It was not all that surprising that the most popular areas of my daughter’s elementary school science fair last week were tables where kids could build, design, and problem solve with each other.
While everyone appreciated the stationary displays, the real engagement came when kids got together to practice and learn both hard skills like paper robot building and soft skills like negotiation, teamwork, and empathy.
And then it struck me that there may be no school next week or even the week after. I know there will be online classes but that is not a substitute for what kids need to continue to stay competitive confident, and connected.
As Glimpse Group CEO Lyron Bentovim points out in his argument for modernizing classrooms with AR and VR capabilities, humans are social, collaborative, and spatial learners and AR and VR are the only technologies that fully support this type of learning.
We need to get AR and VR into schools now so our kids remain engaged when they cannot be together in person. The prices are no longer prohibitive but the cost will be high if we cannot keep our kids engaged in learning, especially in difficult times.
