Promises, Promises, Promises

During this week’s presentation Kim, Brian, and I gave a presentation on the use of virtual, augmented, and mixed reality in the classroom.  Now that it is done, I feel that I can speak candidly about some of the shortcomings of these technologies and why I don’t feel that they will have a place in my own classroom (in the near term).

My father once told me, “Never buy something based on promises; focus on what it can do right now, not what the salesperson tells you it might be able to do in the future.”  Immersive technologies have an incredible sales pitch: travel across the world, go into space, explore the bottom of the ocean, make the impossible possible!  It is incredibly convincing, and initially I was taken in by it.  For an example of this see the video below.

I started imagining how I could use it to teach mathematics, and was quite excited when I saw a video of a teacher employing it to record his math lessons.  As interesting as the demonstration was I had a nagging thought in the back of my head, “Is this really better than just teaching in person?”  The more I read through research the more I noticed a trend, in many of the studies it felt like they were trying to justify the existence of the technology.  I personally have never seen a VR headset employed in the classroom (mostly due to their exorbitant pricing).  With such a incredible up front investment for a class set of these devices I keep thinking back to what my father said.  What can this do right now, today?  In a cost benefit analysis would this be better than re-equipping and updating our art room, purchasing our band a set of brass instruments, or purchasing literally thousands of new books for our library?  I know what those investments would mean to my school, and our student population.  Can virtual reality make a similar impact?  I have my doubts.  Studies have shown that VR increases student enjoyment of lessons and increases their engagement (it has an undeniable ‘wow’ factor), but when combined with well designed lessons students using traditional teaching methods performed just as well as those who experienced instruction through VR.  If this is the case it hardly seems worth it.

Dystopian Nightmare – Genuine Concerns Preventing Adoption

I am tentative integrating new technologies into my classroom.  I don’t consider myself a luddite, but as Gilles noted in his recent blog post technology hesitant teachers often feel ‘left behind’.  I don’t do so because I fear change (ok, maybe just a little), but because each new technology opens new possibilities and comes with costs.  Once the genie is out of the bottle so to speak, it is a little too late.  After reading through the research I have some serious concerns regarding the use of AR, VR, and MR in the classroom.

In her comprehensive article Heller (2020) identified several egregious violations of personal privacy and other serious concerns with the use of these immersive technologies:

• Difficulties with Content Moderation – Researchers working in public virtual reality spaces experienced widespread gender based sexual harassment.  This is nothing to speak of the documented cases of racial, ethnic, religious, and homophobic targeting.  As it stands I have difficulty teaching digital citizenship to my students.  Companies and governments have lagged behind regulating online content, and divisive politics have led some companies to abandon all semblance of trying (providing platforms for bigotry).  As it stands I see immersive virtual spaces as more trouble than they’re worth.
• As Heller (2020) stated herself, “The area of immersive technology that has the highest potential for human rights abuses may be biometric data…”  With companies tracking eye movement, using facial recognition software, and behavioral analysis immersive technologies give companies unprecedented access to our student’s personal data.  This is an incredible violation of their personal privacy that I cannot willingly participate in.  I shudder to think how large corporations will use predictive software combined with biometric data to economically exploit the children I teach.

Who Benefits – Increasing the Digital Divide

Through our discussions it has become clear that expensive technology does not always uplift our poorer students and level the playing field for the disadvantaged.  Quite the opposite, those with access get ahead, and stay ahead.  As someone noted in our post presentation discussion (sorry, I can’t remember exactly who) those who can afford to put on thousand dollar headsets attached to expensive computers are those who would probably have the ability to travel the world and see the locations that they are visiting virtually. Well intentioned acts of delivering technology to impoverished areas is highly problematic; assuming one knows the needs of a community without their consultation is a paternalistic (or imperialistic) mindset.  Do communities that are struggling really need expensive VR headsets (or perhaps, just maybe, they have other needs)?  In a more personal sense many students in my classroom come from families that are struggling to make ends meet.  I don’t see learning through immersive technologies as a particularly high priority given the current circumstances.

I won’t completely dismiss the idea of using immersive technologies in the future, but it would have to reach a point where the financial cost became reasonable enough that it wouldn’t come at the expense of other needs in my school, and regulations caught up to the technology.