The virtual needs to be better than the real
Tuesday, August 5th, 2008Just attending the APAN26 conference in Queenstown at the moment. There was an interesting session with Mark Billinghurst from HITLab yesterday looking at videoconferencing in an advanced network environment.
His main observation was that videoconferencing had not really moved forward at all since Bell Systems Picture Phone in the 60s. Even with the HD telepresence units that are available it is still a essentially a 2D experience. He had some interesting examples of experimental 3D augmented reality video conferencing. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for this technology to make the mainstream.
He had some interesting statistics about the lack of uptake of videoconferencing, even when HD on fast networks was available. His view was that the VC use would not increase significantly until the experience was ‘better’ than a face to face meeting. The focus of existing systems seems to be on making it an ‘equivalent’ experience. I am sure the same thing must apply to numerous other technology applications in education.