VR technology is taking flight in the regions

It was a bit icky as she cut through her patient's rib cage, peeling back the skin and clamping it in place so she could see inside the chest cavity.

She got to work slowing down the heart rate, until the heart stopped.

She had had a quick lesson on the biomechanics going into the surgery, so she was feeling confident about the anatomy.

"It's very interesting work,'' said Ms Stevens, who has a keen interest in science and eventually wants to do a job that helps people.

"But it's a very long process.

"Fortunately, I think I am quite OK with blood and gore.''

So she had fun, though who knows whether her patient survived?

Of course, the year 10 student wasn't actually wielding a surgical scalpel or working on a real life human.

Instead, she was part of a group of 23 year 10-12 students from Our Lady of Mercy College (OLMC), Australind, who were taking part in a virtual reality (VR) workshop - aimed at opening their eyes to the possibilities of careers in fields and places they have not yet dreamed of.

"It was a little concerning, as I wasn't expecting it to be so realistic,'' Ms Stevens said of her surgery experience.

"It is quite cartoonish, but the heart really beats.''

Offered by Perth and Melbourne-based education technology company Mindflight7, the incursion uses VR technology to offer career education, entrepreneurship and digital economy or subject specific education programs to students and has in late March ran its second two-week tour of 12 high schools in regional WA.

It is an exciting, interactive and engaging concept, and a still too-rare example of how modern technology is bringing new experiences to regional communities which are as good as - or even better - than those available to kids in the city.

Mindflight7 creative director Chris Gillard said its so-called VR 'flights' aimed to open teenagers' eyes to a broader range of potential interests and career possibilities.

During the 60 or 90-minute experiences, the flight controllers will also suggest to students that they should base those career choices on their interests and passions.

And they encourage the idea that the students will need to develop a life-long growth mindset to have a successful professional journey - which means not being afraid to try new things.

"We go into a school and a classroom of 30 students puts on a VR headset each and we take them through a one hour or a 90 minute session,'' Mr Gillard said.

"It is immersive and interactive and it comes down to engagement.

"We have something that is so gripping, the kids don't even know they are learning.''

During the Mindflight7 sessions participants each wear a VR headset - which offers visuals and sound and technically operates as simply as a smart phone.

They navigate through the world with two handsets, like gaming joysticks.

During the Mindflight7 Career Taster program, the headsets project the user into a virtual world from a choice of about 40 experiences.

And all the equipment packs up into a large suitcase - which makes it easily transportable to just about anywhere.

For participants, the experience is like watching great gaming console graphics.

But instead of watching them on a screen, they instantly jump the barrier and are in the screen, within the environment and the graphics.

The 'mindflights' are deliberately practical and visual - which means they offer a hugely engaging way for everyone to learn, regardless of their preferred learning styles, strengths and weaknesses.

It works well for neurodivergent children and children who struggle to concentrate in class - or who tend to be disruptive - are instantly engaged.

As well as being practical and immersive, the Mindflight7 education program is conceptual.

The lesson component, delivered around the flight, aims to help teenagers understand the links between what they are studying at school and what they might end up doing for work.

This generation will likely end up having at least seven different careers or roles in their lifetimes - hence Mindflight7 - so it's important they start by following their strengths, passions and interests.

And it aims to take some of the pressure out of the dreaded question "what are you going to do when you finish school?'' that every adult they come across asks, by giving them some options to talk about.

Particularly in regional and agricultural areas, it also means opening students' eyes to career possibilities they - their parents, teachers and career advisors - may never have considered.

It is a chance to look beyond the region's traditional jobs or even just the traditional ways of doing those jobs to new and emerging possibilities.

So that's the serious side, but from the kids' point of view, it's just a whole lot of fun.

"Mr Briers, this is the coolest thing that has ever happened to me,'' year 11 student Abbey East excitedly told teacher Dale Briers, OLMC's head of learning area - career services/vocational education and training, within the first few minutes of their session on March 22 .

For an hour on the Wednesday morning, the small group of OLMC students had a ball - painting in hypercolour, creating music, teleporting through nature and time into space, or the deep ocean or wandering through the Jurassic.

