Monthly Archives: October 2016

How Will Learners Create Their Own Content in Virtual Reality

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When talking to educators about Virtual Reality, the big question I always run into is “how can my learners create their own content?” This is a good question. If we don’t get our learners into the creation process, we are really just creating fancy textbooks and lectures, or slightly more immersive movie experiences. Interesting but passive in the end. There are some ways to use newer high-end phones to record 3-D panoramic images with apps like Panorama 360 or InstaVR. But these aren’t moving, and you need some serious sound equipment to re-create immersive sounds. Projects like Jump from Google are looking at how to work on these issues. But even then you are looking at recording the world around you, bringing in limitations. How does one create content for games, fiction scenarios, historical re-creations, etc? It seems that Google is also looking into this with the Daydream platform (see also the video above). Still very rudimentary, but a good start. Someday we can hope that building VR will become as easy as placing a box of crayons and paper in front of learners and letting them create whatever comes to mind.

Are We About to See Virtual Reality Go “Mainstream”

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Virtual Reality seems to be everywhere I look now in technology news. Does this mean that VR is about to leap from “cool futuristic idea” to “mainstream tool that most people are familiar with”? We will see. Just in the past week alone: Sony Playstation finally released their long awaited VR headset and suit of games (with reviews not always being that glowing), Occulus Rift released a pair of controllers (that did earn glowing reviews), Walmart started selling a headset/controller combo that turns your smartphone into a VR device for $19.98 (made out of plastic instead of cardboard), and a VR model was used to convict a Nazi War criminal. The real educational potential will be more in allowing learners to design their own experiences in VR, from creating 3-D models that they can then walk around virtually to designing and releasing various games and simulations.

Visualizing Wearble Data: Is It a Good Idea?

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iFuTaqD4fM

Finding ways to visualize wearable data is sometimes a tough challenge. How exactly do yo visualize physical attributes when the meaning of those numbers are different for each person? Then there are the ethical considerations of what should you be displaying and where you should display it. So this article about displaying stress levels for everyone to see seems more concerning than intriguing (see also the video above about bio-wearables). Anyone that has used a stress monitoring device of some kind knows they are not always accurate. But even when they are, would you really want that information broadcast to people around you? Maybe you would, maybe you wouldn’t – we are probably all different. But there is also the very real concern of people that could see you are stressed and take advantage of that. Which I realize already happens without technology, but the concern over what data is being collected and who it is available to is a huge one to grapple with.