Finally something good has come out of the coronavirus pandemic: Stuck in quarantine, one teacher has resorted to VR to drop knowledge to his students. Oh, and he did it in Half Life: Alyx.
Meet Mr. Charles Coomber, a San Diego-based teacher at Otay Ranch Academy for the Arts, whose latest lesson on angle vocabulary has gone viral on YouTube. The whole thing is recorded in Half Life: Alyx, with Mr. Coomber using virtual windows as a makeshift whiteboard. Pretty cool.
[Read: Portal for Microsoft HoloLens makes real life look great again]
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The strategy seems to be working, too. So far, nearly half a million people have checked out his VR math lesson. Sure, not all of them are there to actually learn angle vocabulary, but speaking from experience: Sometimes it’s easier to learn things when you’re having fun.
If you’ve been trying your best to avoid looking up Alyx footage because you’re still on the fence about blowing your pockets empty on a VR headset, it seems Valve has done it again: The latest instalment of Half Life looks absolutely stunning. In fact, many are raving it’s the VR use case we’ve all been waiting for.
Unfortunately, the entry barrier to VR gaming is still too high for me to justify the expense. For now, though, I’m cool with tuning in to Mr. Coomber’s lessons.
Keep it up, Mr. Coomber — you’re the teacher children need right now (and we could all use some Alyx content too).
PS: You might wanna rummage through the comments too. There are some pretty wholesome quips.
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