Thursday, November 1, 2018
A New Form of Learning
Virtual reality is able to bridge the gap between audience and subject matter better than literature can. Although literature provides insight into people’s inner thoughts in a more intimate manner than through video, virtual reality allows audiences to live through the eyes of someone else. I watched the video about Mashallah, a Syrian refugee living in a Kurdish region in Iraq. I have watched a few documentaries and read a few articles about the civil war in Syria and the plight of its people, but the experience of using the virtual reality goggles heightened my understanding of the mindset of a Syrian refugee to a higher degree than the other ways I have received my information about the topic. The biggest difference, for me, was the ability to see the person’s face. You are obviously able to see people’s faces in documentaries as well, but virtual reality physically puts the viewer into the situation. When the young boys sang the song about being refugees, it felt like they were singing directly to me. I was able to understand Mashallah situation in an in-depth way, rather than merely feeling sympathetic for her.
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Do you think your understanding comes from seeing them more clearly as people, or from experiencing their lives in the closest way you can?
ReplyDeleteI agree that virtual reality can help see a situation in a more in-depth way and can help see the surroundings, but for me I still knew that I could never be in that persons shoes. I found myself still just feeling sympathetic towards the people.
ReplyDeleteI agree that virtual reality can bridge a gap between audience and subject but I also think that literature can do that same, just in a different way. When reading literature one can see different perspectives and feel emotions just how virtual reality can. However,I think your creativity and imagination can fill in the gaps that literature leaves out.
ReplyDeleteActually seeing an example of what life can look like for refugees was very helpful. The book has a lot of good details, but for me the visuals had a much bigger impact. I could see what it actually looked like, rather than taking details and creating my own image of what I thought it looked like, which was nowhere as severe as the video showed.
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