Virtual Reality (VR) has been a fairly interesting subject during the last few years, as it’s only begun to develop in earnest. It began with the Oculus Rift, and then Sony and HTC threw their hats in after seeing how much traction Oculus got on Kickstarter. Oculus had a fantastic Kickstarter campaign, raising, through 9 522 backers, $2 437 429 dollars. Soon after, Sony came in with the Playstation VR, and HTC soon after with the HTC Vive.
Suffice to say, VR is a rapidly expanding market with gamers. But what about educators?
One VR device that seems to be tailoring itself more to businesses is the Microsoft Hololens. The Hololens is less about gaming and fun, and more about replicating the experience that has been seen is so many movies thus far. You know when you’re watching a movie, and there are holograms everywhere, like in Iron Man or the Avengers? That’s what Microsoft is trying to replicate.
As seen in this short video (taken from the homepage of the Hololens), the Hololens is much more about professional use, and could see huge value in giving more realistic examples to people. Using a device like this, you could give opportunities to practice something like…say, a surgery. You could use the Hololens to replicate performing surgery on someone. The applications of a device like this are incredible.
In the classroom, a Hololens could be used extensively to give more realistic examples of practices. I, personally, am the kind of person who has a hard time picking something up, but when I’ve got it down, I’m usually good from then on. The Hololens could be used to practice activities before actually doing them, and that, I think, is one of the more practical applications.
Of course, this is only speculation up until now. Virtual Reality has come a long way, but it needs to keep going before it’s really picked up. Once it gets there, though, I believe it’s a technology that can be used by everyone, not just educators.
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