Year 12 pupils Vo Nguyen Dinh Tri and Nguyen Quang Duc from the Da Nang- based Phan Chau Trinh Senior High School have successfully created a virtual reality Biology book entitled ‘REBO’ for 11^th grade pupils.

The REBO developers said their idea came from the situation of many pupils being not interested in Biology, and considering this subject as a burden.

Therefore, with the role of members of the Management Board of Phan Chau Trinh School’s Science and Technology Club, Tri and Duc have together created the virtual reality Biology book in a bid to keep pupils engaged in learning Biology.

The book has a lot of graphics, mind maps and drawings, as well as minimalises numbers and letters. Therefore, as using REBO in the combination with the Biology textbook, students can easily learn and memorise the knowledge faster and longer.

In addition, the virtual reality book includes Foldscope - paper microscope, 30 templates of animals and plants, test tubes, and template making tools.

Also, pupils can use microscopes to observe available templates, as well as collect small-sized biological samples by themselves to study and develop thinking skills.

Most notably, this book is accompanied by a set of augmented reality (AR) cards designed by Duc and an AR mobile application developed by Tri. Each of the cards has molecular chains, cellular and DNA sequences printed on.

The REBO and AR application show realistic representations of images on cards in 3D, thereby facilitating users to be able to observe these images and interact with them on the surfaces they want.

Thus, knowledge which seems to be dry now turns into a game that stimulates learners’ curiosity and creativity.

Besides, REBO has a chatbot application on Facebook Messenger chat platform. After each lesson, pupils can chat with this robot to review their lessons and knowledge.

By late February, Tri and Duc's REBO book project won the first prize at the municipal-level contest 2019 for excellent pupils for Informatics.

In mid-June, the talented pupils participated in the two-day exhibition at the South Central Region and Highlands Science and Technology Conference in Da Nang. Their stand attracted a great deal of attention from visitors thanks to their useful virtual reality book.

In the coming time, Tri and Duc are planning to perfect their REBO book and develop some new applications. After finishing the National Senior High school Graduation Examination 2019, they will ask for a helping hand from their teachers to edit the content for the book.