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If your subject benefits from a 3d representation at all. I dare to say: most do not, just as most do not benefit from video. I think the real revolution in te

by jlg23 8y ago

If your subject benefits from a 3d representation at all. I dare to say: most do not, just as most do not benefit from video. I think the real revolution in teaching will be when we have enough well educated, well paid teachers. Imagine the level of immersion that could be accomplished with real-time individualized lessons!

shafyy 8y ago
True. And VR allows new school models with a wildly different cost structure than today's. You don't need a physical building, no physicial equipment and geographic location doesn't matter. In addition, because VR makes project-based learning [0] more scalable, a teacher's time can be used more efficiently. These cost-savings can be passed on to the students and the teachers (in the form of higher salaries). All this while improving average the education quality. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project-based_learning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project-based_learning
- lostlogin 8y ago
  This sounds terrible to me. The process of learning, particularly when young, isn’t just about having the information fed to you. It’s about trying, failing and being shown where you went wrong. Quite literally, falling and being helped up. How do you get help diverse problems like handwriting, getting on with others and the millions of other situations teachers help with? Empathy via Facebook sounds bad. A big problem with education in my opinion is that everyone who has been to school sees themselves as a teaching expert. The near-minimum-wage teacher who buy school supplies out of their own pockets, they are the experts. Rant over.
  - shafyy 8y ago
    Completely agree. And my whole point is that you can do that better in VR. Instead of meeting in the real world, meet in VR and learn there together with your friends and teacher.
    - ericst 8y ago
      A big part of learning is also in the social interaction. VR, no matter how good, will just never match that. You don't only need information, you also need interactions, real life interaction... I think VR might help to some subjects, but having an all-VR experience seems an awful thing to me...
      - shafyy 8y ago
        > VR, no matter how good, will just never match that. Why not? > You don't only need information, you also need interactions, real life interaction What is reality?
      - wpietri 8y ago
        I think it's theoretically possible that one day VR might really be as good. But I also expect to be comfortably dead before that happens. I'll note that TV was seen as the future of education for quite a while. And that videoconferencing has been the future of interaction since the early 1980s. The first never worked out. And although the jury's still out on the latter, it's undeniable that a) it's not as good, and b) it's taken a very long time for the technology to be reasonably useful. Historically, people seem to confuse "we don't know what X can't do" with "there's nothing X can't do". Technoutopianism can be useful, in that optimistic people will try things out and discover where the limits are. The current wave of VR is interesting, but it's perfectly possible that it will end up in the same place as 1990s VR: a historically interesting wave of hype that turned out not to deliver much value that couldn't be gotten more easily with other approaches.
        shafyy 8y ago
        Yeah it's easy to point at tech that never worked out. But it's also impressive to look at the tech that did work out and no one 50 years ago would have been able to predict where society is now. It's just more exciting to me to envision a future where VR will work out, and I will keep working on it under that assumption.
        8y ago
chongli 8y ago
We'll never have enough high quality teachers. The more educated the populace becomes, the more demand there will be for ever higher levels of education. Education is a class separator. What matters is relative education, not absolute.
- keiferski 8y ago
  The question is: are VR headsets going to significantly better at education than say, a book?
  - chongli 8y ago
    I'm pretty skeptical of that. Books are great at teaching kids to solve integrals and write essays. I haven't seen any evidence to indicate that VR headsets would help with these skills.
    - CoryG89 8y ago
      VR is just a medium. Why would it not be just as capable at teaching kids to solve integrals and write essays? You may argue that it can't possibly do any better of a job than a book could, but I think it's unlikely that there is anything a book could teach you that a VR headset could not also teach you. After all, you could just digitize the book and read it in VR. Also, it doesn't matter how good books are at teaching kids to solve integrals if 90% of them won't even give the book a chance, but can't wait to get on their headsets.
  - wongarsu 8y ago
    That question is way too broad to be answerable. VR won't be better at teaching you about writing than a book. If you want to teach biology or woodworking VR can be significantly better than a book.
- konschubert 8y ago
  Teachers will be more plentiful and better educated if you pay them a salary >100K and select rigorously.
ramses0 8y ago
https://jig.space/ https://jig.space/ Please try this and come back with a fresh perspective.

