SCIENCE VIRTUAL REALITY TOUR. Students queue to experience an immersive virtual reality tour featured at the 11th SyenSaya: the Los Baños Science Festival on its opening day at the University of the Philippines - Los Baños (UPLB). The event is organized by the Los Baños Science Community Foundation Inc., the first and one of four science communities of the Department of Science and Technology. (Photo by Saul E. Pa-a)
LOS BAŇOS, Laguna – The Los Baños Science Community Foundation Inc. (LBSCFI) is promoting science tourism in this town, dubbed as “Special Nature and Science City”, which is a first in the country.
Dr. Roberto Cereno, chair of the LBSCFI Committee on Science Tourism, said the foundation forged partnerships with the Department of Science and Technology, Department of Tourism, and Department of Education for science tourism to be part of the experiential learning and science and technology (S&T) exposure trips of students, special interest groups, and researchers, among others.
“We are pioneering on science tourism, the first actually in the country,” Cereno told the media during the "SyenSaya: The Los Baños Science Festival" at the University of the Philippines here.
“SyenSaya” is an annual science festival celebration organized by the LBSCFI which highlights member-agencies’ science initiatives and development technologies and innovations.
He said 22 member S&T agencies and research and development institutes are working together to scale up science tourism.
Under the foundation’s science tourism program, visitors are toured to the showcases of S&T innovations and interventions and get to familiarize with tourism-related products, services and sites.
“These tours will promote the town’s popular products like the buko pie, banana chips, garlic peanuts, among other S&T-based processed stuffs, including an exciting trek to the Mount Makiling Forest Reserve,” he said.
He said science tourism would attract more tourists to this town, with the aim to provide several opportunities for the visitors and tourists to learn, discover, and appreciate the value of science.
Cereno said the foundation scheduled capacity development events in October, while their tourism product and site developments are ongoing.
During the SyenSaya festival, one of the crowd-drawing features was the immersive virtual tour aimed at increasing access to tour-based learning.
Field trips to the science community here help students by making the subject matter more relevant to them through experiential learning and making their educational tour more accessible through immersive technologies like virtual reality.
The virtual tours supplement learning by context-based activities in various school subjects and activities such as environmental science, S&T language learning, and distance education.
Also on the students’ tour list is the “BaBot,” or Baboy (pig) Mobile Robot developed by the UPLB Department of Electrical Engineering that was devised to follow a line track using a sensor. (PNA)
