SUNNYVALE, CA--(Marketwired - Sep 3, 2014) - In classrooms around the country this school year, students will have the ultimate immersive learning experience, dissecting human hearts, diving into volcanos and testing physics outcomes in Jupiter's gravity. And they won't have to worry about limited supplies or student safety when they learn with zSpace 200. The next generation of immersive virtual technology developed by Silicon Valley company zSpace, Inc. delivers a futuristic hardware and software system that brings abstract concepts to life.

"Last year, middle school students at Los Altos School District (LASD) in California piloted zSpace with extraordinary results. Students were engaged with learning science concepts at a much deeper level, collaborating in teams and using critical thinking skills to solve complex challenges," said Paul Kellenberger, CEO of zSpace. "That collaboration between students, teachers and our software developers informed the development of zSpace 200, the next generation of our technology, which will make the virtual reality learning experience even more compelling and realistic."

As excitement for zSpace grows around the country, here are six of the new districts that will kick off the 2014-2015 school year with zSpace STEM labs.

• Plainview-Old Bethpage Central School District in New York use zSpace across the district for health career preparation, middle school science enrichment and in its engineering courses.

• Ross School District in California will implement zSpace in K-8 science classrooms.

• In Texas, Houston Independent School District will deploy zSpace in four schools, and students at eight schools in the Brownsville Independent School District will learn with zSpace.

• At Woodside Elementary School District in California, all science classrooms will have a zSpace lab.

• Rochester City School District in New York will introduce zSpace at two schools.

"We are excited to be incorporating zSpace STEM stations into our science classrooms," said Beth Polito, superintendent of Woodside Elementary School District. "We believe this is just the beginning of a fundamental change to how students learn."

A zSpace STEM lab consists of a set of student virtual reality stations and a teacher station, each outfitted with a custom stylus as well as a wide variety of educational software. The system tracks head movements to provide the user with a personal and immersive virtual reality experience. Virtual holographic images can be "lifted" from the screen and manipulated with the stylus. Some applications provide multi-sensory feedback; for example, students working with a virtual heart can see the blood moving through it as well as feel it beating.

With zSpace 200, students will experience a 500 percent brighter display, plus a faster display response and stylus tracking. zSpace 200 also features an expanded software library, including:

• zSpace Gallery, a curated set of more than 500 3D models covering a wide range of subjects from architecture and history to engineering and zoology.

• zSpace Studio, an application that allows students to create a virtual world as they compare, analyze and explore rich models from the zSpace Gallery or models they create themselves in modeling software. Students can add labels to models, make annotations and take measurements. In addition, they can integrate multiple models to build a multidimensional scene and create video tours of their creations to share.

• Additional software built by zSpace partner developers in education, medicine and design.

About zSpace
zSpace is a leading-edge technology provider that delivers a new way of learning with its flagship product, zSpace®. Focused on the learning market, specifically, science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education, medical instruction, corporate training and research, zSpace inspires and accelerates understanding through immersive exploration. zSpace is a privately held, venture backed company located in Sunnyvale, CA, and has filed more than 30 patents for its innovative technologies. For more information, visit www.zspace.com, or follow on Twitter @zspace.

zSpace is a registered trademark of zSpace, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.