The Stuartholme metaverse – inspiring the next generation of women in STEM

^Highlights

• Stuartholme School are striving to empower our next generation of women with opportunities across the STEM industries and open pathways to STEM careers beginning in their secondary education.
• Read about an amazing collaboration with Stuartholme School and Ann Stevens and Miguel Besas from Imagine Realities on Stuartholme metaverse development.

In my role as a Digital Technologies leader at an all-girls school, I am driven to empower our next generation of women with opportunities across the STEM industries and open pathways to STEM careers beginning in their secondary education.

When the opportunity arose to attend the Extended Realities workshop, led by Ann Stevens, I immediately signed up to attend. The workshop showcased a fantastic piece of work which involved the Queensland Youth Orchestra, and a metaverse project developed for their organisation.

After the workshop, I approached Ann to ask if she would be interested in working with our students to not only view XR content, but to also design and develop XR content. I thought this would be not only a unique opportunity but interesting area for our next generation to explore.

This was the start of many Microsoft Teams calls, phone conversations and countless email communication exploring the endless possibilities of the Stuartholme metaverse.

A few obstacles to kick off the experience didn’t stop the students – the students’ laptops weren’t powerful enough to load required software and some students were starting to become disengaged waiting for software to load. The Parents of Stuartholme group pioneered an incredible fundraising effort to contribute funds to purchase a gaming laptop and headsets. I know I can speak on behalf of everyone involved that we are very thankful for our group of dedicated parents to champion this for the students, and for that, we are very grateful for their continued support of this initiative.

The structure of the workshops was malleable, and Ann and Miguel took extra consideration of students’ engagement, behaviour and interest to pivot the structure of the workshop each week. The flexible approach in workshop structure was the crux of why this project was delivered successfully – Ann and Miguel empowered the students to take the learning approach into their own hands, and it has been wonderful to experience the students’ confidence skyrocket throughout the course of this experience.

The students (and myself) have loved the entire experience – from the real world scenario to the innovative metaverse development, the experience has been rich with creativity and thought leadership.

To Ann Stevens and Miguel Besas from Imagine Realities – thank you for your expertise and patience. We are exceptionally grateful to you and your team for guiding our Stuartholme students into the future of education. We are also grateful for our partnership with the Australian Computer Society to become an ICT Gateway to Schools which has further enhanced our technology opportunities for our students with industry affiliations, mentorships, industry led workshops and practical work experiences.

If you would like to learn more about the Stuartholme Metaverse Project, feel free to check it out here (it’s worth a look!): https://stuartholme.com/extended-realities-program/