AWARD-winning Loganlea teacher credits her grandfather, who only had four years of schooling, with fostering her strong belief in the value of education when she was growing up in Ukraine.
Liudmyla Kovalev is a teacher at Loganlea State High School and was last week rewarded for her work in virtual reality.
“I was very lucky to have great support at home. My mum, being a teacher, was always ready to help. However, she worked long hours trying to provide for us in post-Soviet Union Ukraine,” Ms Kovalev said.
“My greatest supporter when it came to learning something new was my grandfather. He always said ‘knowledge is never a burden, it is easier to work with your head than with your hands’.
“He himself only finished four grades before the Second World War began. All his life he worked as a labourer and made sure his children went to university.
“He funded my English language courses and always pushed me to look for opportunities to learn and practice new skills.”
Since moving to Australia fresh out of university, Ms Kovalev has used her passion for teaching to find new ways of engaging her students’ and inspiring their passion for learning.
Beyond her classroom, Ms Kovalev mentors new and pre-service teachers and shares her insights into the potential of new technologies at Loganlea’s Professional Development Cafe sessions.
She has also been invited to mentor other teachers in her region and, since joining the school, it has doubled its resources for VR teaching.
Her award, in the Teaching Fellows and Early Career Teachers category at the 2022 Commonwealth Bank Teaching Awards, was for her commitment to closing the education gap by introducing augmented and virtual reality classrooms to her students in the face of unique challenges.
“VR is an experience that opens up access to learning on a whole new level. The device helps to understand complex information, concepts, and theories by stimulating vision, hearing, and touch,” Ms Kovalev said.
“It allows students to travel to the highest, deepest, most interesting places in the world. Instead of just observing something from the screen, it places students in the middle of the experience.”
Students wear virtual-reality headsets to access a three-dimensional, computer-generated simulation of real-world places and events. Users immersed into the virtual reality can move through the simulation and interact with others.
“Rather than looking at the picture of the animal cell on the paper or watch it on the screen in 2D, students can go in the middle of the cell using VR headset and see every organelle, their shape and size in relation to other organelles, see how cytoplasm holds them, hear or read about organelle functions and much more.”
Ms Kovalev has found many benefits to the learning technique, including the ability to broaden students’ horizons by providing them with a perspective they never would have had before, increasing excitement in the classroom and improving attendance.
Ms Kovalev is among four outstanding teachers from across Logan who are being recognised for their leadership, innovation and tenacious commitment to their students and communities at the 2022 Commonwealth Bank Teaching Awards.
These remarkable teachers have gone above and beyond in spite of unique challenges from an unprecedented year; faced with devastating natural disasters and ongoing classroom disruptions due to Covid.
Liudmyla Kovalev; Loganlea State High School (Qld), Trent Cowley; Principal, Kingston State School, Michael Hornby; Principal, Mable Park State High School, and Jenna Cullen; Head of Teaching and Learning, Marsden State High School are among the 22 nominated teachers.
