Page 37 - Campus Technology, June 2017

COMPLETE GUIDE TO VIRTUAL REALITY
EXPLORING IMMERSIVE MEDIA IN THE CLASSROOM
As technologies such as virtual reality, augmented reality and 360-degree video become more accessible and affordable, educators are tapping into new opportunities for teaching and learning.
Bowen
“People have been using immersive media for a very long time. Think back to when you were a kid peering into a View-Master — one of those 3D devices many of us played with.”
By Mary Grush
What is making virtual reality, augmented reality and 360 video more accessible for faculty and students, and what does that mean for teaching and learning? Penn State University Director of Education Technology Kyle Bowen talks about the evolution of immersive media in higher ed.
Campus Technology: We’ve certainly been hearing a lot about immersive media — virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality and 3D video. How would you characterize where we are now, with immersive media?
Kyle Bowen: People have been using immersive media for a very long time. Think back to when you were a kid peering into a View-Master — one of those 3D devices many of us played with. Even something as simple as that gave us our introduction to the experience of exploring cities, towns
and scenery through an immersive medium — and “visiting” places that we did not have access to otherwise.
As immersive technology continued to evolve over time, so did our ability to create even more immersive experiences, and over the years we saw the development of various 3D, virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality technologies.
Where do we stand now? The opportunity we have now is that we can begin to innovate on top of all that and create, with even better virtual and immersive tools, experiences that challenge our established ideas of immersive media and take us far beyond what we can experience in “real” physical environments.
If we look at where we are regarding our current efforts, we see a lot of experimentation going on, in many different disciplines and fields, using a wide variety of immersive technologies.4
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CAMPUS TECHNOLOGY | June 2017