Digital Literacy for St. Cloud State University
http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2016/06/three-interesting-studies-on-virtual.html
Construct3D: a virtual reality application for mathematics and geometry education.
On the usability and likeability of virtual reality games for education: The case of VR-ENGAGE.
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more on VR in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=virtual+reality
Five Ethical Considerations For Using Virtual Reality with Children and Adolescents
G+ link https://plus.google.com/+TessPajaron/posts/8YYgjoPrQvq
In an address to the VRX conference in San Francisco, noted game developer and tech wizard, Jesse Schell predicted that over 8 million VR gamer headsets will be sold in 2016. Facebook purchased Oculus Rift, presumably laying the groundwork for a future where friends and family will interact in rich virtual spaces. All the major players, including Microsoft, Sony, Samsung, Google and an HTC and Valve partnership are jostling for the consumer headset market.
Experimenting with VR in his classes as part of a project piloted by Seattle-based foundry10, a privately funded research organization that creates partnerships with educators to implement, research and explore the various intersections of emerging technologies and learning, including VR..
And the technology’s potential for good is vast. It has already been used to help with autism, improve personal financial management, treat PTSD and manage pain. More and more news outlets, including the New York Times, are adopting immersive journalism, where news stories can be experienced through VR.
As an educational tool, VR might prove transformative. Google Expeditions allows students to take over 100 virtual journeys from ancient Rome to the surface of Mars. It might also have a big impact on social emotional learning (SEL), as VR’s unique ability to produce empathy recently led Wired magazine to explore its potential as “the ultimate empathy machine”. Addressing a persistent anxiety, Suter used Samsung Gear’s Public Speaking Simulator to successfully prepare a few nervous students for class presentations, reporting they felt “much more calm” during the live delivery.
Ethical Considerations
In a recently published article, researchers Michael Madary and Thomas K. Metzinger from Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany review a series of ethical considerations when implementing VR. The illusion of embodiment may provide VR’s greatest value to education, but also lies at the heart of its ethical implementation. Madary and Metzinger believe that VR is not just an evolution from television and video game screens, but a revolution that will have an enormous social impact. In their paper, they claim that:
VR technology will eventually change not only our general image of humanity but also our understanding of deeply entrenched notions, such as “conscious experience,” “selfhood,” “authenticity,” or “realness.”
It’s important to remember that many current VR uses in schools, like Google Expeditions, are not interactive VR, but simply 360-degree video experiences. In these cases, students experience immersive 3D pictures or panoramas, but do not deeply interact with the content. The illusion of embodiment is a product of interactive content and motion tracking, where users can alter and affect their environment and engage with others who share their virtual space. Headsets like the Vive and Occulus Rift fall under this latter category, but it won’t be long before most, if not all, consumer oriented VR technology will be completely immersive and interactive.
1. Long-Term Effects and Prolonged Exposure
2. The Impact of Environment on Agency and Behavior
3. Aggravating Preexisting Psychological or Emotional Issues
4. (Un)Reality and Diminished Real World Interactions
5. Privacy and Data Gathering
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more on virtual reality in this IMS blog
By Michael Hart
In the research project led by Ph.D. candidate Gabriel Culbertson, 48 students were recruited to play two versions of the game. In one group, students were connected via a chat interface with another player who could, if they wanted, offer advice on how to play. The second group played a version of the game in which they were definitely required to collaborate on quests.
The research group found the students in the second so-called “high-interdependence” group spent more time communicating and, as a consequence, learned more words.
The research then expanded to a larger group of 186 Reddit users who were learning Japanese. After reviewing gameplay logs, interviews and Reddit posts, they found that those who spent the most time engaged in the game learned more new words and phrases.
The Cornell research team presented its research results at the Association for Computing Machinery Conference on Human-Computer Interaction in May in San Jose, CA.
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more on games in this IMS blog:
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=games
more on virtual reality in this blog:
More on virtual reality in this IMS blog:
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=virtual+reality
more on storytelling in this IMS blog:
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/07/virtual-reality-future-oculus-rift-vr
More on Oculus in this IMS blog: https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/?s=oculus&submit=Search
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141124162926.htm
UCLA neurophysicists have found that space-mapping neurons in the brain react differently to virtual reality than they do to real-world environments. Their findings could be significant for people who use virtual reality for gaming, military, commercial, scientific or other purposes
http://www.livescience.com/49021-virtual-reality-brain-maps.html
a new study in rats shows that the virtual world affects the brain differently than real-world environments, which could offer clues for how the technology could be used to restore navigating ability and memory in humans.
Per Google Scholar:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=brain+and+virtual+reality&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ei=KvCMVKrHPIaayATNjYKADA&ved=0CB0QgQMwAA
Avoiding making people sick is one of the key struggles in producing VR games. Developers large and small have said games need to be made in new ways to protect players from motion sickness.