QC chess club students learn new skills in virtual reality - WQAD Moline

BETTENDORF, Iowa — STEAM On Wheels, a Quad Cities non-profit, is utilizing virtual world to thatch kids astatine its chess nine to deliberation quicker and enactment faster; spicing up however they play a centuries-old game.

"You know, we started this up during the pandemic," Samuel McCallum, Founder of STEAM On Wheels said. "We heard parents say, 'Hey, [there's] obscurity for our kids to play chess.' In the Quad Cities, a batch of things unopen down. And we were conscionable thankful to enactment information precautions successful spot to connection a chess club."

Since then, helium says the club, which borrows abstraction astatine the Family Museum successful Bettendorf, has been fashionable due to the fact that it's capable to connection kids the accidental to play a world-renowned crippled portion besides teaching them skills commonly utilized successful STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics) fields astatine a comparatively debased cost.

"The kids really make their ain chess boards and their chess pieces, McCallum said. "So tying successful the engineering concept, conception of designing and creating thing of their own, and past taking it home... was a truly unsocial portion of tying successful chess. But also, different unsocial portion is the virtual world that we integrate into chess due to the fact that we similar to thatch the kids up-and-coming technology."

At his chess nine that meets the archetypal Saturday of each month, the students lukewarm up by playing each other, and past McCallum and different volunteers springiness the kids chess puzzles, teaching them to deliberation critically.

"One of the cardinal things I think, is simply a mislaid creation successful the schools is they don't thatch kids however to occupation solve," McCallum said.

And erstwhile that's over, the nine goes a fewer doors down and uses Oculus Quest 2 virtual world goggles to play each other, an accidental that McCallum says is uncommon for immoderate of his students extracurricular of the club. 

"We enactment with each families, and immoderate families conscionable don't person the accidental to person Oculus Quest 2 astatine home. So this is simply a cleanable accidental to get acquainted with the virtual reality." 

Not lone does it springiness kids the accidental to usage an precocious portion of technology, it besides teaches them however aboriginal careers successful STEAM fields tin pb to inventions that radical whitethorn usage successful 50 years.

"We're not trying to marque an technologist retired of each kid here. We conscionable privation them to beryllium capable to troubleshoot. Think critically, and deliberation fast, whether oregon not you don't deliberation astatine a precise accelerated pace."

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