Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtual world is an emerging technology allowing a connection to a virtual world. Games such as Sims, Minecraft, Warcraft and training programs for military allow an effective way to become connected. There are many advantages and disadvantages as we would expect, both for obvious reasons and the fact that it is still in development. Especially for kids, they cover about half the users in the Minecraft game, as Jacki Morie says that kids get "to exercise their imagination and to connect with others to also want to build and create things." By being creative at such an early age, it can definitely benefit them as they grow up. Not only does Virtual world technology help on the gaming side as it states in "Situated Learning in Virtual Worlds and Immersive Simulations" that, "over the past several years, an increasing number of immersive virtual environment experiences have become available for both educational and entertainment purposes." This emerging technology can benefit in classrooms, helping kids, teachers, and generally the whole education.
The most interesting and helpful use of Virtual World in my opinion would be training for military. Having virtual training very close to reality can allow real-live situations rather than the traditional way of training. But this technology can also have its drawbacks with its not-so-perfect reality (such as characters, perspectives, and basic laws of physics). I feel that as technology further advances, Virtual Technology will definitely benefit tremendously.

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