Jonesboro, AR — (JonesboroRightNow.com) — April 24, 2025 — Two Jonesboro students are working together with the Jonesboro Fire Department to make it easier to see the ins and outs of the department’s fire trucks.
Elliot Gramling and Elias Nunez, students in the Education Accelerated by Service and Technology (EAST) class at International Studies Magnet School, are working on creating a 360° virtual tour of the fire trucks. When completed, the tour will be shared on the department’s website. The tour will also be used for the Arkansas Fire Academy to teach participants all about fire trucks.
EAST facilitator Carman Owens said the idea was one of many brainstormed by the students at the beginning of the year, focusing on problems in the city and how technology can be used to solve them.
“They first had an idea, ‘Let’s do a VR tour, a VR firefighter experience,’ and we really looked into that and talked about that a lot, and then it was like, ‘Well, what if we did a 360° tour of the actual fire truck,” she said. “They actually found an example online and they said, ‘This is what we want to do. Look at how cool this is,’ and I was like, ‘Oh! It can be done.’”
Originally, Gramling and Nunez created a 360° virtual tour of one of the school buses, and after they did that, they asked the fire department if they could do something similar with one of the fire trucks.
“They asked them a lot of questions, some related to the project, some not, and they’ve just been really fantastic to work with, very accommodating as far as taking the kids’ ideas and jutting letting them run with it,” Owens said.
Not long after their initial meeting with the fire department, Gramling and Nunez visited one of the fire stations to learn about the trucks, ensuring they gathered accurate info for captions and captured 360° photos of the trucks from every angle.
“They spent two-and-a-half hours with us and showed us every single part of the fire truck. They were really fantastic and just really teaching these boys everything they could so that then they can put that back into the tour and teach other people,” Owens said.
Both Gramling and Nunez said they did a lot this year to figure out how to use the 360° cameras and the virtual tour software, which Owens said was trial-and-error before they figured things out.
“It may seem easy at first, but when you really dig deep into it, it’s not really that easy. You have to learn how to use the camera, how to connect it, and how to operate it,” Nunez said.
A project like this, according to Owens, can educate the youth on a firefighter’s job and brings more appreciation to what they have to do daily.
“Once you learn all the things that a fire truck has, you’re going to know all the things they’re doing, and it’s much more than fighting fires,” Owens said.
“They do a lot, and we’ve learned that they have a bunch of cabinets that all have a different part in their fire truck. Some compartments have stuff to break down. I know one can take off a lock and wall. Me and Elliot never even knew that was even possible,” Nunez said.
With this project, Owens said she hopes these students will be able to see other problems in the community and tackle them themselves.
“I want them to feel confident to be able to do that. I want them to be able to figure out like, ‘What are my next steps? How do I research something? How do I try something on my own? How do I make something presentable?’ It’s real life, and they’re learning how to do the things we want our future leaders to do,” Owens said.
As for what’s next, Gramling and Nunez will be downloading the photos they’ve taken, putting them into the virtual tour software, and tagging all the parts of the trucks, making sure it is presentable. They hope to have it done by the end of the school year.