I am in the UC Denver ILT program at the moment and SPOILER I spend time reading other things besides research articles on virtual reality. Like the book Ready Player One, which…uhhh….is a book about a kid who spends every waking moment inside a Virtual Reality simulation.
I swear I have other hobbies and go outside.
You may be familiar with the movie that came out recently, once again reminding me that paperback books are really only written to be made into movies. My dog’s name is Sirius Black.
The Ask
In my Producing Media for Learning class we were asked to Illustrate a 2026 or 2046 day in the life of one of the following:
K-12 Student (pick the grade)
College Student
Adult learner.
Ready Player One takes place in 2044. COME ON!
Of course I was going to figure something out for this assignment that involved the book.
I chose to create an eLearning based on the assignment using Articulate 360's platform, RISE.
I am a big fan of the book Ready Player One by Ernest Cline and given how close this book takes place (it actually begins in 2044 but ends close to 2046) to the assignment, I decided to do something a little quirky.
A quick plot overview of Ready Player One
We are introduced to the concept of Virtual Reality by way of the OASIS, a VR environment created by James Haliday. What started off as a cutting-edge video game platform designed just for gaming grew into Earth's go-to reality. Everything in the OASIS is a simulation, and humans log in spending so much time each day immersed in the world, most consider the OASIS their actual reality. James Halliday amassed a fortune and upon his death, broadcast a message to all OASIS users on how to find his wealth, worth billions of dollars. Anyone who finds the fortune would be worth more than Bill Gates, but finding the fortune is a game itself - taking place within the OASIS - with people tracking down the clues along the way in the form of 'easter eggs'. These clues rely heavily on a user's knowledge of the 1980s, the time period Halliday grew up.
The book centers around a high school student named Wade Watts (his OASIS name is Parzival) and his quest for Halliday's fortune. The first 60 or so pages describe a lot of what going to school is like in 2044.
As a result, my eLearning is a built out VR based on the descriptions found in the book. When you view the link, imagine you are wearing VR goggles and are logged into the OASIS as Parzival. Your profile is available to you, your classes are listed, and there's a section for you to chat with other users and store media you use to help you on your quest to discover Halliday's fortune.
Each class were those mentioned in the book, and each has one example of an immersive VR example I believe teachers would implement given the VR experience now being ubiquitous with human culture.
UPDATE 8/2018: I TOTALLY WANT TO MAKE THIS COURSE A REAL VR SOLUTION!
I was able to recently get a student-copy version of Wonda VR to test out some immersive VR solutions that can incorporate 360 media to create your simulated environment (I have a 360 camera) and think it would be cool to tackle this project at some point. What do you think?