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.

Comments

why?

[Karmashock]

Why does the classroom of the future need to be VR? I would think the typical computer monitor would be sufficient.

Re:why?

[sunderland56]

Why does the classroom of the future need to be VR?

So that your teacher can be a smokin' hot babe? In every single class?

Re:why?

[gweihir]

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.

Re:why?

[davester666]

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.

Re:why?

[pitchpipe]

Having a smoking hot babe as a teacher has been show to increase focus and attention span, at least in a study I did of myself. Although I don't remember if I learned anything.

An Unbiased Opinion, Eh?

[NotSanguine]

In other news, a spokesman for gun maker Smith & Wesson said today that "gun ranges are the classrooms of the future." Film at eleven.

Transformative Platforms!

[Anonymous Coward]

List of transformative, disruptive, game-changing, paradigm-shifting technologies that have changed education forever:

1) Radio
2) Televison
3) Language Labs
4) Personal Computers
5) Laptops
6) Tablets
7) Second Life/Virtual Worlds
8) Gamification
9) Eight-Track Tape Recorders

Thanks to these transformative platforms, the classroom of today is nothing like the ancient classroom of Rome or Greece, or even the quaint antiquity of the early twentieth century. Education is completely different now! No more reading, writing, and arithmetic: thanks to transformative platforms and gadgets, kids have no need for such lessons! And it's all thanks to visionaries and other CEO's who haven't seen the inside of a classroom since their childhood.

Re:Transformative Platforms!

[Anonymous Coward]

I taught for a while in the early 2000's. We had to do inventory every year, and our department had a number of giant boxes that incorporated speakers, amps, and eight-track players. No one knew how to work them or if they even worked, and no one remembered ever having any eight-track tapes to play in them, but we had the machines in pristine condition. They'd been moved from the old school building to the new one in the late 90's and kept in the teachers' workroom, and we doubted anyone had touched them in twenty years. After much wrangling, some of us convinced the department chair to let us asset-transfer them back to the school system's central warehouse; we gained an invaluable amount of storage space from the deal.

One aged teacher had 16mm filmstrips. His chair wouldn't let him transfer the filmstrips from his inventory, even though he had no projector for them -- it had broken back during some Presidential administration I probably didn't remember. He said the students had never learned anything from the filmstrips anyway.

Every year the system would buy more clutter that wasn't actually useful for teaching, just for looking good for having new technology. Once the technology isn't new anymore, it finally becomes licit to tell the truth: that the filmstrips and record players never really helped the kids learn to read or add and subtract. The cheapest things -- pencil and paper, chalk, books -- were the most effective tools, because they gave practice. The rest was just inventory, or rather it became inventory once the next fad came along and the hype surrounding the previous fad had faded enough that we were allowed to think that it wasn't the silver bullet that would magically teach the students in place of practice and human interaction.

The worst use of VR ever

[rebelwarlock]

Yes, let's strap on VR goggles all day for classes which aren't enhanced in even the smallest way by VR. Hell, why stop there? Keep them on constantly. It'll be great when grocery shopping.

I truly hope not

[Camael]

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.

Re:I truly hope not

[Harlequin80]

That would surely depend on whether the platform was closed to content. I could be very wrong here but I thought the Occulus was merely a way of viewing content not in anyway controlling what the content is.

In the same way that an iPod can be filled with MP3s directly or via the itunes store means Apple doesn't control the content. It can control whats on iTunes but that is a different thing to controlling what is on your iPod.

I guess I see it as someone having the patent on LCD screens (which I'm sure there is). They don't control what you see on the LCD.

Right...

[DivineKnight]

"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!

Bad for developing brains

[kheldan]

Wasn't there a news story some time ago that said research was done that shows that children a certain age or younger should not play 3D games because it screws up the development of their brain? Also mod Oculus Rift CEO down for being as biased as they come.

VR is still pointless.

[Seumas]

All the goggles are accomplishing is wrapping an image around your face. Until touch, movement, smell, and sound are also adequately reproduced, it's not virtual reality anymore than the Hard Drivin' arcade machine from the 90s was. And replication of those elements are not coming in our life time; likely won't come until we've figured out a way to trick the brain into doing the work for us.

Also -- holy shit, the pink eye this is going to cause. Gross.

Distance Education

[Harlequin80]

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.

Some classes would be AWESOME!

[khasim]

Physics - awesome!
Chemistry - awesome
Biology - awesome

But I think he's wrong on some many issues. From the summary:

... he imagined laser-scanning every object in the Smithsonian for students to explore ...

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.

... and collaborating in shared virtual spaces rather than campuses.

They're called "chat rooms". Wanna "cyber"? Porn is NOT the same as education.

Looking at other students would be a distraction.

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 youâ(TM)re right in front of me.

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.