Monday, March 7, 2016

Education, immersed in the world of virtual reality – El Universal

After years of development, in a few weeks the company Oculus VR, which belongs to Facebook- be finally released their lenses Rift virtual reality. Until now, these were only available as a prototype and to a limited audience.

The launch goggles for Sony PlayStation 4 console and the viewer Live HTC also joined. And is that if everything continues, 2016 would be the year when virtual reality was consolidated as an increasingly massive tool, ranging from entertainment to education.

“It’s a technology specially suitable for teaching because of its ease to capture the attention of students by immersion in virtual worlds related to the different areas of knowledge, which can help in learning the contents of any matter, “says Carolina Concha, scholar career Education at the University Mayor and specialist in information and communications technology.

This is because virtual reality is a digital representation of an environment. It is accessed through displays that put a screen in front of the eyes, allowing the user to observe at 360 °. The content then surrounding the person: if we look to the front a house, turning the head to the sky are likely to see is clouds. If you look down, the screen shows the street on which simulates standing.

“The advantage of virtual reality is that students can live the experiences in first person and not just reading information on a blackboard or viewing pictures. just imagine how different it is to tell you about how big dinosaurs were, versus feeling that you are standing next to each other and to dimension that size, “exemplifies Benjamin Oto, mobile solutions specialist Samsung Electronics Chile.

the technology company developed Gear VR lenses, which have their own content platform and educational applications to download. Among them is The Body VR (it helps to understand the functioning of cells in the blood), Speech Center (simulator presentations with virtual public, focused on learning to lecture) and The Night Café (which can take a tour of the various works of Vincent Van Gogh).

Greater impact

the idea of ​​virtual tours also took Google, which through Expeditions tour application allows public attractions using your lenses Cardboard. Thus, downloading the program you can stroll virtually sites as diverse as the Great Barrier Reef, Machu Picchu and Buckingham Palace.

“Expeditions are collections of panoramas virtual reality, with annotations details, points of interest and questions, which can be integrated easily into the curriculum already using schools, “says Florence Bianco, manager of Corporate Communications Google for Latin America.

” One of our priorities is to create a repository of diverse content that is unique and challenging. to achieve this, we are working with a wide range of institutions, including museums, planetariums and art galleries “explains about the program, which, for now, only works in schools in eight countries, including the US, Australia, UK, Brazil and Denmark.

“it is still hard to think that learning experiences in virtual reality they can spread massively. However, there is no doubt that we are at the beginning of the massification “believes Fernando Valenzuela, president of Cengage Learning Latin America, company educational solutions.

” The biggest challenge is not happens to have access to these platforms and devices, each more accessible day, but by the proper design and implementation of a learning experience that allows students and teachers to extend and increase the impact of learning, “he adds. for example proposes that teaching about culture a virtual application is used to show students how they lived.

to do this, set the stage Reto Hultún where a journey is experienced at cenote Hultún in Yucatan. There users can find animal bones, pottery and Mayan relics, each with descriptive data.

“virtual reality is based on applications where knowledge is retained much more when experienced or lived, when just seen or heard. Even this learning generally occurs implicitly, because we are not aware that they are learning something, “raises Carolina Concha.

 Technology coming from the universidadesEl world of higher education has not been marginalized phenomenon of virtual reality, and several universities are using or asking their students to develop applications around this technology. at the Catholic University of the North, the Engineering in Metallurgy & Mines, besides Geology, experience fieldwork through virtual reality glasses. with them they access a scenario that simulates a crushing plant where the ore is crushed.

“the student gets to know the different parts of the process-the primary, secondary, and tertiary crushing similar to a video game, where it goes through different levels of learning. With these tools, they feel much more comfortable and prepared to perform the actual site visit, “says Carlos Pon, Academic Department of Systems Engineering and Computing.” Students participate more in the classroom, being the more active class “he says.

the application was created within the university and the material used is part of the inventory of the university, which received funds from the Ministry of Education for this purpose.

through the line of student Entrepreneurship its Institutional Development Fund, the Ministry of Education, in 2014, also financed the project four graduate students of Architecture and Informatics Technical University Federico Santa María, which sought to return more real the models that performed the freshmen.

“We entered one of its workshops and occupy virtual reality as a visualization tool of projects were arming. We teach and we model them in three dimensions that could then see them full-scale, taking advantage of the virtues that has to feel immersed within the same project; virtually, could go that they did, “says Eduardo Valenzuela, head of the initiative.

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