Education and VR

In chapter 12 of "Communications and Cyberspace," Terri Toles Patkin talks about having VR as a type of learning experience, such as having a VR internship or VR environment pertaining to certain subjects and classes. I think this idea is brilliant although it may never be possible due to how expensive it would be to create various VR environments for different classes and internship experiences. If it were possible to create these VR environments affordably and actually have them at schools such as Fordham I believe it would revolutionize education. It's commonly known that the best way to learn something is hands-on, and VR would be able to offer that hands-on experience that would enhance education. Patkin focuses mainly on the education/experience of communications students, but she acknowledges that VR would be beneficial to all. One field I think it would enhance the most would be foreign language classes. Most people say the best way to learn a language is to immerse yourself the culture surrounding the language, but in order to do that you would have to travel to another country. With the VR environments you wouldn't have to travel anywhere, it would all be right there for you. The VR environment could be a copy of different cities for different languages. For example, a student taking Italian could choose a VR environment of Rome while a student studying Spanish could choose the city of Madrid. This type of immersion into an environment where the VR people speak only the native language would be ideal for these students. If VR environments actually become a reality there really are no limits to what we could learn.