I can definitely see how VR can play an important role in science subjects like physic and chemistry. These tend to be subjects that involve experiments and hands-on activities for students to fully immerse themselves in their learning in order to gain better understanding. As one of the videos highlighted, VR allows students the opportunity to ‘step inside’ and explore DNA, diseases, viruses, etc. to gain further insight. Teachers would also have the opportunity to ‘add’ content that further supports and facilitates student learning. It would seem that the prospects would be unlimited to teachers and students. I also see that VR provides the chance to better engage students in their learning. This is obviously a concern for educators and science seems to be a subject where teachers have great concern regarding the engagement level of their students. A further exploration of the topic seems to indicate that VR can greatly help to shorten the learning time for students. Here is a link to one article:
https://unimersiv.com/why-virtual-reality-should-be-used-in-the-classroom/
Yet, I think that Virtual Reality also lends itself quite naturally to other subject areas. Imagine the possibility for students to use VR to immerse themselves back in history to an important moment in time. Students could have the chance to see and ‘feel’ what a particular time was like. How do people interact with others? What values were particularly present during this time? What issues were prevalent? What activities did people have in their lives? What about in areas like mechanics? Students could use VR to build or repair cars and other items before actually working on real ones. There are so many ways that VR could work in different subject areas.
I think that students could benefit from VR goggles like those that were invented by Michael Bodekaer. Students would have the ability to perform experiments that may be impossible to do in a typical classroom, due to costs or availability of supplies/equipment. Will the VR lab be as good or as authentic as the real lab? Well, that depends on the quality of the VR lab itself. I believe that VR can allow for experiments that would be difficult to conduct otherwise. It could remove the ‘impossible’ that real-world situations would not allow for.