They were drawing on whales, in whales and inside themselves - with the magic of Harry Potter adventure.

But plenty of the experiences were also practical.

Quite a lot of the lads had a go at driving a forklift - it was tricky - one student happily dissected a shark, most tried the open heart surgery and year 10 student Banjo Nugent-Brown had a great time trying everything.

Fifteen-year-old Ben Pennefather, who is taking electives in sports and design this year, headed to the VR options for game development, the nature trek, drove the forklift and tried the heart surgery - saying he thought it would be cool to see what that was like.

"It was pretty good,'' the year 10 student said of the surgery flight - which pushed him outside his comfort zone.

Was he a natural surgeon?

"I probably need a bit more practice,'' he admitted.

"I thought the nature trek was really cool, with all the different environments.

"I did the deep sea one and the jurassic one, they looked the most interesting to me.

"I thought this would be a cool opportunity to see what virtual reality could do and all the career options as well.

"I would definitely do it again.''

As well as the open heart surgery, Ms Stevens had a go at the genetics flight - it showed her the different chromosomes and she could see how they related to each other - and let her indulge her passion for science.

"I like health subjects in general,'' Ms Stevens said.

"I find medical things very interesting and science is very interesting this year, now we are extending from what we have done before.

"I don't know exactly what I want to do yet, but I want to do something that helps people and where I can learn a lot all the time, learning new things and always challenging myself.''

The OLMC visit was the first stop on Mindflight7's second major 'Great South West Roadshow' - which also included Manjimup Senior High School and will include 11 other schools over two weeks, up to Easter.

The Mindflight7 team returned to OLMC for its last stop of this tour, when 90 students - the entire year 9 cohort - will have their chance to join in the experience as part of the school's two-year careers education program.

The career roadshows are supported by South Regional TAFE and the Department of Training and Workplace Development's Career Taster Program.

Mindflight7 is planning a third and fourth WA roadshow to the great South West later this year - to run its entrepreneurship and digital economy course.

The company also offers a VR Room package for schools to buy, a mental health and wellbeing program and is further developing its VR content to roll-out new types of experiences, including one led by First Nations communities and indigenous students, later this year.

With the VR Room, the Mindflight7 team sources VR headsets for the school, then works with the principal and head teachers to curate content which is right for their culture and students, and then with the wider teaching group to get them excited about the technology.

"We want to get the teachers motivated and excited about the technology because this is really legitimately an education revolution,'' Mr Gillard said.

" VR is mind-blowing in what it can do - it can take you anywhere - and it is conceptual, meaning you can take an idea or concept and make it a place.

"You can, for example, actually walk around inside an atom and teach a class within the atom.

"It gets the students thinking critically about how that all works.''

Mr Briers said each student who had participated in the Mindflight7 workshop at the college had a significant interest in trying VR technology.

"I have worked with a lot of them as a career advisor for the college and some of them are interested in specific pathways, like healthcare and medicine," Mr Briers said.

"For us, this is part of that journey to graduation.

"It is about encouraging the students to explore things they are interested in and find things they may not have tried before.

"We want our students to be open to new ideas.''

The co-educational OLMC has nearly 900 students in years 7-12, including students from nearby Australind and Treedale, to farming and mining communities around Brunswick, Harvey and Collie - with some ultimately destined for the WA College of Agriculture, Harvey, in years 11-12.

"But we try to meet those needs for them here too,'' Mr Briers said.

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Mr Briers was enthusiastic about what Mindflight7 could offer students, saying it was the first time the college had experienced VR technology and that the experience would be part of its year 9 Career Taster Program, which began last year.

"The idea behind that is in Year 9, students start to engage in future possibilities, so this adds more meaning and value to the education process they are going through,'' Mr Briers said.

"This is the second year I have run the Year 9 taster program and I can see the difference it has made in our year 10s, in terms of their motivation.''

The school's career program also involves exploring trade pathways, visits to the Construction Future Centre and annual SkillsWest Expo in Perth and to the South Regional TAFE, it offers a range of incursions and links into year 10 work experience and workplace learning programs for years 10-12.

"Our students are actively being engaged in learning about where they want to be for the future,'' Mr Briers said.

