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Oculus Rift CEO Says Classrooms of the Future Will Be In VR Goggles
jyosim writes "Oculus Rift isn't just for gaming. Brendan Iribe, CEO of the VR company, says the immersive tech will be "one of the most transformative platforms for education of all time." In an interview with Chronicle of Higher Education, he imagined laser-scanning every object in the Smithsonian for students to explore, and collaborating in shared virtual spaces rather than campuses. "The next step past that is when you have shared space, and not only do you believe that this object is right there in front of me, but I look around and I see other people just like we see each other now, and I really, truly believe that you’re right in front of me. We can look at each others’ eyes. If you look down at something, I can look down at the same time. And it’s every bit as good as this. And if we can make virtual reality every bit as good as real reality in terms of communications and the sense of shared presence with others, you can now educate people in virtual classrooms, you can now educate people with virtual objects, and we can all be in a classroom together [virtually], we can all be present, we can have relationships and communication that are just as good as the real classroom," he says.
In other news, a spokesman for gun maker Smith & Wesson said today that "gun ranges are the classrooms of the future." Film at eleven.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
I am fairly uncomfortable with the thought of "one of the most transformative platforms for education of all time" being under the direct control of private corporate interests. Whose interest lies in maximizing shareholder profits at the expense of everyone else.
Aside from imposing a royalty/licence fee on every user, having platform control indirectly enables thought control in the form of restricting easy access to the mass population. The publication of material dealing with sensitive but important topics such as religion, abortion, gay rights, racism, terrorism, prostitution, child pornography etc can be curbed simply by denying them access to the platform. We are already seeing this happen to a lesser extent with Facebook (deleted posts, banned accounts etc) and Apple store (all forms of porn).
As an analogous situation, imagine if the creation of (text)books was originally patented. The patent holder would then be able to ensure that any textbooks whose contents disagreed with him do not get published simply by denying a licence to the publisher for that book.
"Oculus Rift CEO Says Classrooms of the Future Will Be In VR Goggles"...and people will live out their lives in self-contained tubes.
I swear, when some of these CEOs talk about new technologies for education, you can hear the line from The Hudsucker Proxy in the background ("You know...for kids!").
"we can have relationships and communication that are just as good as the real classroom" -> *facepalms* Drop the Web 2.0 'Social Media' bullshit. "It's a social thing, where you communicate with other people, doing other social things, kind of like a party or something, but using our technology!" -> Someone please kill me, it's the same story every single time. Why not just promote the damn VR stuff for what it can do that RL (real life) can't do? Displaying stuff that can't fit into a classroom, like a tesseract. You have this great technology which can be used to push the boundary of what students are exposed to these days, and these jokers want to use it for a glorified chatroom. Gah!
Actually, that would be a pretty bad idea: https://edutechdebate.org/ict-...
Learning is really not about technology, as soon as pen, paper and books are available.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
This should finish off the job of not educating a good portion of the population. Between not being able to 'VR' into the class because the internet bill couldn't be paid, to the VR helmet being broken/used for video games instead, to even less 'classroom discipline' [kids actually paying attention to the teacher], to the biggest one, chiefly even less social interaction between kids.
Sure, some kids can successfully learn this way, but not a lot.
And rich kids parents know it's all about connections while growing up, so they will still bundle them off actual schools.
But I can totally see that 'inner city' schools will be forced to spend billions on this technology, and it will be sold to the public as 'giving the poorest children the biggest hand up". And teachers of those schools will generally be for it because it means far less stress in class trying to get children/teenagers to pay attention without being able to discipline them [they will just cut of any student that bothers them] and it makes it that much harder for the students to knife the teacher.
So, this is really a 'win' for America. Spend billions of dollars to help the poor, by giving that money to several large corporations, then shove it out into the poorest schools and forget about it.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
This could be excellent for distance education. A virtual classroom for those people who simply cannot get there.
Or in the situation where the teacher has the best view and you and everyone to see that. Imagine being able to watch, from the exact perspective, in stereoscopic a master surgeon at work.
Physics - awesome!
Chemistry - awesome
Biology - awesome
But I think he's wrong on some many issues. From the summary:
Why? That's like looking at a single car from one country and claiming an "education". Think REALITY. The students could see HOW the objects were created. What tools were used. Who crafted the item. What the society was like that required it.
They're called "chat rooms". Wanna "cyber"? Porn is NOT the same as education.
Looking at other students would be a distraction.
Why does it matter that you see avatars looking at the same point that you are looking at?
And he keeps going on about that. For him it is all about "seeing" other "people" (really just avatars) so it can be the same "experience" as real life.
That's stupid. They are not people. They are avatars. And knowing how people are, their avatars would be designed to be as distracting as possible.