected from the ceiling and each had an image attached along with a company in sand where relevant. These were activated by the student with or without support if they needed actual, you know, physical support by passing a handheld controller across the appropriate color to break the beam. So handheld controls and haptics can determine the level of vibrations so students who are blind can actually also experience VR because VR doesn't stand for visual reality, it stands for virtual reality.

(18:41):

And so it's possible to create a virtual reality of what some students have to encounter on a daily basis, whether they're blind deaf or whatever. So perhaps if required we would've extra support with using auditory input and haptic input more for those students. So transmitters and receivers on the walls would enable an immersive experience that was very real for that student. Each student was offered an individual session of 10 to 15 minutes in length once a week spanning a period of eight weeks. These sessions were split into three stages and during this time each student was encouraged in the room to act out crossing the road. It was as if they were at the crossing, they were required to listen out for all the sight and sounds. They learned how to press the button to control and activate the traffic light system. And they learned to wait patiently as they looked and listen continually.

(19:43):

The immersive room experience is very real. It allows students to explore and experience situations as if they were actually present in that environment. At the third stage, students were taken to the actual crossing to see whether the VR session had been successful or not in helping them cross the road in a safe and timely manner. And during the last week, each students were taken to the cross in the staff and the success of failure of the program was observed. It was a hundred percent success. So students with fears and phobias are now able to build their own private secure library in their head of how to cope with social situations that ordinary people take for granted. The National Dental Association praised us at their annual meeting because they reported a hundred percent success race for all of our students attended the dental surgeries. And this hadn't happened before we used VR because some, a lot of students actually who were, are neurodiverse have huge problems with going to the dentist, but VR solved that for us.

Marsh Naidoo (20:53):

For those parents out there or just the general population really that might think that VR is kind of an expensive gimmick, what would you say about that?

Ange Anderson (21:04):

Well, I would say if you're in the UK <laugh>, check out what the NHS National Health Service are now doing because they're providing virtual reality to assist people with mental health issues. And if you do a search at you know, an internet search, you'll find out why they're doing it. Multi-Sensory rooms are in many special schools and I think you could claim that these were an expensive gimmick and I didn't want just an expensive gimmick. A VR room makes better use of multi-sensory rooms in my opinion because it's developed to assist social skills and deal with anxieties, fears, and phobias. And to be honest, this takes up a lot of time in school and for parents in lots of areas of the day. All kinds of things, all kinds of transitions are happening all the time. And I know of other schools in colleges who on top of installing a multi-sensory room have employed outside disability nurses who use those room with students to deliver VR in the way that we did. VR is al also supports their employability curriculum with them being able to film workplaces prior to students leaving site for them to explore the safety of the cl for them to explore in the safety of the classroom and therefore supporting the anxiety of a new environment and new demands.

Marsh Naidoo (22:29):

Angie, thank you so much for joining us today. And guys be sure to check out Angie's book as well as her YouTube channel. I look forward to talking to you again in the future. Thank you Angie.

Ange Anderson (22:46):

Thank you Marsh. It's been lovely talking to

Marsh Naidoo (22:51):

Thank you so much for listening along with us today on the Raising Killen podcast. Be sure to rate and review this episode. And if you would like to join us for some upcoming episodes be sure to subscribe on your podcast platform. If you would like to learn more about Angie Anderson, you can contact her via her website. Angie is spelled a n g e Anderson, a n d e r s o n therapeutic co. Uk and I will make sure to include that information in the show notes as well. So until next time, as always, remember, get to the top of your mountain. This is Marsh Naidoo signing off.