Is Virtual Reality a Good Place for Education?

                                                

We live in 21^st century with a progressively diverse, globalized and complex society. The 21^st century is escorted by drastic technological revolution.  Two or three years old boy may not be able to count, read, or write, but he will be able to play a video game, navigate through an iPad or an iPhone applications, or play on the computer. 

  Education has changed significantly in many areas. It went from pen or pencil and paper to computers and Microsoft Office programs, from the chalk and chalkboard to whiteboard, from face to face classes to distance learning. And now the question that seems to be attention-grabbing and not easy to answer is: what will be the education for the future? Researchers now talk not about only online learning (distance learning), but about something more advance called virtual world or second life. 

Hamlets

Virtual Reality Glove

The term Virtual Reality (VR) may have different meaning for many people. If for some VR is conversation books, movies and pure fantasy or imaginations for other VR is a specific collection of technology such as computers, glove input device, helmet, speakers, and so on. VR can range from simple environments presented on a desktop computer to fully immersive multisensory environments experienced through complex headgear and bodysuits. . In all of its manifestations, VR is basically a way of simulating or replicating an environment and giving the user a sense of being there, taking control, and personally interacting with that environment with his/her own body.

Is this you in the future?

Through various display devices such as helmet and glove input device, data is transformed into 3D images that you not only can see, but also hear or even touch. The users manipulate what is perceived to be “real” objects in the same manner as they would manipulate them in the real world, as opposed to the typing, pointing and clicking you traditionally use to manipulate objects when you interact in other computer environments.

Is this you it he future?

Is this you in the future?

 

The appearance or illusion that is created by the computer program and transmitted by the display devices seem so actual that human brain accepts it as a real environment. You may grab an object with your hands, lift it as you normally lift objects in the real world, and put it down wherever you want it inside the virtual environment. In other words, VR become as real as Real World.

 VR has traditionally been used to train military pilots and tank crews.  In many cases, the trainee steps into a simulator device, which is surrounded by screens that generate a 3-D image completely controlled by high-powered, computerized artificial intelligence. Today, new VR tools allow multiple participants to freely interact with each other in 3-D computerized environment. Training with VR allows large numbers of personnel to interact in a simulated face-to-face environment with other distant military units through the Internet (or through the classified network known as SIPRNET), and with first-responder units, civilians, and even medical personnel units, providing a training experience that is increasingly effective

 Education changed significant for the past few years. Today, we have more and more online classes.  Moreover, the number of online high schools, universities and colleges rose too. Often is possible to see or hear ads about online universities that became more popular for the past few years such as University of Phoenix, Kaplan University, American InterContinental University, and so on. However, the sifting from tradition education did not stop here. Today, researchers are taking about something more advance such as learning in virtual reality. VR was used until now for gaming, for social purposes such as chats, and military, but today VR is entering the education world. The use of VR technology for education purposes is still in the beginning stages.

So do you think that is possible? Could this be dangerous for society?  Or Could be this a solution for  some social problems?