Virtual Reality in Education

Emporia State students engaging with Google Earth VR on an Oculus Rift

VR and AR is gaining popularity in education. Kelly Walsh from Emerging EdTech provides a sample of sites that educators can use with their students.

Virtual Fields Trips

• The Arlington Science Focus School in Arlington, VA is using the Oculus Rift to take their students on virtual field trips to places like the the Smithsonian Museum (the Smithsonian actually has a bunch of different virtual tours, using a variety of technologies)
• Titans of Space offers a tour of the solar system, great for some science classes
• Google Expeditions is getting a lot of attention with their growing library of field trips
• Go back to the time to the Jurassic Age (search “Jurassic Age Virtual Reality” to find a variety of apps)
• Another interesting example was college students identifying hazards on a job site using VR, avoiding having to be in a dangerous situation in order to learn

Content Creation

• Gaelscoil Eoghain Ui Thuairisc school in Carlow, Ireland is recreating historic sites with Mission V 3D modeling software
• Drury University in Springfield, MO has been teaching architecture design using virtual reality tools

Special Education

• The Jackson School in Victoria, Australia has been using the Oculus Rift to help students with special needs
• Silesian University of Technology in Silesia Poland is doing therapeutic exercises with autistic students using virtual reality technology

Medical Uses

• UCLA is training neurosurgeons using their “Surgical Theatre” (learn more in this video)
• Chu Angers University Hospital in Europe is stimulating patients brain during a medical procedure
• Case Western Reserve is using VR to teach virtual anatomy (you can do a lot of things with VR that you can’t do with cadavers)

Recruiting
 
Virtual campus tours available on the web are being evolved to work on Augmented Reality platforms. A couple popular platforms for this are You Visit and Georama.
The University of Michigan is using VR to let potential football playing students experience what it's like to experience being on the field in a full stadium.
 
New Pedagogies

• Mendel Grammar School in Opava City, Czech Republic is teaching students about the anatomy of the eye in biology classes with the Oculus Rift
• St. John’s School Boston, Massachusetts is using Minecraft and VR to create immersive experiences
• Penn State University in Pennsylvania is training students to do things in the virtual world as a precursor to doing it in the real world, increasing the efficacy of learning
• University of British Columbia in Vancouver is experimenting with virtual lecture halls