DEVELOPMENT OF EDUCATIONAL AND COGNITIVE COMPETENCE OF YOUNGER SCHOOLCHILDREN BY MEANS OF VIRTUAL REALITY
The question of the developing value of virtual reality technologies, the possibilities of their application at the level of primary general education is considered. The results of studying various studies on the philosophical, psychological and pedagogical aspects of human activity in virtual reality (VR) are presented. The importance and necessity of introducing virtual, augmented and mixed reality technologies for the digital transformation of the education sector is proved. An attempt is made to classify the means of virtual reality used in education based on the criteria of immersion and presence. The classification distinguishes types of virtual reality technologies according to: the degree of immersiveness; types of educational tasks; graphical user interface; graphical representation of users; interaction opportunities; features of representation of objects in virtual reality; used educational tools and technical specifications. Examples of the implementation of the immersive approach in general education are given: studying the influence of social configurations on the visual attention of students and the learning process in an immersive virtual reality classroom; the influence of text annotations in the class of immersive virtual reality on the ability to recall educational information, etc. The advantages of using VR in education for the development of educational and cognitive competence in primary school age are described: visibility, the ability to visualize complex and inaccessible knowledge, abstract concepts, involvement and interactivity, multimodality of perception, compatibility with distance learning and the possibility of gamification of the educational process. Positive ideas of practicing teachers in relation to the use of VR tools are revealed. Teachers are ready to introduce virtual reality tools into the educational process, however, there is an insufficient number of high-quality VR products that meet the thematic needs of subject teachers. Tasks for children were developed in 4 areas of development: value-semantic, cognitive, operational-activity; reflective-evaluative.