What makes students curious to learn? Is it the pedagogy or the content that puts off students from learning? Terry Heick, Founder & Director of Teach Thought, once said “Like the caffeine in coffee, the chords on a guitar, or the wet in water, genuine curiosity is not a thing, it’s the thing” Not temporarily wanting to know, or being vaguely interested in an answer, but being able to put together past experience and knowledge like the millions of fibres on a network is the key. Can we bring back genuine curiosity in learning?
Education, disrupted like every other activity, be it by online or blended or hybrid models, needs to stay relevant. Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR) class rooms, are the new delivery markers of ever-growing education markets. VR and AR whose genesis is entertainment, over time found applications in everything visual. The fact that the brain tends to remember 10% of what it reads, 20% of what it hears, and 90% of what it does or simulates, drives VR. If applied to education, it can make it exciting and more effective besides possibly weening away the millennials from smart phones. VR essentially available for science subjects, is also being developed for almost all disciplines.
Augmented Reality is used to broadcast 3D emails, create overlays during sports broadcasts, sending out intuitive messages and what not. It is finding its application almost everywhere, so why not classrooms? While primarily focused on the gaming industry, current statistics show that the demand for consumer-based AR products is 33 percent higher than non-augmented reality products.
VR can weave a virtual world around us. It can aid design and modelling 3D, editing, transformation, and testing in virtual environments to progress to qualitatively different levels. VR makes the classic studying process a really fascinating experience. With its help a classroom is not limited to four walls. It is the universal tool to display objects, processes, locations, and historical events, with no language barriers. A big part of investments in VR education is directed towards training medical students and personnel. Different trainee programs are aimed to prepare doctors and nurses, and simulations help practice different clinical cases and improve skills. VR even helps study complex material through practical tasks. Students are naturally engaged by how VR/AR can change the world around them. If VR is dovetailed into blended learning, the learning outcomes can be absolutely phenomenal. In fact, numerous companies are coming up with textbooks encoded with AR possibilities.
Marker images serve the purpose of displaying AR content on or over the surface. Education applications use AR markers linking them directly to the content of the lesson. In fact, Carlton AR books, powered by a proprietary tool ‘Digital Magic’ can make objects come to life and leap off the page. The books are woken using a mobile or tablet one can control, customise, and make the characters life-size, play with friends and share the amazing experience. It can allow virtual travel to explore places all over the world without leaving the classroom or empathise with communities in crisis or experience different careers first-hand or explore the depths of the ocean and the vastness of space or explore within the human body or even allow students to create and share their own VR content.
One can actually bring the faculty to life in an online model of delivery by creating a faculty photo wall, wherein pictures of the faculties are placed on the display board and AR helping students or visitors scan through the images to see them come to life. New vocabulary can be learnt by bringing the words to life. AR can bring changes in the education sector by enabling augmented triggers around the Science laboratory, so when students scan through them, they learn different safety procedures and protocols of the laboratory equipment. Parents can attach augmented trigger images at their wards desk and boost them with a few words of motivation. The possibilities are mind boggling.
AR actually has limitless possibilities and can be an extensive part of profound learning. A Virtual Reality headset has a student-friendly interface, gesture controls, embedded educational resources and simple-to-use teacher controls. Experiential learning as they say, can be created that will expand a child’s thought ability as well as create a learning adventure. A major advantage is that it can delink the marks-based assessment from learning. It can destress a child’s psyche and democratise education.
Have you ever watched Discovery channel’s ‘Discovery VR’ that provides an immersive experience by watching virtual videos of incredible places of our planet or the VR simulation ‘Apollo 11’ that recreates the events of July 1969 Moon landing and where you can control and fly the command module, land the lunar lander, explore the Moon’s surface and even deploy some experiments? A child’s learning experience can only enhance without losing the fun of learning. Imagine teaching a child to draw or to paint. One of the most graphical apps from Google, ‘Tilt Brush’, helps to create art in 3D space with lots of possibilities. By using a wide range of dynamic brushes and variety of interfaces, children and artists can use any virtual space as a canvas to create a real masterpiece and even share as animated gifs.
Education space is the most exciting and challenging of the current century. Technology and hindsight have allowed minds to fly without manacles. It’s not that we don’t know what the challenges are. But their roots sometimes lie largely outside the reach of our schools and colleges or in deeply entrenched educational processes and structures that are difficult to change. A political response is sometimes to focus instead on low-hanging fruit and quick wins and to make changes at the margins where change seems possible. However, real reform and significant progress in improving the quality and equity of education depends on tackling our deepest and most stubborn educational challenges. Designing a 21st-century curriculum, promoting flexible learning arrangements focused on growth, identifying and meeting the needs of children on trajectories of low achievement are all challenges difficult to surmount. Technology has several solutions that one can use. With the costs coming down VR/AR could be a real game changer. Are we game enough for the changing game is the million-dollar question?