My classroom is a paleontological site: A teaching-learning resource of virtual reality

Resumen

The use of the game as a teaching-learning resource has been used in the classroom since Ancient Greece. The rise of new technologies has meant that digital games are used from an early age, as a consequence the proliferation of educational games in which content over experience win out. In recent years, the development of immersive games supported by Virtual Reality has had a great boom, for this reason we propose this educational experience in which the student become an apprentice instead of a player. This gamification experience will be possible thanks to an app in which, through Virtual Reality, we can place the students in a paleontological site. In this case, in a beach where you will find different representative fossils of the fauna that has lived in the Canary Islands in different time periods, with a warm (tropical) climate in the Neogene (upper Miocene) and Quaternary (upper Pleistocene). Through the use of the app the students will be able to know the way of life of these organisms and how the climatic changes have influenced in the marine fauna, something to keep in mind, given the climatic crisis that we are living nowadays and that we can compare with the Global Warming that took place in the Miocene and Upper Pleistocene.The use of this mobile application will be aimed at secondary school students since the following objectives are established in their curriculum (RD 1105/2014):- To conceive scientific knowledge as an integrated knowledge, which is structured in different disciplines, as well as to know and apply the methods to identify problems in the various fields of knowledge and experience.- Knowing, valuing and respecting the basic aspects of one's own and others' culture and history, as well as artistic and cultural heritage.To complete the work done in classroom, the experience ends with the loan of a didactic suitcase consisting of in a collection of 3D models collection of 15 marine fossils (mollusk: gastropod shells and bivalve shells; arthropods: a cirriped; and a plant: limestone algae) from the Quaternary age (2.59-0.01 million years old) that are part of the palaeontological heritage of Canary islands. Many of the fossils used are located in the Anaga Biosphere Reserve in the north of the island of Tenerife, which due to its valuable natural and cultural heritage has been proposed as “Anaga Paleopark”. This teaching resource will help both, teachers and students, to recognize and to value the usefulness of fossils in our culture through manipulation and comparative study. This means that the population that will know, appreciate and therefore to preserve them. In addition, this didactic material will promote scientific vocations and the understanding of concepts such as the climate crisis and heritage, which is closely related to the fossil record, being the Canary Island a good example of this. The results on learning the complex concepts will be carried out through pre- and post-workshop questionnaires with students of different ages.