While I’ll beg your forgiveness for the obvious hype-train connection in my title to the release of the film READY PLAYER ONE, the film does raise many questions about the future of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). For me, this question often comes up in the context of VR and AR in education, since my work as an Instructional Designer often means looking at new technologies that could change the way we go about the task of learning and teaching. Our office recently started a working group together with partners across the university to begin exploring what VR and AR in education could look like.
Recently I purchased a wheelchair for my mom on Amazon. I love shopping on Amazon. It’s quick, easy, and my packages come straight to the front door. I read the reviews to see what other buyers have to say about the product, and usually make up my mind whether or not to buy based on those reviews. Generally, I never have an issue.
In the field of coaching there is more and more research that shows that when an athlete is in an environment where they feel supported and where they are having fun, skill acquisition comes more easily (for an interesting talk on this, 
On Feb 15th, the 
For as long as I’ve been interested in 
Digital story telling is an instructional practice that is used to tell stories by using computer-based tools. For example, individuals or groups may tell a story by using a variety of multimedia such as audio, graphics, voice, text, and video. For centuries, many people have learned messages from stories that were either passed down orally or written in a book. We now live in such a technological advanced society that learners can now comprehend an intended message by using technological products of the 21st century.
I’ve always loved Rube Goldberg’s drawings. They lent a certain sense of the absurd to everyday tasks, creating a ridiculously complicated machine to handle something most of us could do without even thinking about it. Like many young people, I also delighted in building machines similar to Goldberg’s, using every toy at my disposal to produce something that, let’s be honest, may have been more satisfying to design and build than to actually deploy most of the time. A few hours’ work for ten seconds of payoff? Not a big deal, when you’re a kid.