Meta wants to push it's VR tech into schools

[rousseau]

https://www.axios.com/2024/04/15/meta-quest-vr-headset-school-education-apps

"We accept that it's going to take a long time, and we're not going to be making any money on this anytime soon," Nick Clegg, president of global affairs at Meta, told Axios — in an interview conducted remotely using Quest VR headsets.

Everyone, everywhere: our kids are suffering from unprecedented mental illness and social problems, we need to de-digitize schools and help them learn again
Meta: what we need to do is give them VR headsets!

It looks like Meta's created a high performance culture, where everyone in the company is afraid of speaking out against these terribly stupid, unethical decisions.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Zuckerberg went all in on VR.

VR is a kind of like 3D. It keeps popping up here and there, but it can't get over 1) being a gimmick and 2) having no viable use.

 

[Playball40]

I think some VR lessons would be amazing. It would make teaching history so much more interesting if immersed into a VB version.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I think some VR lessons would be amazing. It would make teaching history so much more interesting if immersed into a VB version.

It'd be awesome, but it'd be expensive! Science, history, even literature. But you'd need to produce it.

 

[rousseau]

I could see a VR version of history being a problem as in most cases we don't actually know what the virtual world looked like, and would be making best guesses based on what we do know, which could make it highly misleading. History is an academic subject and contemplation of known facts about the past, which is largely what students of the field are taught. You need an emphasis on books and reading material.

And this is the problem with VR and educational tech. It's technology looking for a use case, with no proven ability to actually teach students anything. We need to tread very carefully before we let this stuff inside schools.

I could also imagine a scenario where kids become so used to immersive and digitized technology, that it kills their ability to focus on reading (which is where learning actually happens).

 

[Jarhyn]

I could see a VR version of history being a problem as in most cases we don't actually know what the virtual world looked like, and would be making best guesses based on what we do know, which could make it highly misleading. History is an academic subject and contemplation of known facts about the past, which is largely what students of the field are taught. You need an emphasis on books and reading material.

And this is the problem with VR and educational tech. It's technology looking for a use case, with no proven ability to actually teach students anything. We need to tread very carefully before we let this stuff inside schools.

I could also imagine a scenario where kids become so used to immersive and digitized technology, that it kills their ability to focus on reading (which is where learning actually happens).

To my mind the best application of VR is in teaching math, because much of math is about visualizing motion. To my mind it would allow introduction of trig concepts much earlier.

 

[ZiprHead]

I've seen commercials touting the use of VR for training and practicing skills. Welding, for example.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I've seen commercials touting the use of VR for training and practicing skills. Welding, for example.

Fundamentally, I see just the VR headsets as of almost no educational value. Where they become valuable is when they're paired with sensors to allow integrating that projected image with other things. Both for visualization (walk through the plans to get a feel for them) and for training for things that don't have much in the way of tactile requirements (your welding example--use a real target and replica of the welder, let the system show what would have happened from your actions.)

 

[Jarhyn]

I've seen commercials touting the use of VR for training and practicing skills. Welding, for example.

Fundamentally, I see just the VR headsets as of almost no educational value. Where they become valuable is when they're paired with sensors to allow integrating that projected image with other things. Both for visualization (walk through the plans to get a feel for them) and for training for things that don't have much in the way of tactile requirements (your welding example--use a real target and replica of the welder, let the system show what would have happened from your actions.)

Largescale visualization and virtualized constructive spaces are pretty invaluable.