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

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.

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?

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.

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.