Marc Zuckerberg tried
the Oculus Rift headset, was blown away and bought it for a staggering $2
billion. It’s a pure tech buy as Oculus has no customers. What Zuckerberg saw
was more than gaming. What he saw was the breadth of possible applications, one
is education.“Imagine…. studying in a classroom of studentsvand teachers all over the world - just by putting on goggles in your home.”
Some of us are now working to make this a reality.
1. Sex swap
Hundreds of millions are spent on often useless classroom
and e-learning equalities, sexual harassment and diversity training. We now
have the chance to allow you to swap gender or race, seeing the world from
their point of view. I played around with this using a female avatar in Second
Life – it was a harrowing experience! This crazy experiment shows us the way.
You will, literally see and feel what is like to be someone else. If you think
this is crazy, the artist Mark Faird will spend 28 days wearing the oculus and
seeing the world through another person’s eyes. Watch video here.
2. Tank training
The Norwegian Army have rigged up the Oculus Rift to four cameras
around the tank to feed in scenarios, and other map data, to allow drivers to
drive tanks with the hatch down. This is just one of a number of military
training programmes using the Oculus and VR, tradition users of expensive VR will now see prices plummet. Others examples include medical triage. Watch tank video here.
3. Social care
Caspian Learning, funded by the University for Industry,
have produced a Social care training programme, where you literally learn
within a 3D model of a care home, dealing with the residents (avatars). You
also see the world through their eyes (blurred). It trains, assesses and tracks
competences with a full set of analytics that shows progress and proven
attainment in each competence.
4. Construction
One more solid training programme from Caspian Learning and
Ufi, on training people in retail. Caspian are also doing a health & safety
programme on construction sites. You enter a site and have to choose the right
gear for the right jobs. If you don’t, accidents happen. This stuff allows you
to experience the consequences of your action, do the impossible – through safe
failure.
5. Physics
Do you know Newton’s three laws? Try the Spacewalk, where
you don a spacesuit and navigate, using small jets on your suit around the
International Space Station. Squirt your jet and you move forward, that’s
newton’s 1st Law – every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
. Sounds simple, but most people are surprised that even when you turn the jet
off, this is space, so you continue moving forward. That’s Newton’s 2nd law - very
object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion
unless an external force is applied to it. How dis the Space Station get up
here – that’s Newton’s 3rd law – F=ma. Watch video here.
6. Biology
The undersea walk allows you to do the impossible – walk
across the sea floor to Teach geography, geology or biology. Teach the food
chain as you walk beneath beneath a humpback whale and shark. Encounter a
hydrothermal vent shooting out superheated water at 400 degrees centigrade. Watch video here.
7. History
This is a shocker. It’s 1793 in the middle of the Reign of
Terror and you’re about to be executed. Experience this for real, as you get
your head chopped off on the guillotine. You literally lean forward and see your head drop into the basket. When do you think the last execution
using the guillotine took place in Fance? 1977! Watch video here.
8. Field trips
Harvard have been using VR to create field trips and I don’t
just mean, the usual trips to the country to look at plants. In this case you
can visit the Great Pyramids in Egypt for some real archaeology. Museums, art
galleries, geographic locations, battlefields – you name it, the oculus will
not only take you there but allow you to explore at will and learn things in
context. Watch video here.
9. Dangerous
environments
Makemedia has built this Oculus application that allows you to build a nuclear reactor. It uses the Razer-Hydra with Oculus Rift to allow you to do things within different components, lift, insert, attach etc. The Razer-Hydra provides the learner with a pair of virtual hands to pick up and insoect each component of the primary circuit., such as reactor core, steam generator and pressuriser. This manipulation of objects, along with real haptic feedback will greatly improve many vocational training tasks. Watch video here.
10. PTSD
Conclusion
What we will see is some quite serious ‘learn by doing’ VR education and
training. These programmes will have clear learning objectives, with clear
competences, tasks and goals. AI driven avatars will provide interaction with
people. We’ll also see support for teachers, trainers and tutors. VR is a
medium, not a gadget – a learning medium.
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