As new VR technologies emerge, educators at all levels are finding new applications to augment the classroom experience – and for good reason. VR allows educators to move past pages in a textbook to create totally immersive experiences that stimulate and inspire students.
Imagine a social studies teacher leading a discussion about the Taj Mahal, for example. While educators and students used to be bound to traditional experiences like books, handouts, or PowerPoint presentations–now they can use the power of VR to take virtual tours of the monument, walking from space to space and seeing every detail of the carved stone.
The applications for VR in education are truly endless and open up an entirely new way of learning–with lesson formats that can literally bring students back in time for history class or transport them to different galaxies for science.
However, with VR in the classroom on the rise (and even VR-first schools like Optima Domi entering the market), the introduction of new technology always presents new challenges for educators. Just like we saw with the introduction of laptops in the classroom over the past decade, powerful technology has the ability to greatly improve the classroom experience, but also has the potential to be a burden to manage and is at risk of being abused.
So, what does it take to successfully deploy a VR program in the classroom? Let’s take a look at three key factors to consider:
Teachers need easy-to-use platforms
Most educators do not have the time or the technical know-how to manually sideload apps, manage configurations, update devices, or manually track their location and usage–and even if they did, teachers should not have to be part-time IT professionals anyway. However, these are all things that are necessary in a successful VR deployment, and therefore, schools should invest in fun, simple platforms that do not require technical expertise to manage.