There are many ways technology today is impacting our education system. One of the most advanced and interesting pieces if technology used in education is virtual reality. Using this technology in education allows for teachers to do more than just tell students about things like ancient ruins, it allows the students to actually experience them. Virtual reality bring new experiences to the classroom that students won’t forget and they will definitely pay attention. “Kids love to engage with [VR] lessons,” said Guido Kovalskys, chief executive and co-founder of US-based edtech company Nearpod. “One minute, they are learning about Roman history, and the next, they are transported to ancient Rome and are exploring the Colosseum.” In the last 2 years, almost 6 million students have experienced lessons involving virtual reality.
Education technologist are not saying that virtual reality should replace all learning. It is better to teach somethings in the traditional way. But for some lessons, virtual reality can teach students much more than just a video could. VR is becoming much more affordable which allows more people to have access to it. I think in a few years VR will become something available to students across the country and be used often by teachers.
Kennedy, Emma. “Can Virtual Reality Revolutionize Education?” CNN, Cable News Network, 1 Nov. 2018, www.cnn.com/2018/11/01/health/virtual-reality-education/index.html.
I agree that virtual reality can lead to an absolutely amazing experience for students. The ability to basically have a different field trip every day to a new part of the world in order to learn about the history of that place, would have seemed like a crazy idea in the past, but due to the advancements in technology and virtual reality, this has become much more realistic. I do agree however that elementary school kids overusing the systems may create a problem. It might be better to focus this technology in an area of much greater need. Using virtual reality to help students with autism has had great success recently. The program allows teachers to understand exactly what the student is focusing on. This is especially important when working with autistic students who have limited verbal skills. This program is then able to simulate much more realistic situations and help teach autistic students how to handle and react in the situation. I agree that virtual reality can revolutionize education, but I think its important to focus on what area needs it first in order to prosper greater into the future.
Source: https://www.freethink.com/shows/superhuman/season-3/using-virtual-reality-to-help-kids-with-autism
As we all know, the improvement of technology actually provides us with more methods to get access to what we should learn. A lot of technology stuffs are making our classes more vivid and help us learn the class contents more quickly and clearly, like the virtual reality mentioned by the author. People always say that interest is the best teacher for us to learn. The technology stuffs offer us more interests to some extent, which make students eager to learn, not pushed by teachers and parents, which can probably increase the teaching efficiency.
However, I have a concern. We all learn a lot about the technology so we might notice that technology could be distractive. Students certainly enjoy the learning process but actually the knowledge behind the new teaching method is the final goal. I am a little worried that students might ignore the knowledge itself, just caring about the technology. Based on my own experience, once I had a course which asked us to play a computer game to get the knowledge but I found it was more difficult for me to concentrate on the lesson without traditional teaching method. To be honest, I love the game but after playing the game, I could hardly remember anything from the lesson because there was no knowledge system. To be more specific, there was not a relationship among the concepts we had to learn, like “ontology” we learnt in the class.
Thus, I think that the traditional teaching method actually has its advantages that should be continued. Maybe the new technology can help us take in the knowledge we have learnt but has difficulty helping us learn some completely new information in my eyes.
I agree with having virtual reality in education and i think it can greatly improve our education system in the United States. But too much can hurt us and we have to be careful with when we use it. Especially at a young age, elementary school kids through middle school will use virtual reality as a toy than as an educational tool. I believe it would be better to use virtual reality at universities. At a university you can more use out of a virtual reality goggles but maybe using it for simulations when it comes to surgeries, putting together an engine, architectural designs, etc. I love the idea of using virtual reality in education but by using it too much right away might have students losing focus of why they are actually using these. Overall, Virtual reality is expensive so it is probably not in the best interest for elementary schools and high schools to buy them. But for universities and even past college, VR should be used, VR should not only be used for fun but for education too.