Virtual reality became more popular as it got more advanced. Even though it isn’t perfect, it has a lot to offer nowadays, especially in education. People are constantly looking for more effective ways how to learn new things quicker and VR seems to be the next step. But why we should implement VR to schools? Isn’t it “too much”? Or isn’t it kind of unnecessary? Let’s dive deep into this problem.
Humans evolve naturally
First of all, the time passes and as it does, we evolve. We are used to gain and process a lot more information than ever before. When we have a question we can find the answer easily, thanks to search engines. It’s much faster, than looking for an answer in a book. Most of students don’t really like reading books at all. Why? As they got used to find information pretty quickly, they don’t see a reason to spend some time by looking at a long and boring text.
Thanks to AI, which sorts the best results according to keywords we type, we get direct information. But that also means, we became more quick-tempered and we don’t have much temper to look for something for a longer time. In the past, the only source for learning or looking for some information were books. However, we became more dependent on interactive and more interesting things, which is natural, because it helps us to learn faster. And VR can really help with that. For example we can experience things, which would be hard to realise in reality. Even a detailed explanation of the ancient city won’t help students to remember important buildings or statues etc. Because they have seen the material in the text, they can only learn it by the outdated “constantly re-reading and attempting to remember” way. But this type of learning is really useless nowadays and students will literally forget the information right after the exam. And that is not very effective.
Learning by experiencing
But things hit differently when we experience them. How many of us learnt about ancient Egypt, but actually never saw or experienced it before? We could imagine a desert place with some pyramids, but we never saw them, which is quite strange, when you think about it. And if you have visited this place, how did you feel? I believe, that the feeling or expectation was completely different from the first impression at school. VR would be useful for school field trips in places, which are hardly accessible. At the moment we already have technology, which would allow us to visit for example pyramids of Giza. Students can learn about it by living in there for few minutes. It’s easy to forget that VR experiences aren’t real, because our body actually believes it’s in a new place. This feeling engages the mind in a way that is remarkable. That feeling would be comparable to the feeling when we visit the place in real life.
Next, VR can be really useful for work based on practical experiences. Learning how to work in a science lab or making medical surgeries with no danger, that would be possible too. Students would be able to experience jobs, such as being an astronaut, a pilot, a teacher and much more. Distance learning would gain new dimensions. With VR, distance learning tools can put teachers and students together in the same room with digital representations (avatars) of themselves. Teachers could “teleport” into the VR world and guide students through their experiences.
VR would help students overcome problems about understanding the anatomy of our body or about hardware supplies in computers and machines. VR can provide the 3D view of anything we can imagine in every angle (point of view). Learning through seeing things how they look in reality is something, we should be focused on. It is very effective and easy to understand.
Unlocking innovation and accessibility through VR
Overall, learning through VR is the future. It’s an innovative way of learning new things, which will be more effective and advanced. It will help us to understand problems more. We can start today. The technology already exists, but it’s mostly expensive. That’s why we should focus more on availability of innovative education for everyone.
Google has already made a project with VR, which is affordable and quite powerful. Have you heard about Google Cardboard? It’s a VR headset made of cartoon with two special lenses. And all you need is a smartphone with an application, which supports Cardboard. Google has one official app, which you can download on both iOS and Android devices. Also YouTube supports watching videos using a Cardboard, which is an interesting experience even more in 360°.
Even though it has some cons, for example wearing the cartoon headset is uncomfortable and looking to a smartphone few centimeters from your eyes is also painful after some time, it’s a great start to develop something useful, fun and innovative.
Summary of the biggest VR advantages for education:
- Experience places in the world
- Distance learning
- Practical experiences
- See things which are hard to imagine or understand
Boosting creativity