Commonwealth Bank of Australia is trialling the use of virtual reality technology to teach young children about money management.
CommBank has been running its Start Smart financial education programme with Australian schools since 2007, helping to teach more than two million students about saving, spending, earning and investing.
The bank is now investigating whether virtual reality technology, in concert with a storybook, can help kids learn about money.
During a two month pilot, around 1500 primary school students will take part in normal Start Smart lessons but also take home a pack containing a VR headset called the Teleporter and a storybook called Sammy the Space Koala, written by Australian children’s author Ursula Dubosarsky.
The pack includes instructions for parents and carers to download a free Teleporter app to their smartphones, which are then inserted into the headsets to start the virtual reality portion of the adventure.
The book and headset have been designed to work together and feature content adapted from Start Smart’s programmes to provide an "interactive, educational experience that reinforces the difference between a ‘need’ and a ‘want’".