For years, the world of education has existed within a strict set of parameters. As much as educators want differentiated learning for their students, they have only so much time and so many resources at their disposal. They can only reach the student during the school day. Furthermore, a teacher has to teach within the constraints of their classroom, using the physical tools at hand like books, desks, pencils, and whiteboards. The environment in which teachers operate is static.
Or is it?
For a growing number of educators, the option to leverage technology to change the entire paradigm of teaching is here. Virtual reality (VR) is fundamentally flipping the education model on its head. Here’s how.
Helping distracted students focus
We have all been in a classroom at one point or another. There are the other students around you, the fly buzzing by the window, the clock ticking on the wall, your best friend trying to get your attention from two seats over — a myriad of distractions that can make learning difficult, even for the most well-intentioned of students. Even worse, attention-deficit disorder (ADD) is a growing challenge, with over 6 million students diagnosed with ADD, according to the most recent data from the Center for Disease Control. For these students, the distractions are even more of a hurdle.
Virtual reality is a way of blocking out all of those distractions. When a student wears a pair of VR goggles, they can see the environment only as it is presented. It’s just them and the teacher or the experiment or the homework assignment. Furthermore, VR introduces an entirely new set of rules for interaction. Rather than just counting the apples printed on a 2D image of an apple tree, they can reach up and pick each apple from a virtual tree as they count them. The ability to attract, capture, and hold a student’s attention is vastly different than in traditional teaching.
Exploring the world in new ways
Virtual reality is also changing the way that students can explore — and opening up new options for everyone. Field trips have long been used as ways to help students learn in more hands-on ways and give opportunities to take learning outside of the classroom. But logistically, they are difficult. There are additional associated costs, which many cash-strapped school districts can’t afford (and passing the costs onto families can also prove challenging). Transportation is hard to coordinate, and increased concerns about safety and liabilities can give educators hesitation. Virtual reality changes that.
Not only can students experience new environments instantaneously via VR, they can also do so quickly, cheaply, and safely. Even better, virtual reality makes field trip options literally limitless. While the old model maybe allowed students a trip to the local science museum, virtual reality allows learners to travel across the globe — to visit the Colosseum in Rome, to virtually walk the Great Wall, or to look up and see the painted ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
Leveling the playing field
As in many areas of society, unfortunately, education is oftentimes a situation of “has and has not.” In underfunded areas, the opportunities for learning can be severely limited and detrimental to students’ chances at success. Virtual reality helps change this. With just a smartphone and a $6 VR headset, teachers can open up an entirely new world of learning. There are many organizations releasing free VR learning tools, including environments that teach anatomy, biology, astronomy, and much more.
Educating the whole student
With recent increases in school violence, educators have placed an increased focus on developing students’ social skills — things like empathy, acceptance, and kindness. But in day-to-day activities, the opportunities to practice these skills may be infrequent. Virtual reality changes that. By using VR, educators can put students in situations that allow them to practice these “soft skills.” In the sense that “practice makes perfect,” these students are better able to learn how to deal with emotions and react to their environments in healthy and productive ways.
The education field has made huge strides in the ways they use and deploy technology. While some of the technological advances for teachers have been expensive or difficult to deploy, virtual reality is one area where the cost and barrier to entry are relatively low — opening up a new world of learning opportunities.
