Education Technology | Future Technology 500

Hologram Technology for Classrooms of the Future

Oct 112020

The coronavirus pandemic has brought several challenges to our lives. And in order to address those troublesome circumstances, people have started making the best use of the latest technologies. One such example is hologram technology by professionals in Texas.

In order to create a safe classroom environment for students during the Covid-19 pandemic, they launched a creative solution of beaming the professor to the classroom in the form of a hologram.

The McCombs School of Business at Austin recently established a connection with a Contextual Content Group in Austin, and they created a brand-new 3D immersive video solution for the intuitive learning experience. This new system combines hybrid, in-person, and online teaching experiences to deliver interactive, engaging, and valuable distance learning experience.

Joe Stephens, the director and senior assistant dean at McCombs School of Business, recently said in an interview that the teams here were eager to make the digital learning experience much better. He revealed that authenticity, curiosity, tenacity, and enterprise are the four pillars of the system at McCombs, and they took the initiative to utilize these pillars more creatively during this pandemic.

The Recourse platform launched by the school is currently being used by the accounting professor Steve Limberg to handle his Executive MBA class. Reports reveal that he is the first most faculty member in the school to adopt this technology. Limberg, while interacting with media, said that this new system is very reliable, and it leads to an authentic experience as he can see all the nuances and gestures made by the students. It is more like a real classroom where students can interact, raise their hands and enjoy active learning sessions.

This pandemic has created a new opportunity for the McCombs school and University at Austin to help students learn during the entire semester of the year 2020. It was also a reliable way to follow social distancing measures as guided by medical health professionals. The new Hologram based teaching practices made it possible to collaborate online while keeping students and professor safe.

Jim Spencer, the CEO of Contextual Content Group, recently revealed that this technology is very robust, and it has a long way to go. While developing this concept, the main goal was to help professors teach safely with socially distanced experience. As students and professors were not able to join the classroom physically, the online virtual experience could lead to enhanced returns. And the great news is that this new technology is working fine and is currently in use.

The technology is a good fit not just for the pandemic duration; rather in the long run for the McCombs School of Business. The professionals here are even looking for some ways to expand it further to enhance teaching-learning experiences.

Such inventions can make student’s life easier while helping them stay in touch with the professor virtually. They can discuss their doubts, queries, and new ideas openly via hologram technology. What does the future hold for this technology? Well, hologram students in the classroom as well.

Citation

https://news.utexas.edu/2020/09/17/hologram-technology-to-launch-classroom-of-the-future/

Could Virtual Reality Help Children with ADHD?

May 262019

For many parents, helping your child who suffers from ADHD can feel quite exhausting. Today, there are many classes and solutions developed purely with the idea of helping your children cope with their condition. Sometimes, though, the options might just not feel diverse enough. One option that is being developed at the moment, though, is the use of virtual reality for ADHD children.

Virtual reality has quietly exploded as the next form of entertainment – a transformative means of interacting with the things we enjoy. A new study by the UC David Medical Investigation of Neurodevelopmental Disorders Institute, though, shows promise that VR could be used to help ADHD sufferers.

This is going to help children suffering from the disorder to minimise distraction, according to their latest press release. The research lead on the study at the MIND Institute, Dr. Julie Schweitzer, said: “I was talking to a parent who told me when she was in law school studying for the bar she was studying in noisy cafes,

“Eventually, she learned to block out everything around her. But now she wishes her son could learn to do the same.”

The aim is to help use VR to give children an easier time practicing on focusing on objects of importance. It would not involve clinical treatment, and it would be something that could be used in real-life situations. Part of the challenge with ADHD can come from helping children to focus on situations. With VR, the level of realism in the situations they’ll be focusing on can feel that bit more immersive.

The purpose of the study

The aim of the research, then, is quite simple. They will send each participant home with a VR headset, that is programmed to use a 25-minute training session per day. It would put them in a location where there are distractions that they need to overcome. The logic, then, is that the children will become more used to distractions that could otherwise snap their focus.

Now, when they are in a real brick and mortar classroom, they should already be used to distraction. This should help them to become much more alert to the matter at hand: the actual lesson. This could cut down on distraction and maintain a higher level of day-to-day focus in the children. During the training, they’ll be given a classroom-like environment, and go through an exposure therapy session. It’s built upon the same ideals where VR has been used to help those with anxiety, and could offer much of the same benefits to ADHD children.

The researchers will be able to help children to become more focused and increase their score, reducing the likelihood that they will become distracted during lessons. For parents who worry about their children not taking in enough during education, then, this could be the development that you desire.

Until more detail is released from the finding of the studies, though, at the moment this is just a theory. It will, though, be very interesting to see the results of the study when they are finally released.