- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Building the Human Body from the Inside Out
Earlier this year, RealityTEK Educators, Ben, John and Shane, ran a session at the Girls in Tech Expo at St Peter's Girls School. Year 5 and 6 students used PICO 4 Enterprise Ultra headsets to step inside a virtual laboratory and build a human body from scratch: locating organs, assembling a skeleton, and working out what goes where and why.
The session was a proper curriculum-aligned science lesson, built around the Australian Curriculum standards AC9S5U01 and AC9S6I04, both focused on how the structural features of living things help them survive.
How the session worked
Students worked in pairs. One person went on the hunt, navigating the virtual environment to track down organs scattered throughout the space. The other acted as the "eyes," watching the full scenario and keeping track of what had been found and where things needed to go.
Once the organs were placed, the pairs talked through the functions and positions of each part. And after the hard work of "saving a life," they got to customise their skeletons with hats and glasses, which went down very well.
The environment was managed through ManageXR and built within the EngageXR ecosystem, a secure, enterprise-grade setup that gives teachers full control over what students can see and do inside the headsets.
What the students said
We used Mentimeter to collect live feedback at the end of the session. Students answered in real time, unprompted.
In one word: how did it feel?
The words that came up most (excited, curious, happy, smart) speak for themselves. A handful of students said "frustrated" or "annoyed," almost always because a partner had moved an organ they were still working with, or because finding a specific one was harder than expected. That kind of friction is actually useful; it's where a lot of the problem-solving happened.
What skill did they improve most?
Nearly half the room pointed to problem-solving: working through a challenge under a bit of pressure, with someone else counting on them to get it right.
What kind of tech career sounds exciting?
This one genuinely surprised us. We weren't sure how it would land, but the interest across different tech career paths was remarkable, especially given that roughly half the room had never used a VR headset before.
Only 2% of students said they weren't sure about tech yet. After a single session, the other 98% could name a direction they'd genuinely consider. Engineering and MedTech came out on top, which makes sense given the session was built around biology and solving a problem in a technical environment.
One more number worth noting
On a 1–5 scale, we also asked three questions about focus, memory, and engagement. These were scored out of 10 (the Mentimeter scale used in this session).
That last score (the low one) is actually the most interesting data point here. Students didn't feel like they "kept focus the whole time" in the traditional sense, because they weren't sitting still and listening. They were hunting, building, arguing over organ placement, and laughing at skeleton accessories. That's active, embodied learning doing exactly what it's supposed to do.
The 9/10 on memory retention and 8/10 on engagement preference are the numbers we'd highlight to any school that asks whether VR learning actually lands differently than a classroom lesson. Students believe it does. Strongly.
Why this matters for schools
The Girls in Tech Expo was a natural fit for what RealityTEK does every day: show students (and schools) that technology isn't something you passively consume. Because the whole point is getting students to do the learning rather than watch it happen. The data from this session reflects that, and the students walked away with genuine opinions about careers in engineering and healthcare technology.
We're working with schools across South Australia to bring this kind of active, curriculum-aligned learning into regular classroom programs across science, biology, and critical thinking.
If you'd like to see how a RealityTEK session could work in your school, get in touch.
Email: schools@teachtek.education
Phone: 1300 934 484
