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Ariella
Ariella
6/1/2017 10:00:45 PM
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Re: New things for Virtual Reality
@elizabethv that's an excellent idea!

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JohnBarnes
JohnBarnes
5/31/2017 10:36:57 PM
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Platinum
Re: A redefinition of learning
ElizabethV,

Well, because by definition, virtual is not real, and the connection to the real is what matters. The fetal pig (or for that matter the cat or the corpse) exhibit difficulties to understanding and identification that the simulation simply can't, and finding one's way through the difficulties is where the real learning takes place.  It's the same reason that Masterplots or Spark Notes aren't the work, or that Virtual Rome in an Italian-learning program is not Real Rome, or that the quadratic solver on almost any graphic calculator doesn't teach anything like as much as the classroom "solve this four ways" exercise does.

There are plenty of good uses for VR -- but the virtual road has to lead to a real place, ultimately.

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elizabethv
elizabethv
5/31/2017 5:15:45 PM
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Platinum
Re: A redefinition of learning
@JohnBarnes, I personally have a Master's Degree in History, so my understanding of the intricacies that exist in the field is fairly exstensive. That said, you don't start with every little detail about what was going on from the English perspective and all the other building blocks that eventually led to the Revolutionary War in 4th grade. In fact Paul Revere's ride (the poem you refer to) might just be used to help build an interst in the story, even with its historical innacuracies. You have to get kids interested if they are ever going to want to know why those living in America didn't want to be taxed and why the crown ruled them in the first place. For these kinds of things VR could stand to be useful. They shouldn't completely replace all historical learning, but it wouldn't hurt for me to have a few more kids interested in my ramblings-on. 

As for science, I fully believe it should be used to replace disections. I refused to participate out of principlel in disections and never understood why there wasn't some computer program that could have taken the place of the fetal pig on everyone else's desk. 

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JohnBarnes
JohnBarnes
5/30/2017 10:23:49 PM
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Platinum
Re: A redefinition of learning
ElizabethV,

Except that a student who has had the VR experience may very well mistakenly believe they've had the Real Reality experience, with all the possibilities for dismissal and overconfidence that that entails. Also, to a great extent, abstract information in far transfer is used actively and is more general (if you understand how to apply the right equations for how momentum and friction affect the motion of a car on a road, you also understand all sorts of other things from hockey pucks to avalanches). Seeing Paul Revere make the ride he never made (he got caught; Samuel Prescott actually carried the word to Lexington and Concord, but he didn't rhyme nearly as well, so Longfellow gave the credit to someone who did rhyme well) is going to be more vivid and entertaining, sure, but how much of the underlying structure of things will the student get? (This is the chronic war-story problem; the privates are doing all the interesting stuff, the generals (sometimes/sort of) know what's going on, and it's very hard to follow both privates and generals at the same time).

Seems to me like we're about to have an all-subjects replay of the battle that happened in science classes 30 years ago over replacing experiments with simulations.

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elizabethv
elizabethv
5/30/2017 5:30:56 PM
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Platinum
Re: A redefinition of learning
@JohnBarnes - exactly! VR offers the students a chance to go beyond rote memory of any one topic and potentially experience it. Rather than reading about Paul Revere's ride, you could potentially take the place of a man on the street watching Paul Revere ride. Thinking or even feeling what it might be like to have existed at the time our country was born. With VR the ability to make education much more enjoyable for all truly exists. And the more information at-risk kids can retain, and even work to apply, the better chances they have in the future. Especially since at the moment, most of those kids tend to feel like education and the entire system just isn't for them. 

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elizabethv
elizabethv
5/30/2017 5:24:31 PM
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Platinum
Re: Education
@freehe - without a doubt those problems all exist. I personally work with kids who face most if not all of the problems you listed. Still, VR could be extremely beneficial for kids and the educational structure as a whole. A big focus now is that not all kids learn the same way, and they're finding a fair number of kids learn kinestetically. That means they learn by doing, and VR would certainly allow kids to learn that way. This would be particularly useful for kids who might have a learning disability, or even ADD or ADHD as it would promote learning while allowing them to be phyiscally active. Just because the other issues exist doesn't mean you can't also work on fixing other problems in the classroom. 

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elizabethv
elizabethv
5/30/2017 5:20:53 PM
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Platinum
Re: New things for Virtual Reality
@Ariella - brilliant! It could potentially also be used for drivers training courses after someone gets a ticket while driving. Test the skills of the ticketed person again before sending them back out on the road. 

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JohnBarnes
JohnBarnes
5/29/2017 9:09:45 PM
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Platinum
A redefinition of learning
To use a favorite phrase of mine, and I don't think it's a good thing or a bad thing necessarily, but it's definitely a thing.

A huge part of the deutero-learning or metalearning in education has always been how to get information out of "cold" sources (texts and lectures) and apply it to the world around you. It's what educators call "far transfer of learning," meaning getting from reading a description of a bobolink in a book to recognizing one in the field, or solving a problem in an engineering textbook about a bridge rocker and later looking up from underneath an overpass and seeing one doing its job.

Another component has been the difference between teaching for mastery (the student knows and gets what's in a primary text, e.g. can attend a performance of Lear and understand everything that's happening) and teaching for recognition (the student knows Shakespeare wrote King Lear, it's supposed to be a great play, and it has {list of events from SparkNotes} and {list of "Important Quotes"} in it.

Normally far transfer learning and teaching for mastery have gone together.

VR learning is apt, I think, to simultaneously tip those balances in opposite directions, and that is something really new. The student will see the bobolink or the bridge rocker in the virtually real world first, with maybe an AR diagram imposed on it to clarify what s/he should see. But the student will be just seeing it, not using the information in any real way. So it will enhance far transfer and also de-emphasize teaching for mastery.

Whole different kind of learning.  As for why that matters, well, listen in while Robin Williams explains it to Matt Damon.

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mpouraryan
mpouraryan
5/26/2017 10:15:10 PM
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Platinum
Re: New things for Virtual Reality
For the record, they are Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Alphabet (Google) & Amazon--I look forward to your insights on it.

 

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ms.akkineni
ms.akkineni
5/26/2017 8:46:39 AM
User Rank
Platinum
Re: New things for Virtual Reality
@mp:

I have heard about this Newyork Times thing. But didn't get to explore so not aware of much insight. Will try to get more details.

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