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Google Daydream Review

We recently let an Education student borrow our Google Daydream to review. Here are her thoughts:

The google daydream itself was a really neat piece of equipment with some glaring disadvantages. Besides the cost, the daydream is very heavy, then add on your phone and it becomes even heavier. The strap was difficult to utilize and never got quite small enough for my head. The device itself fit my head very well, but it did not fit my husband when he tried it out; it really smashed his nose and hit his forehead in a weird spot. The highlights for the daydream are the fact that there is no outside light that can enter the device; I found this to be a draw back to the cardboard. And the remote is unbelievably useful. You can even see it virtually, which is a big plus when you need to orient yourself.
The app for the daydream was clunky and definitely has some kinks to work out. The tutorial is very helpful, but when downloading through the VR App store, it rarely works, and there is a lot of taking your device out, and putting it back in. It’s obvious that this technology is still in its infancy.
This technology would still be fun to implement in my future classrooms, but I have concerns about accountability. There’s no way for me to tell if they’re doing what they should be doing.

VR and Pain Management

Using VR as a therapy is gaining popularity and as the technology matures I imagine the use cases will only increase. Jeremy Bailenson is doing some great stuff using VR in pain management. Learn more here.

Chemistry and VR

One of the educational advantages of virtual reality content is that you are not bound by the laws of physics. You can visualize microscopic mechanisms and slow millisecond reactions. For this reason, I believe VR has the potential to change the way we teach sciences, particularly chemistry, biology, and physics. The first step for chemistry and biology is to get existing 3D models into a virtual environment. The ChimeraX team at UCSF have successfully done this. Exciting times!