[skizm]

You know what's funny? I actually think Ready Player One nailed the only use case that might be a game changer for VR: remote schools. You can just make all learning materials virtual. VR school means no physical real estate, buses, cafeterias, bullying, janitors, you can cut like 90% of support staff, the list goes on. Also if you divide people by location (like we do now) you can still coordinate field trips and/or social events that I'm sure parents and nay-sayers would claim are lost with virtual schools.

Honestly I think if we had the right software we could do remote schools effectively right now. The largest barriers are going to be (as always) legislation, bureaucracy, and cultural. I mean companies still balk at remote workers, I don't see governments jumping at remote teachers and students any time soon unfortunately.

[Animats]

Ready Player One nailed the only use case that might be a game changer for VR: remote schools.

Edison thought education would be the killer app for the phonograph. Zworykin thought it would be the killer app for TV. The One Laptop Per Child people thought it would be the killer app for laptops. The tablet people thought it would be the killer app for tablets.

Education doesn't seem to be a technology problem. Would Udacity or Coursera be better with VR? Probably not.

[dragonwriter]

> The One Laptop Per Child people thought it would be the killer app for laptops.

No, they didn't.

They thought laptops would be a useful enabling technology for a particular model of education, but did not think that education would be the killer app for laptops (a product that was so we'll established by that time that thinking about it even needing a "killer app" at that point is senseless.)

[sbierwagen]

http://pages.ucsd.edu/~bgoldfarb/comt109w10/reading/Kraemer-...

>Negroponte seems to question whether teachers are needed at all. Speaking about providing the rural poor a solid educational basis for development at the 2007 Digital, Life, Design conference in Munich, Germany, Negroponte said: “It’s not about training teachers. It’s not about building schools. With all due respect [to Hewlett-Packard’s e-inclusion efforts], it’s not about curriculum or content. It’s about leveraging the children themselves.

>David Cavallo, OLPC’s chief education architect, says, “We’re hoping that these countries won’t just make up ground but will jump into a new educational environment.”

The OLPC people thought they were going to cause a literal, actual revolution in learning. Didn't happen.

[cr0sh]

This may be OT and a bit ranty...my apologies:

I can't speak for Coursera, but Udacity would be much better if they didn't continue to muck with the platform as you are taking the course.

Seriously - things break all the time, then get fixed, etc; last big thing that happened - and I don't know exactly why, but it had to do with a large update to the site and course system I think - a big chunk of people from the second cohort (of which I am part of) in the Self-Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree - lost access to their original mentor. That might not sound like a big deal, but it kinda was. Then, to get access restored, you had to email one particular support address, that was only posted about (IIRC) in a Slack channel.

By the time I realized that the problem was more widespread than just a simple "service interruption" like everything else and emailed the support about it, they had already assigned the "max number" (whatever that is) of people to my original mentor that I had been communicating with and using since I started last year; I was reassigned a brand new mentor, who knows only what he sees about my progress, and nothing about the other communication and help I had from my former mentor.

It's a bit frustrating, but I'm adjusting to it as best as possible - I'm certainly not going to let it stop me from completing the course (still going strong in the second term, just finished the second project of the UKM and now working towards the localization project) - but I'd rather have a stable platform to work with, especially since I am spending so much money on the course.

/sorry about the rant

[skizm]

I mean we're getting closer. More and more colleges are offering online degrees.

[return0]

> a game changer for VR: remote schools.

A great advantage of VR compared to other interactive learning environments is that it eliminates all distractions and forces you to focus on the subject. I believe it could also lead to revival of MOOCs. We first need cheaper, lighter, no-hassle headsets.

[fudged71]

Yes, until users have the expectation of their phone and other distractions are part of the VR experience. Maybe we'll call it AR.

[bpicolo]

What about the barrier of 1:1 interaction being important? Certainly schools only scale so far on that front.

And probably kids aren't going to just be left home alone all day. That's a very big logistics problem on a country-wide scale.

[goatlover]

So when the parents go off to work, they just leave their kids at home alone to don their VR headsets? Which naturally kids will use to learn and not play games or watch movies.