VR as Assistive Technology: WSU Assistive Technology Research & Development Lab https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvamGtYg_mw
VR Platforms After we understand the capabilities and limitations of VR broadly we need to choose some VR platforms to get started discovering the assistive technology of VR. The easiest way to get started using VR involves your smartphone’s screen which is placed in cardboard or plastic headsets ($5-10) to create smart- phone based VR experiences. Students and educators can get started using these VR experiences by searching their mobile devices app stores such as Google Play or Apple’s App Store for the search term “virtual reality”. Some of the currently popular VR applications using smartphones and headsets are education focused experiences such as Google Expeditions and Nearpod which take users through interactive presentations and allow teachers to create their own interactive immersive presenta- tions as well. In addition to smartphone based VR there are several ded- icated VR platforms which have their own unique features, controllers, and collections of VR applications. The primary VR hardware platforms are made by HTC (HTC Vive, Vive Focus Plus),
learned this lesson by partnering with the WSU ARMY ROTC who mounted the camera on a cadet’s helmet during a field exercise that involved many obstacles, running, and jumping. We now use this video as an example of how to make people motion sick. Beyond that limitation of slowing down and keeping the camera steady, 360 video is easy to learn to produce. Just like traditional video modeling has been applied to a wide range of skills, VR video modeling also has an incredible potential to address skills. Imagine a student who struggles with changes to routine and new transitions, for example learning to ride a school bus home. We can record the new experience, in this case the new bus ride experience start to finish with all of its sights and sounds so our learner can practice that experience in advance. The student’s teachers can see if there are major distractors or other problems that could be reduced or eliminated before the student has to attempt the transition in real life. The 360 video models could be applied to individual needs for AT to address functional skills, academic needs, or employment related activities using similar best practices to traditional video modeling.
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