"Our partnership is with industry, the community and the school working together to give the students real-world learning experiences.

"That is key - our mission is to show them the relevance of their learning in relation to what they will do next, and having good options and making good decisions.''

Mindflight7 was created by entrepreneurs Kajal Pala,Yuan Liang and Yang Liu, starting with a couple of VR headsets and working out of a garage.

Ms Pala has a background in creating fun learning enterprises, including Melbourne's Dreamcity, an educational theme park targeting primary school children and the tourism markets, akin to Perth's Scitech.

Realising a bricks and mortar-based business limited access for students living outside Melbourne, she came up with the idea of taking VR headsets to schools to give students a career education experience.

In mid-2019, the Mindflight7 team started testing their business concept and developing the company's own programs to deliver a lesson plan, combined with the VR experience, to children aged 11 to 18.

But when COVID-19 lockdowns hit just as the company was launching onto the market, the team spent time working on new products, including its VR room option, and refined the VR flights it now delivers to schools.

The flights incorporate science, technology, engineering, arts and maths (STEAM) or trades content.

Within that remit, there is a huge scope for students to choose their own experience - from being an astronaut driving the Mars Rover, to a plumber, electrician, or a veterinary nurse.

They can weld, scaffold, cut hair or perform surgery from the comfort of a chair in a classroom or gym.

Having toured through Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and New Zealand for the past few years, Mindflight7 took its VR experience to about a dozen of WA's South West regional schools for the first time just before Christmas last year.

During that two-week trip, Mr Gillard and the team covered more than 2200 kilometres, driving from Perth to Esperance and back, visiting Dalyellup and Kearnon colleges and the State high schools in Nannup, Margaret River, Manjimup, Harvey, Pemberton and Esperance.

They delivered career taster flights encompassing STEAM skills, plus trades, to about 900 students in the two weeks.

"The trip was highly successful as the first one of its kind in WA,'' Mr Gillard said.

"Students got the full autonomy to discover any kind of VR experiences from a selection of about 40 pieces of content.''

Mindflight 7 now has about 200 experiences in its VR library - comprising resources created in-house and from VR companies around the world - and the library is constantly growing.

The company also offers an entrepreneurship and digital economy program, which it plans to bring to regional WA at the end of this year - and is particularly relevant to country communities.

"This program highlights the fact that you don't have to go looking for a job, you can create one,'' Mr Gillard said.

"For regional areas, the overlay on that idea is that you don't have to do things the way they have always been done in your region.

"You can rethink how it is done using digital technology or the digital economy, or you can think of something entirely new - and you can do it from your region.

"We talk about business flexibility of the digital economy - which means theoretically, as long as you have got good internet, you can run a business from anywhere."

In the entrepreneur workshops the students are asked to work in small groups of about three, using a business suggestion or their own ideas to solve an existing climate or environmental problem.

"We take them through the process of building a brand, a brand name, how it looks, how it might talk, what kind of audience is appropriate for it,'' Mr Gillard said.

"Then we get them to jump back into the VR, into a program called Multibrush, which is a 3D virtual arts studio, and we say go and visualise your brand name, or logo or colour palette and then we share that with the other groups.

"We then talk about the areas of entrepreneurship that are important in relation to that - working together, collaboration and using digital technology to collaborate, all those kinds of ideas.

"It is a really interesting interactive use of VR technology, and the VR technology is demonstrating its capacity, and we are also demonstrating a purpose-led entrepreneurial business, and that is Mindflight7.''

Mr Gillard said the flights cost $20 per student for a 60-minute session and $25 per student for a 90-minute class, and the company sets up its roadshows so that it charges schools a little extra (or nothing at all) for its travel costs.

"We try to keep the costs down as much as possible because we want as many children as possible to have access to this technology,'' Mr Gillard said.

"It's important just to give them exposure to VR - forget for a minute all the careers content that they do.

"Their exposure to VR and their awareness of its capacity is going to be important for whatever job they are going to do, because it is a tool that gets used so much already, especially in WA, which is a bit of a frontrunner in using it in the mining, logistics, fisheries and the maritime industries."