Virtual story worlds and game engines aren’t just for video games anymore. They are now tools for scientists and storytellers to digitally twin existing physical spaces and then turn them into vessels to dream up speculative climate stories and build collective designs of the future. That’s the theory and practice behind the MIT WORLDING initiative.
For many years, schools and universities have had to change the way they work and teach in order to fit in with technology.
Software like PowerPoint, for example, which has long been used as an education tool, wasn’t designed for education. Nonetheless, it has been a staple tool in education settings, used as a way to present information in template, bite-size formats.
new back-to-school ritual seems to have taken root in technology circles, as each fall we speculate on whether (and how) education technology will transform the traditional classroom experience. I’m going to join the melee by weighing in on virtual reality’s potential. Despite a number of recent virtual reality (VR) developments, the 2016-17 school year is unlikely to be the time when VR becomes ubiquitous in classrooms across America. I’ll discuss the reasons why and reflect on the VR industry’s potential to break into the education sector.
The first project from the Holospark VR studio The Impossible Travel Agency, which both aptly describes the experience while encapsulating the promise of the medium. VR can take you to places you could never go, and when you’re standing on a mountaintop as a manta ray-like creature flies past and an otherworldly ritual unfolds all around, you realize just how powerful virtual reality can be.
