VR can be used for educating and helping students with special needs. Instead of visiting museums or looking at pictures of famous sculptures, art students can observe these artworks in great detail by manipulating and moving them around through VR apps. Students can build and design their own constructs or recreate historic sites. Read also: What VR Platforms are Best for Game Development?Īrt, design, and architecture can be more easily learned with the help of virtual reality. Platforms like Viar360 can provide future mechanics with a clear interactive visual of a car engine from all the angles while sitting in the classroom. Afterward, during vocational training, virtual and augmented reality will help them too.
Students may use VR simulations for a better understanding of what careers are interesting for them. Virtual reality education apps have the potential to impact many professions. The same goes for time travel back to significant historical events such as Washington’s Inaugural, Pearl Harbor, Dunkirk, or the Viking Age.
OCULUS RIFT VIRTUAL REALITY HUMAN ANATOMY PROGRAM FREE
Somewhat similar is the Discovery VR app which allows users to dip into time, history and space via immersive 360-degree videos, ‘from shark-infested shipwrecks to free boarding the curviest street’. It’s a virtual Solar System tour with highly accurate visuals with loads of facts narrated by a guide. Titans of Space claims to be better than a trip to the planetarium. The Expeditions VR app also allows users to create their own virtual field trips. Students can now easily visit the Louvre or Mount Everest or explore tornadoes or beehives from the ease and relative safety of the classroom. For example, Google Expeditions offers tours created by leading institutions across the globe. They use Oculus Rift to ‘shrink’ students learning human anatomy to microscopic size, allowing the students to “roller-coaster” through the human body with a simultaneous tour guide narration.Īnother possibility involves field trips to places difficult to visit in the real world due to logistical and safety concerns. The J and K Virtual Reality Learning Center at the Western University of Health Sciences has been using an innovative VR-based curriculum model since 2015. Soon, doctors and students will be able to create models and test theories and scenarios that they cannot done in the ‘classical way’ using cadavers. With VR, surgical training improved by providing realistic simulations for many types of surgical procedures. Human anatomy is a difficult subject, and in best-case scenarios, students may have the chance to practice surgeries once on a cadaver prior to performing an actual surgery. Because of highly accurate virtual models, VR provides the opportunity to educate and train high-quality specialists in the most complex fields, ranging from technical maintenance and to medicine.įor example, VR apps already significantly enhance the safety of medical studies. One way to leverage the capabilities of virtual reality in education is to simulate things that are hard, impossible, or dangerous to do in real life. Read also: Guide on VR Training Simulation DevelopmentĪ Few Ways to Use Virtual Reality in Education This article will provide, what we hope are, some convincing examples of delivering educational content in new exciting ways through the power of VR. Many people are used to the old ways and are skeptical when it comes to something new and high-tech. Others may be slower at seeing the benefits of virtual reality in education. They see the potential and are ready to continue. Previously, Oculus had teamed up with California State Library and research institutions of MIT and Harvard in attempts to ‘better understand VR’s potential impact on learning outcomes’. Taiwan decided to use VR headsets in libraries and museums, Japan will explore the possibilities of remote education, and Seattle Public Schools are developing a VR creation course. They work with local organizations to provide VR headsets so that educators and students can explore ways to use them in educational settings and see how beneficial that is. For example, in August 2018, the company launched Oculus Education pilot programs for Taiwan, Japan, and Seattle.
Oculus VR is moving in that direction as well. Technological solutions like Google Cardboard may not be perfect, but still more engaging than textbook pictures.
A few years ago, when virtual reality was becoming increasingly affordable, ideas about using it in education began to emerge.