Virtual reality is a computer generated representation of the world or in other words, reality. It can be used in many different ways including games, sightseeing, and also medical training. Speaking of medical training, hospitals enforce virtual training to better prepare nurses in real life scenarios. This is extremely important because we are talking about life or death of a patient. If nurses aren't trained well enough, they might not know what to do when the unexpected happens which then, they are forced to hit the panic button. For example, in the article "Avatar II: The Hospital", Simon says that “Dozens of hospitals, medical schools and health foundations have staked out space in the online community Second Life, where participants can build their own virtual clinics and stage just about any training drill they can imagine” This shows you the benefits of what virtual reality can have on reality itself and it is getting utilized more and more to this day. Virtual reality could benefit many other careers and jobs to improve its employees and workers.
On the contrary, virtual reality do has its disadvantages. Some of the generated virtual models are not fully compatible or representational of the real world. It is also time consuming to spend countless hours just trying to get the feel of a virtual world. One example is having a virtual classroom. In the article, "The Advantages and Disadvantages of the Virtual Classroom and
the Role of the Teacher", they write that "The lack of face-to-face interactions with other peers and the instructor can be a disadvantage for the students and professors." This is true to a sense that you almost never get to see your professor and vice versa. Everything is done virtually. From my experience, I learn more in a classroom setting because you are there in reality sitting in a classroom while the professor is lecturing.
Virtual worlds foster creativity by having the creators brainstorm any idea that comes up to their heads and use it as part of the virtual reality. This brings out their creative mindset into the picture. In other words, virtual reality can be anything, anyone, or anywhere. I have a feeling virtual reality in the future will be so high tech, that you almost would not tell the difference between what is virtual and what is real. That is how far technology has come and it will continue to be more advanced in the future.
Citations:
1) "Avatar II: The Hospital" by Stephanie Simon, The Wall Street Journal, April 13, 2010
2) "The Advantages and Disadvantages of the Virtual Classroom and
the Role of the Teacher" by Guy Posey, Thomas Burgess, Marcus Eason, Yawna Jones,
virtual classroom.pdf
I agree with your point, that learning virtually learning takes longer, than in-class learning. However, I do believe that virtual classroom will eventually be better than being in class physically. Having the freedom of going to class when ever we have free time, will be the reason why. Also, I agree that technology will make it very difficult to differentiate virtual from reality.
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