Chapel Hill High School is using a virtual reality program called the Flaim Trainer System. | Pixabay
Chapel Hill High School is using a virtual reality program called the Flaim Trainer System. | Pixabay
Chapel Hill High School recently began incorporating virtual reality into its education.
Marcos Ochoa, 15, is one of the students who is using the technology, which teaches him about careers in fire and rescue, WRAL News reported. The virtual reality system presented him with a fire outbreak scenario on a cargo ship.
“So when they started walking me back, like, 'Dude, I’m going to walk off the crane, right? I’m about to fall!' I was right in it, which I kind of didn’t expect,” he told WRAL News.
Educating students in the fire-and-rescue industry isn’t new for Chapel Hill High School. The virtual reality simulator is called “Flaim Trainer.”
“It does everything from house fires to vehicle fires to docks and plane crashes,” explained Travis Adkinson, a fire safety instructor with the Chapel Hill-Carrboro School System.
The school uses the Flaim Trainer System to show students what it's like to fight fires from various different angles, such as above the fire on a crane.
“We are trying to get younger students involved in the fire service and in our curriculum,” Atkinson told WRAL News. “It doesn’t eliminate the need for pulling hose and working with a team. That’s what we’re going into -- the unknown, all the time.”
Virtual reality doesn't stop at what a student sees, but a warming vest simulates the heat of an approaching a fire, too.
The Flaim Trainer System is only one of ten in use in the entire country, so Chapel Hill High School is lucky to be an early adopter of this technology.
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