It's Getting Real. Virtually Real.

Posted September 17, 2018

External Article: Interactions Magazine

Neha Kumar, assistant professor in the Georgia Tech Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, co-authored a story about her work leveraging low-cost VR technologies for underserved learning environments.

Here's an excerpt:

Virtual reality (VR) is no longer solely the stuff of science fiction. As VR headsets become increasingly mainstream and affordable, thanks to major industry actors such as Google and Samsung, a slew of companies have surfaced to explore the more and less understood affordances of this emerging technology. With much of this activity focused on technology-rich parts of the Global North, we were curious to understand what VR might offer a world less saturated by technology. In this article, we describe our experience of introducing immersive, 360-degree VR to a resource-constrained learning environment in Mumbai, India. We also discuss some of the challenges and possibilities of going mainstream with VR, reflecting on the narrowing digital divide and the questions it raises for technology transfer.