The Future is Bright with VR Education
If you couldn’t tell by your social media feed or the number of kids on the street this morning hauling around fresh backpacks, for most, today is the first day of a new school year. And while to some this passage of time may signal aging, each passing year brings not only gray hairs and added pounds, but technological advances.
In the case of those kids heading back to school, there are areas where virtual reality technology will soon vastly change how they learn about the world around them. From the mountains of Mars to the depths of the Great Barrier Reef, school trips are getting far more interesting thanks to Google’s Expeditions app which contains over 500 virtual reality experiences that have been used by more than one million children in schools around the world.
Of course not all schools yet have access to this kind of technology, but for those lucky enough, they have the ability to present to their students virtual experiences that would be impossible to access in real life. But while the future of virtual reality in education seems bright, there are others who warn that just because the technology’s immersion can be captivating, especially to a young audience already glued to their screens, this captivation is not immediately enough to argue it’s educational.
Research being done at Durham University by Steve Higgins suggests that there were small positive benefits with respect to technology in education but that those benefits existed only when the technology in question was properly aligned with an actual curriculum. The big question that seems to surround the use of technology in the classroom is if the technology is being used educationally or if its mainly for enjoyment.
There are educational arms to both Minecraft and Lego that blur this distinction, allowing students to use video games that are based on each property but adapted for learning, but whether students are actually learning, at least in a classical sense, or are more engaged by the mechanics of the game is up for debate.
What does seem to be less a question however is that the future shape of the classroom is changing. Whether we like it or not, as VR technology becomes ubiquitous, virtual reality experiences are going to be inserted into lesson plans by even the most hesitant of teachers.
Just like how bored teachers used to show movies to their classes when they needed a break, it’s hard not to expect virtual reality to take the place of “Gandhi”. But in the future, the kids may get a chance to visit India, rather than just see it.