After deciding to dig into the use of Virtual Reality (VR) in the language classroom for our Ed-tech inquiry project, I realized I hadn’t included one of the key sources for my interest in the topic. Eric Hawkinson is a professor at Kyoto University of Foreign Studies and is a self-described “learning futurist”. I had the pleasure of meeting Eric a few times informally while teaching in Kyoto and he is definitely on some cutting edge use of VR and Augmented Reality (AR) in the classroom. It might not be so practical for us language teachers (as we won’t likely have access to the technology), but it is interesting and definitely a step toward where I see education moving in the future.

Eric is a prolific speaker and advocate for technology in learning. One thing I really like about his philosophy towards tech in education is that the point is to build human interaction. He states the goal is to “create a deeper sense of community with your classmates by sharing our hopes, goals, and dreams for college life.” From what we’ve been taught about building classroom communities, that sounds like a worthy goal. His “Before I Graduate Community Art Project” is pretty cool. Basically, Eric asked his students to post messages on the wall detailing what they would like to accomplish before they graduate. He then took those messages and compiled them in an augmented reality book.

This is the kind of project that I think could really help build stronger classroom community and relationships between students. Eric has a ton of projects going on and spending some time exploring his website and blog gave me a better understanding of AR and VR and how it can be applied to education. If you’re interested in future learning, do yourself a favour and check out what he is working on.