30 June 2022
Mrs Katharine Payne, Coordinator of Kritikos
Students impressed governors, parents, Dr Whitehead and other staff guests with the quality of the research they had put into their curiosity projects, demonstrated through presentations, Q&A sessions and round table discussions at our Kritikos event on Friday 24 June.
Kritikos is Woldingham’s programme of academic stretch and challenge, which includes seminars, games sessions and individual tutorials. Each student also completes a significant piece of independent academic research - the curiosity project. This year, students explored future possibilities for virtual reality (VR), following an introduction to the topic in November 2021 from Mr Chris Scattergood, one of our school governors and the CEO and Founder of FundamentalVR and Fundamental Surgery.
Friday’s event showed that students had taken this initial stimulus in many fascinating directions, looking at the use of VR in education, flight training, prisoner rehabilitation, gaming and military training, as Meerab explains.
Meerab, Year 9
Kritikos members enjoyed discussing our curiosity projects with one another, parents and staff over tea and cakes. Three students presented their projects and it was great to see their amazing ideas being brought to life. First up was Oyin in Year 7 who researched and presented about the NHS and how it is incorporating VR technology into the world of healthcare. Her work was based on interviews and case studies. Next to present was Manon from Year 9 who shared how VR could solve travel problems. She told us about her experience travelling to the Louvre, using this to explain how the experience could be improved by incorporating virtual reality. To round up the event, Anna from Year 10 gave a fascinating and very enjoyable presentation, using physics to explain how events that occurred in the Marvel Universe could be possible in real life!