Hi everyone. Today, we’ll talk about a relevant topic that will revolutionize schools and education in general soon. Virtual reality in education. Maybe the switch won’t happen immediately. But with the current growth of this industry, we believe that VR’s application in the classrooms will be notable within ten years.
Contents
Virtual Reality Creating New Possibilities
Virtual reality in education creates new possibilities to live such different and engaging experiences. This provides value to the users by immersing them in virtual environments. It had been relatively more common for a long time to see the use of augmented reality to overlay elements. For example, 3d graphics, music, or text into real-world environments. Virtual reality is helping not only the students but also the teachers to be more productive in some lessons. It is making it possible to engage more students and keep them focused on the subjects.
Virtual Reality Making its Way into Classrooms
Virtual reality in education is making its way into the classrooms to transfer students completely to unbelievable worlds and scenarios. Some classrooms in developed countries or private colleges are taking advantage of VR technology. This will help them to engage their students by turning boring lectures into Marvel’s journeys. The famous moments of history are walking into a prehistoric land with Dinosaurs with their enormous scale.
We can foresee a boom coming specifically in the education sector in the following years. Just imagine that on your student days, you could study geography in a book or a spherical glob map, but instead, you could visit countries and cities around the world that you always heard about without having to leave your classroom. Does it sound great??
VR Dramatically Increasing Knowledge Retention
This technology would dramatically increase knowledge retention. It is scientifically proven that people learn more by living more direct experiences than just reading about a specific subject. This is because our brains get more stimulated in 3d environments from a first-person perspective while being part of reality simulation.
It’s quite easier to transfer information into our minds in this way. There have also been great discoveries about the benefits of VR for autistic children and introverts. Its benefits have been observed on many kids who have difficulties in school due to focusing issues, special needs, or just learning disabilities.
The present generation is born in the digital era and raise with recent technological developments. VR will be their new norm of education for them. This will improve the students’ ability to understand the subjects and see how they fall into an interactive simulation where you can repeatedly walk around and play with the elements. It is beneficial for subjects like chemistry, physics, history, or literature, any specialized object as architecture, design, medicine, or even biology. This tech is also the best option for students in high school, college, or private school.
Students, especially parents will be attracted, and they are willing to pay a good amount of money for such a fantastic learning tool. The best part of this technology is that the material will be used for a long time. Just it is needed to be updated or replaced with a certain frequency. And new knowledge can be easily generated and downloaded.
What if Digital content has deteriorated with use?
Matt Chacon is one of the cofounders of DogHead Simulations, a company dedicated to developing and implementing virtual reality in education. He worked to create content for video games. He felt that his time in the area was over and he decided to follow his new passion by creating a company to provide innovative content in VR format and make education technology more accessible
The company had sales accomplished to work hand in hand by creating content for other institutions and providing a service to other organizations. There is a distinguished company in the sector – ClassVR. Their commercial offer is available in some countries such as the UK, Middle East, Australia, China, and the United States. Its main goal is to promote and provide schools with VR headsets and educational content that surprisingly covers all the main subjects from preschool to college.
You can find VR courses regarding math, literacy, chemistry, history, music, and even religious education. You would think that the most crucial aspect when developing these immersive learning sessions is the headset. But there is a crucial aspect that you should consider before applying this technology to your class: “the infrastructure”.
Infrastructure is a critical point because of the physical space for a VR experience.
So the students can move freely in the room without bumping into something or someone else. It’s always important to define a specific area for this process, depending on the experiences and technology involved. The schools must prepare a space to take advantage of such tech. This innovative medium is showing great results worldwide. A few challenges delay the spread of these headsets in schools, such as; the budget.
The amount of money required to supply schools for the equipment is so high that even first world countries have difficulties in implementing VR on a big scale. But there must be some way to take a huge step to implement such an impactful VR problem.
Slowly showing that the investment they’re going to make will pay off not only for the students who will take advantage of it but also for society in the future.
Another obstacle is the creation of content. Several companies create content. But, They’re not enough a complete all subjects in a short period of time, but at least they can complete urgent selection.
Hopefully, this technology reaches to be the norm in modern society.
There’s a natural proposal to create a platform in which developers cooperate to develop educational material and upload it to a website to create a bigger repository. This platform reduces the lack of educational content and even inspires more people to join in this experiment.
What the future brings for this technology is in the process of testing. One initiative presents the possibility of reaching the full concept of attending a school in VR. In Japan, one of the main countries is testing this new concept in high schools. But, we should not limit this to a certain school schedule, location, or group.
Programmers are trying to recreate the whole experience of attending school. I Mean, you could be physically in your house wearing pajamas, but once you put your visor on, you will be able to walk around campus and take classes with people from many parts of the world in this virtual University.
Virtual reality in education can also allow employees to practice and learn safety procedures and practices by virtualizing processes, showcasing how to do things correctly and safely. VR replicates critical real-life situations to reinforce the significant actions, rather than just reading a written manual or watching a playing video.
The Last Thought
We are sure that we’ll be able to apply these same principles and technological infrastructure to bring more VR experiences to schools and students around the world.
Resource
Picture retrieved from …
- https://www.viar360.com/education-schools-using-virtual-reality/
- https://unsplash.com/photos/3eAByt3-eOw
- https://www.timeforkids.com/g2/virtual-classroom/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkvDiqL40SM&app=desktop
- https://www.vive.com/au/support/cosmos/category_howto/setting-up-the-play-area.html
- https://www.klcc.org/post/virtual-classroom-aims-reduce-implicit-bias-student-suspensions