Page 39 - Campus Technology, June 2017

COMPLETE GUIDE TO VIRTUAL REALITY
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CAMPUS TECHNOLOGY | June 2017
CT: What are a few of the education values institutions have found in their experimentation within or across these categories? Does any one of the four categories have particular potential right now, for higher education?
Bowen: Perhaps the area having the most impact for education in the near term is 360 video. As we discussed earlier, it’s probably the most accessible and the easiest to understand and create.
One of the opportunities 360 video offers is that it unhinges what I might term the single perspective. When you watch a normal video with a group of people, you are all seeing the same thing onscreen. So in your group’s discussions fol- lowing the video, each member of the group would share their own perspectives, but the group would all have viewed and be commenting on the same thing. With 360 video, because each viewer can look where they want to in the same movie, any two people from the group are likely to have completely different experiences of the movie. From an education perspective, this raises a whole new level of discussion. The differences in viewers’ experiences can create conflicts that can become great points of conversation.
Another opportunity we have with 360 video is in its creation. Because it’s relatively easy to produce, we can begin to enable students to work together in groups to create these videos — and to collaborate around an emerging form of media.
Additionally, there is an important value in offering students a way to access places and environments they would normally find difficult or impossible to explore. For example, at PSU we have a professor who is studying coral reefs. He is currently in the U.S. Virgin Islands using a 360 video camera to capture the reefs he is studying. You could imagine the logistics of sending students on a field trip with him — but of course he can fairly easily share his experience with students through the 360 video
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