Page 18 - THE Journal, April/May 2017

FEATURE |IMMERSIVE EDUCATION
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| APRIL/MAY 2017
“Seeing is believing,” said Colin Messenger, a senior market analyst
with a focus on education at Future- Source Consulting. Even if the viewing lasts just two minutes with each student, he added, “that’s long enough” for the experience to stick.
However, anybody who has watched the education segment for any length of time also knows that the initial “cool” factor isn’t enough to sustain the market. Last year’s NMC/CoSN Horizon Report on K–12 education gave VR two to
three years to hit the tipping point. As a recent FutureSource report noted, a big question is whether this new technology can be integrated deeply enough into
the curriculum and help achieve specific learning outcomes in order to drive mainstream adoption.
Virtual Results with
Staying Power
What will that take? User pull is one component, suggested FutureSource. Teachers need to be clamoring; otherwise, it’ll continue to be a product in search
of a market. Practically speaking, if VR
down. Right now, just a few vendors such as BestBuy and NearPod have developed kits that include everything a teacher might need to use VR in the classroom. These are expensive; a 10-student kit from BestBuy is $3,999; a 30-student kit is $9,999.
Another aspect needed to ensure success of VR is an ample supply of education-tailored content. This is an area where a number of companies are jumping into the opportunity. Google, for example, has worked with hundreds of partners to produce more than 500 separate Expeditions, group VR experi- ences that have a “guide” who leads and “explorers” who follow. Users plunge into these immersive environments using the low-cost Cardboard viewer powered by a smartphone that can run the Cardboard app. Google helpmate YouTube has nearly 300 VR videos posted on its site, though they’re just as likely to be non-education oriented (such as, “Sunsets for Sale — the first Virtual Reality Infomercial!”).
Mainstream media operators have also embraced the potential. Publishers such
with Microsoft to create applications for “mixed reality” content that will run on the Redmond company’s HoloLens.
Streaming education media company Discovery Education has expanded its in- tegration of VR into its Techbook digital curriculum line. A techbook opens just like a “normal book,” albeit on a screen and with one other difference, explained Discovery Ed’s Hall Davidson. When the student clicks on a picture on a page, a video might start up to explain the topic in that format or the student may be
able to do a 360-degree pan of the scene using the mouse to look around. If the student is wearing a Cardboard outfitted with a phone and an app or a high-end headset running from a computer from Oculus or HTC (which makes the Vive brand), the view will be from his or her perspective. A turn of the physical head will translate into a turn of the head inside the environment.
Davidson, a senior director of global learning initiatives who speaks frequently on the topics of VR and AR, said the results for teaching can be “astonish- ing.” He pointed to Lockheed Martin’s
Mainstream media operators have also embraced the potential. Publishers such as the New York Times and USA Today are
experimenting with VR to immerse readers — who could just as easily be students — into stories being covered.
and AR require “onsite demonstrations” to make sales, the channel that typically sells into education will struggle to main- tain margins for these kinds of products. What they want to identify is reoccurring revenue. It will be like the early days
of classroom computing, when schools could barely justify purchasing laptops for teachers. Only when large purchase orders were on the table for outfitting whole classrooms or grades did the K–12 market suddenly command real attention among device makers, forcing pricing
as the New York Times and USA Today are experimenting with VR to immerse readers — who could just as easily be students — into stories being covered.
Textbook publishers will be “very prominent” for bringing education content forward, said Chris McIntyre-Brown, as- sociate director of professional equipment for FutureSource. “There are a lot of subtle nuances to how it rolls out in schools.” Pearson and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt have joined up with Google in its Expedi- tion work, and Pearson is also working
“Generation Beyond” initiative, powered by Discovery Ed, which takes classrooms on online field trips to learn about deep space exploration. One tour shared Lock- heed Martin’s VR space, which has saved the company millions of dollars in the building of spacecraft models before the actual vehicles are constructed. “They used to do it with plywood. Now they do it with a computer,” he said. Designers create the models in software, put on a headset, pick up virtual tools and work on the vehicle that way. “You don’t want