Virtual and Augmented Reality: Understanding the Race for the Next Computing Platform

Virtual reality and augmented reality, in my opinion, is going to emerge into the education field at a fast pace over the next few years. I see this to be especially valuable to those who live in rural areas. As someone who has worked in an extremely isolated, rural community, students do not have access to many everyday life experiences that many people do. The disadvantage these students have is that with lack of exposure, if and when they do go out into a more populated area, they do not know how to do many things that the average person would. This often leads to them being very overwhelmed, and unsure of their place in a more public world. This then leads to them going back home and being too afraid to explore their interests further as they are more comfortable home. Virtual field trips or VFTs provide teachers with the opportunity to take learning beyond the confines of the classroom walls. While VFTs may not specifically replace a real field trip, VFTs may enhance a real field trip by preparing them for what they were going to experience and allowing them to build a baseline of knowledge prior to physically visiting a site. These may allow students to have exposure to certain aspects of everyday life in a more urban area prior to them leaving a rural area. Textbooks often provide students with pictures and examples but they aren’t meaningful to many of these students because they’ve never had the chance to see or experience these things. These students also have many conceptual challenges in learning because they don’t have a lot of real-life experiences to disprove some of their misconceptions. Incorporating VR or AR into education can be very important for not only a students education, but also their everyday life afterwards.

From an educators point of view Virtual reality and augmented reality are going to be the next level of technology introduced into schools around the world. Like said earlier, the price point can be the only thing keeping this from schools now, however most districts will jump at the chance to introduce technology that will impact their bottom line in a positive way down the line. Making things easier for educators as well will be a positive influence of this into the market. Allowing teachers to take their students anywhere or anytime will be amazing. This will be very useful for educators, it can phase out text book use, give students an actually experience rather than them reading and memorizing. I expect future versions of this will be made easily accessible to educators in the near future. The use of technology in schools is only getting better with the advancements in ipads, phones, and computers this virtual reality will be the next step.

Hi Ryan! I love this concept and I agree that there is so much potential for VR/AR/MR in education and beyond. What struck me was the article stated that the adoption of virtual field trips in education would be slow due to budgetary constraints. This could be true if schools opt for more high-end hardware or classroom kits. This could partly be because the article was written in 2016 and price points for VR headsets are lower now, and companies are making much more affordable options for schools (such as Google Cardboard - although it's not quite the same as a high-end set!). Also, with the advent of Google Expeditions, the app alone (which is free) provides students with over 900 virtual tours. Here's the link to what's available: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uwWvAzAiQDueKXkxvqF6rS84oae2AU7eD8bhxzJ9SdY/edit#gid=0 Students and teachers can also make their own VR tours using Tour Creator, which was launched in May 2018. As for AR, there are many free apps available to consume and/or create content. Google Maps now has an AR function too.