Friday, April 18, 2008

VR in Education

VR in Education:

I do think virtual reality, VR, and the 3D web have some place in a Kindergarten through 13th grade education. I think it’s important for classrooms to experience all that is available to them to help them to become well prepared with the constant advances in technology. After researching and reading about these different forms of technology I find it very important to incorporate them in a regular classroom. It would be a very nice change of technology for the teacher and the students and would allow their knowledge to expand. I was browsing the web and found a really cool website that you could virtually browse an art gallery, which I thought would be very entertaining and exciting for an art teacher who was trying to show different artwork to his/her students in a new, technological way. The website is: http://www.enjoeydesigns.com/. I don’t think the 3D web and virtual reality should be taken lightly, but if a teacher finds something that pertains to a subject in her class or feels would be beneficial to the students he/she has the right (if given the “okay” by the principal) to show their classroom.

As far as the safeness goes I think a lot of time and research is needed on the teacher’s behalf. You don’t want to just browse a particular virtual reality site and bring it up in class and it consists of false facts and inappropriate information. I am sure that there are many inappropriate 3D websites, which may become a problem when researching. The researcher needs to be mature and if for some reason a virtual reality assignment is given to the class make sure their parents know that they are accessing the web and get their permission, as well as making sure the site they are doing this assignment on is appropriate.

I think it depends on the educator when it comes to justifying spending that extra time away from the typical curriculum in order to learn how to interact in a virtual world. If the teacher thinks it’s in the best interest of her students, as well as themselves. If they have the extra time and energy and find the cause to be worthwhile I think that if the teacher feels the need to incorporate it and really want to they will make the time to learn about it and make it happen. In my opinion if something, such as 3D web or virtual reality, was really important to bring to the classroom I think I would go at any lengths to make it possible.

VR could definitely be a fad, as much technology is, but I think that there are a lot of new on-line courses that VR would be useful for when teaching a course. For example, Sean, instead of power points Virtual reality could be used to walk us through important information in this course. As for right now I prefer power points, they are simple enough and almost anyone can make them, not to say that I am not willing to try new things but I am much like if one thing works why complicate it. Although I could be bias because I am not very good with technology! J Sometimes people get caught up in the next best thing; VR could just get overlooked by something else. I think it is a new and innovative way to teach things and could be very beneficial to some classrooms and courses and should definitely be looked at. I can only imagine how VR and 3D web will change overtime, but I do think that with the growing technology VR will only get more popular with time.