Educational VR: The Irony of it All
The stout and trendy presence of virtual reality these days
leaves me with a hefty sense of irony. (Please look at the last two week's post
for an introduction to this series.) I am struck by the incongruity of
the past and the future colliding in an uncomfortable way. I am describing
something we’ve seen before—when we were pushing for 3D visualization tools in
the classroom from 2010 through 2015. Virtual reality is all the rage
today, but in the past, things didn’t look quite so bright. Though the
technologies are really quite similar, something has changed. Here's my third effort at ironic sentiment:
Complaint: 3D
makes some of my students sick.
Educator response to
3D (5 years ago): “How do you expect me to use a tool that makes students ill?”
“How do we explain this to parents?” “My teachers are getting sick, too.” “We
just can’t do this, sorry.”
Educator response to
VR (today ), although VR makes even stronger visual demands on the
student: “I don’t care, this is so transformational, i.e. really sexy!” “No,
none of my children appear to be sick [even though I haven’t really asked
them].” “Where can I buy this for my school and classroom?”
Ain't it ironic???
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