With distance learning giving us a taste of the future, what will the future of education actually look like?
With the school year winding down, and districts everywhere attempting to plan for what next school year will look like, it may be a good time to think about what the future of education will be. While distance learning gave us a taste, there is much to be improved before we can say that the future is now (some suggestions can be found here). There is no doubt that whatever is next, it will be technology based, but I am not ready to throw away the traditional classroom environment. With that in mind, could virtual reality be the future of education?
Virtual Reality has been the mythical golden goose of technology for almost thirty years (yes it is that old). In the 1990’s it was introduced as the future of video gaming and could be experienced in select shopping malls. It provided the user with a blocky but immersive experience into another world that in no way would be confused with ours. The hype was immense and the complete disappearance of the technology made it feel as simply another failed gimmick.
VR was just another forgotten novelty of the nineties, up there with Hypercolor shirts (google it), until the technology was revived by Oculus through a Kickstarter campaign in 2012. Oculus has since been bought by Facebook, and the technology has some gained some traction through the existence of VR for Sony’s PlayStation and headsets for phones like the Samsung Gear VR. A dead technology that has been revived and now has a somewhat firm grip in the gaming and multimedia markets could be the future of education.
VR and AR (augmented reality) headsets have been creeping into education surely, but very slowly. At their core a VR headset is a computer screen (and computer) that is worn on the head and the user will see whatever is playing, and as they move so does the image. Right now they exist as little more than a gimmick, a different fun way to introduce a classic topic. A 360 degree video can be played in the headset and the user can look around the video as if they were experiencing it firsthand. With some changes, this gimmick can be an immensely powerful tool.
What does a traditional classroom environment provide that the distance learning setting does not? Immersion in an academic setting, peer interactions, visual stimulus, audio stimulus etc. Now let’s go back to those 360 degree videos, what if instead of a video, it was a live stream complete with audio? A teacher could set up a traditional classroom with a camera at each student’s “desk” and a monitor for them to see their students’ work. Live human beings replaced with a 360 degree camera and monitor. The students will have the ability to look around the room and see what the teacher intends them to see, and the teacher can still see what the student is working on. This virtual presence is entirely possible.
Sure there are challenges, this isn’t’ a fix for right now, it is a fix for the future. How would the students see each other and not other cameras? How can the teacher see the student and the work at the same time? We may need another jump or two in technology to have a whole classroom of students interacting virtually, but we are not that far away. It is possible, right now, to have a 360 degree camera live streaming to a VR headset giving a single student the feeling of being in the classroom; that is doable. Now we need to find a way to replicate that experience for a full classroom. The future is just that, but in our rush to figure out what’s next, let’s not lose sight of what works, the traditional classroom should not be left behind just yet.