Our first objective was to show how to exploit the opportunities offered by digital technologies, in this case especially Virtual Reality, for teaching in primary schools. Parallel objective was to develop specific key competences of students: multilingualism, digital skills, personal and social competences, cultural awareness and expression. They both served the main goal - effective language teaching, which can be beneficial for all the students, including those less motivated or facing specific personal or sociological obstacles.
The main reason why we started this project was to find an effective and attractive way of teaching English as foreign language in our schools and to give teachers clear instruction, how to follow it. One of the main challenges all teachers usually share irrespective of education level and the subject they teach is to mobilise students’ interest and engagement. Teaching based on VR games and apps, so attractive for students, was a way to address this challenge and facilitate the teaching and learning process in a way that respects the students’ cognitive, social and cultural backgrounds while addressing the curriculum standards that they need to attain. We identified also some significant obstacles that stop teachers from engaging in new technologies at school. The main are: - familiarity with this kind of technologies, - ability to find appropriate apps, - lack of dedicated materials for teachers, - costs and lack of the equipment In our case, the project helped us to overcome all these obstacles, and we also found solution to help other teachers to overcome at least the first three.