VR Educatin'

 With school being on the forefront of many discussions lately, including within my own household as we are dealing with a fakedemic and a 5 year old who was supposed to be going into Kindergarten this year... I've been seeing stories popping up about VR Education... this was something I thought about a long while back that I just wanted to revisit... well, because i'm bored.

First I read a story about some teachers using Half Life: Alyx to teach students... although I don't know why, since there are plenty of dedicated VR classroom type experiences that aren't a Single Player game... (I didn't read the whole article) but still the concept fascinates me...

The basics of the VR Education concept, in my opinion anyway, is that it is a great way to replace learning from books... I still believe an actual teacher is still necessary to guide students on the path as to answer questions and make the knowledge digestable... but many subjects could benefits immensely from VR.

The biggest one that jumps out at me, and already has a good number of apps/experiences out there, would be History! Followed along by Science, Geography, and Social Studies... imaging that instead of reading about a historical event and trying to follow along paragraph after paragraph, you instead are AT that historical event... with the possibility of freezing time to explain details, answer questions, etc... it would be much more memorable than just reading through a book. 

Science and Geography as well, since these are largely visual and/or experimental subjects... have a VR lab with simulated chemicals, or take the class through outer space to take a closer look at the milky way... on the way back down to earth, fly over the continents and identify each of them.

The possibilities are truly endless... most, if not all subjects could benefit from VR... I just really like the History aspect and get kind of interested in thinking that students can actually travel with the pilgrims on the Mayflower, or watch the signing of The Constitution, or be in the crowd watching Martin Luther King Jr's "I Have a Dream" Speech... again, this is stuff that would be truly memorable. 

The technology still has to catch up a bit... although The Quest is taking things in the right direction, since it is wireless and a bit easier to use and set-up than PCVR. The units will still need to get more powerful, lighter and cheaper... and those things aren't a matter of how, just a matter of when. I will say within a few years...10 at the most, VR headsets will be a part of the classroom... or they will BE the classroom...