Meta to Redefine Learning Through Virtual Reality
By Movieguide® Contributor
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to change how children are educated through virtual reality headsets.
Per CNN, “Later this year, Meta will launch new software for educators that aims to make it easier to use its VR headsets in the classroom. The tools will let teachers manage and program multiple Quest headsets at once, give them access to a range of education-related apps and provide greater oversight and control of how students are using the devices.”
“You will be able to teach biology and chemistry without having to have a fully equipped laboratory in the future,” said Nick Clegg, Meta’s President of Global Affairs. “You will be able to walk the streets of Ancient Rome with students.”
For those concerned about students’ safety in the Metaverse, Clegg reassures, “we are building these tools so it is entirely controlled by the teacher.”
“It’s not controlled by us [Meta]. It’s the teacher that decides whether the headset is used. It’s the teacher that decides what the content is on the headset. Students won’t be able to access the Meta Quest store. They won’t be able to access social media apps and social experiences on the Meta platform,” he told NPR.
The company already has several education-focused VR partnerships in place.
VictoryXR offers “immersive classrooms and campuses through virtual reality that allow students to interact in a synchronous yet virtual environment.”
Prisms VR focuses on math education. It aims to “radically improve student achievement by teaching students mathematics, spatially, through hands-on problem-solving before connecting to symbolic notation.”
Immerse helps students learn new languages.
However, some researchers feel we shouldn’t bank on the new technology for education.
“I think that (VR) is one area that really would benefit from having some additional research. With technology, sure, it can have a lot of promise, but at the same time, it can also be a lot of hype, and I think it’s important to rigorously evaluate these types of technologies…sometimes you don’t know if it’s just flashy and innovative and cool versus actually impactful,” Vincent Quan, education researcher and co-executive director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, stated.
Movieguide® previously reported on Apple’s venture into the VR space:
Apple announced its augmented/virtual reality headset, Vision Pro, during its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on Monday.
“Built upon decades of Apple innovation, Vision Pro is years ahead and unlike anything created before – with a revolutionary new input system and thousands of groundbreaking innovations,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said. “It unlocks incredible experiences for out users and exciting new opportunities for our developers.”
The headset will start at $3,499 and will release in the U.S. in early 2024. The Vision Pro runs on a new operating system, VisionOS, which Apple says was “designed from the ground up to support the low-latency requirements of spatial computing.” The headset has been in development for seven years.
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