Isolation. Unreal. anti-social. Introverted. All words that you may have heard about virtual reality. The negative stigma of digital technology, especially immersion technology, can be hard to overcome. The introduction of how to emotionally and socially interact with technology didn’t really come with an instruction manual. Bad habits became mythology, such as screen time and violent gaming. But is there a way back for immersion technology to provide solutions to life’s problems instead of contributing to them?
The answer is absolutely. Virtual reality is a new way to collaborate with others despite geographic barriers---whether for education, or personal connection. Watching movies with a loved one deployed around the world, pairing two classrooms on opposites side of the country to tackle solutions to world problems, or attending virtual conferences with perspectives from all continents represented should be enough to put out the isolation myth. Though in an unreal environment relationship building, strong connections and real world impacts start inside of us. Virtual reality has become a facilitator of the impossible that ripples into the tangible. In February of this year The New Yorker released an article entitled “Limiting Your Child’s Fire Time: A Guide for Concerned Paleolithic Parents.” Limiting fire time, having a set room in the cave where fire time occurs, and committing to non-fire family time, are all tongue-in-cheek criticisms that parallel the modern screen time debate, and being a newfangled technology, virtual reality also falls under this scrutiny. However, virtual technologies are becoming more sophisticated everyday. The rules are changing. And the new rules are being forged by those willing to trailblaze through the fire and highlight the benefits, regardless of misplaced blanket statements of technology use without understanding the impact on each individual. Companies and educational entities are starting to realize the impact cutting edge technology can have not only on education, but society as a whole. Conferences such as ISTE are bringing together some of these trailblazers, from business and education. In this episode we will provide guidance to be a trailblazer yourself by focusing on ISTE VR prometheans: educators, vendors, and companies that are coming together in one place to share ideas on immersion technology. Whether it is sessions, playgrounds, or social networking, we hope you find a recommendation to fan your immersive sparks into flames.
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We live and work in a time where technological advances are moving as fast as the speed of light. As an educator, it is our duty to adapt and evolve at a comparable speed to keep our strategies relevant, and engage the current generation of learners. This looks like checking our twitter feed and notifications for the newest app or strategy. Spending our personal time collaborating with colleagues across the world. Creating podcasts like this to share insights and ideas. To become better versions of ourselves and fulfill our paths so our students may due the same.
Reid Hoffman, a serial entrepreneur and author of The Start-Up of You, has a podcast episode where he talks about living life in permanent beta. That the ‘you’ right now is the best version of yourself at the moment, and we should continue to be a work in progress, building meaningful networks, and learning new skills to increase our value. This couldn’t be more true for the 21st century educator. Furthermore, teaching students to navigate digital realms and take part in meaningful collaboration through problem solving is at the heart of modern pedagogy. Technology has become intermingled with the art of teaching, and has become the arteries to deliver content, assess learners, and ease some of the load and accountability that weigh on the shoulders of teachers across the world. The internet has made this possible by making the world a little smaller with tools like Skype, Gsuite for Education, and social media, allowing us to tackle even the biggest of ideas And now we have VR.
In episode two, Steven asked you to “imagine the possibility of constructing new outcomes with “artificially intelligent virtual interaction” and joked he made that one up. I found out today that this capability actually does exist from Cathy Hackl, futurist and arvr content creator, and it is being called Reactive AI.
Again. The future is clearly now, and we have to continue to live life in BETA by BETAing this newfangled technology in our classrooms---by grabbing vr by the headset and finding ways to provide our students access and involvement beyond google expeditions, and beyond vr consumption. By providing feedback to developers on what these tools should look like, so we don’t recreate some of the same educational problems in the virtual reality that we have in reality. In reality our students can be anything. In virtual reality our students can experience anything….
Let’s look at how we can not only bring VR experiences to our students with the technology that exists now, and shift them to the role of creator.
References
https://www.vrs.org.uk/virtual-reality/history.html https://ecorner.stanford.edu/podcast/live-life-in-permanent-beta/ https://lethbridgecollege.ca/events/merging-realities-event-multiple-perspectives
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