by jlg23 8y ago

shafyy 8y ago

True. And VR allows new school models with a wildly different cost structure than today's. You don't need a physical building, no physicial equipment and geographic location doesn't matter. In addition, because VR makes project-based learning [0] more scalable, a teacher's time can be used more efficiently. These cost-savings can be passed on to the students and the teachers (in the form of higher salaries). All this while improving average the education quality. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project-based_learning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project-based_learning

lostlogin 8y ago
This sounds terrible to me. The process of learning, particularly when young, isn’t just about having the information fed to you. It’s about trying, failing and being shown where you went wrong. Quite literally, falling and being helped up. How do you get help diverse problems like handwriting, getting on with others and the millions of other situations teachers help with? Empathy via Facebook sounds bad. A big problem with education in my opinion is that everyone who has been to school sees themselves as a teaching expert. The near-minimum-wage teacher who buy school supplies out of their own pockets, they are the experts. Rant over.
- shafyy 8y ago
  Completely agree. And my whole point is that you can do that better in VR. Instead of meeting in the real world, meet in VR and learn there together with your friends and teacher.
  - ericst 8y ago
    A big part of learning is also in the social interaction. VR, no matter how good, will just never match that. You don't only need information, you also need interactions, real life interaction... I think VR might help to some subjects, but having an all-VR experience seems an awful thing to me...
    - shafyy 8y ago
      > VR, no matter how good, will just never match that. Why not? > You don't only need information, you also need interactions, real life interaction What is reality?
    - wpietri 8y ago
      I think it's theoretically possible that one day VR might really be as good. But I also expect to be comfortably dead before that happens. I'll note that TV was seen as the future of education for quite a while. And that videoconferencing has been the future of interaction since the early 1980s. The first never worked out. And although the jury's still out on the latter, it's undeniable that a) it's not as good, and b) it's taken a very long time for the technology to be reasonably useful. Historically, people seem to confuse "we don't know what X can't do" with "there's nothing X can't do". Technoutopianism can be useful, in that optimistic people will try things out and discover where the limits are. The current wave of VR is interesting, but it's perfectly possible that it will end up in the same place as 1990s VR: a historically interesting wave of hype that turned out not to deliver much value that couldn't be gotten more easily with other approaches.
      - shafyy 8y ago
        Yeah it's easy to point at tech that never worked out. But it's also impressive to look at the tech that did work out and no one 50 years ago would have been able to predict where society is now. It's just more exciting to me to envision a future where VR will work out, and I will keep working on it under that assumption.
        8y ago

chongli 8y ago

We'll never have enough high quality teachers. The more educated the populace becomes, the more demand there will be for ever higher levels of education. Education is a class separator. What matters is relative education, not absolute.

keiferski 8y ago
The question is: are VR headsets going to significantly better at education than say, a book?
- chongli 8y ago
  I'm pretty skeptical of that. Books are great at teaching kids to solve integrals and write essays. I haven't seen any evidence to indicate that VR headsets would help with these skills.
  - CoryG89 8y ago
    VR is just a medium. Why would it not be just as capable at teaching kids to solve integrals and write essays? You may argue that it can't possibly do any better of a job than a book could, but I think it's unlikely that there is anything a book could teach you that a VR headset could not also teach you. After all, you could just digitize the book and read it in VR. Also, it doesn't matter how good books are at teaching kids to solve integrals if 90% of them won't even give the book a chance, but can't wait to get on their headsets.
- wongarsu 8y ago
  That question is way too broad to be answerable. VR won't be better at teaching you about writing than a book. If you want to teach biology or woodworking VR can be significantly better than a book.
konschubert 8y ago
Teachers will be more plentiful and better educated if you pay them a salary >100K and select rigorously.

ramses0 8y ago

https://jig.space/ https://jig.space/ Please try this and come back with a fresh perspective.