Assignment 2-1: What is Immersive Education?

In the beginning of this video, Professor Walsh starts by introducing himself and about immersive education. He is faculty at Boston College as well as the director of immersive education initiatives and has been using it since 1997 to teach remote and hybrid classes online. It also explains it was not good back then and empathizes about technology improvement.

Professor Walsh answers the question, "Why": he dedicated 20 years of life in immersive education and he has fundamental beliefs that we could change people's lives, we could change the way we learn by using advanced technology. Although immersive education initiatives started decade later, thousands of people are member of iED. 

Professor Walsh explains about what is immersive education and provides examples of immersive education, which are virtual worlds, leraning games, simulations, and full, augmented and mixed (FAM) reality.

College of education and faculty have developed a curricula that uses virtual world experience like video game or for students with autism; technology allows us to craft the learning activity (allows them a social experience in a different way as well) to the individual need to the kids. 

As an example, the picture above is Eco-move research project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. It is immersive virtual environments to teach eco systems to the middle school students.

Towards the end of his video, he talks about certificates and chapters of immersive education. Then he offers a question time for two attendees. First question raises network issues that have been holding immersive education back. He replies back that a new technology will be available soon that will completely change just like webpage; visiting virtual world through web browsers without plugin. Can go to jied.org (Journal of Immersive Ed) to learn more about early access.

This is an assignment from the Immersive Education course that I am taking at Boston College. The course is called Discovering Computer Graphics. For details, visit the immersive BC portal at http://ImmersiveEducation.org/@/bc