Exercises: Virtual, augmented and mixed reality

Explain in your own words what virtual reality is and what augmented reality is, highlighting the main difference between them, and give an everyday example of each that is not a video game.

The image shows an educational experience using several devices.

Explain the function of each labeled item (1, 2, and 3) and reason whether the experience shown in the scene corresponds to virtual, augmented, or mixed reality.

Order these three experiences from lowest to highest sense of immersion and explain the criterion you used: watching a 360-degree video on a cell phone screen, touring a museum with a VR headset and controllers, and making a dinosaur appear on a textbook using an augmented reality app.

A virtual reality headset includes, among other components, small screens, lenses, and motion sensors. Explain the purpose of each of these three components and what would happen if each one failed.

A 360-degree video allows you to look around by moving your cell phone or dragging with your finger. Explain how this experience differs from VR using a headset and how you think a 360-degree video is recorded.

Some augmented reality apps need to point at a specific image (a marker) to display content, while others place objects directly onto the floor or a table. Explain the difference between the two and give an example of how each type is used.

The word "metaverse" often appears in headlines. Explain in your own words what is usually meant by metaverse and give two examples of activities people might do in it, highlighting what is virtual and what is real about them.

Some people experience motion sickness when using VR headsets because their eyes say "I am moving" while their body says "I am stationary". Explain why this motion sickness occurs and what three recommendations you would give for the first VR sessions in the classroom.

Propose two specific educational uses for virtual reality, each for a different subject, and explain what each adds compared to watching a video or viewing a photo of the same content.

An augmented reality app shows the inside of a beating heart on a classroom desk when pointed at with a cell phone camera. Explain which real-world elements and which virtual elements are combined on the screen, and what components of the cell phone are required for it to work.

A museum offers two remote tours: one using virtual reality headsets that recreates the entire building, and another using augmented reality that projects artwork onto the classroom walls. Compare both options: required equipment, advantages, limitations, and which type of visit each is best suited for.

Medical students practise surgery in virtual reality, and mechanics rehearse assembling parts before touching a real engine. Explain the advantages of practising this way compared to doing it "for real" directly, and what limitations virtual practice still has.

An augmented reality app promises to measure your room by pointing the camera and place a virtual wardrobe to see how it looks. Explain which cell phone sensors are involved and why the measurement might have an error of a few centimeters.

The school wants to create a virtual tour of the middle school for students arriving next year. Design the tour: which five spaces would you show, what could the visitor do in each one (look around, move, touch objects), and which technology would you choose, VR or AR, justifying your choice.

Virtual and augmented reality can help students with different needs: exploring a building before visiting it, seeing enlarged text overlaid on the real world, or practising social situations. Analyse two potential aids and a new barrier that these technologies might create, and how you would avoid it.

Compare these three ways to experience virtual reality: a cardboard headset with a cell phone inside, standalone mid-range VR goggles, and a phone on its own displaying a 360-degree video. Evaluate cost, quality of experience, and ease of use in a classroom of 30 students.

Design a mixed reality activity to learn geometry in your year group: what students would see, what they could do with controllers or their hands, how the teacher would participate, and how you would check that the activity truly helps learning.

During a virtual reality session in the workshop, a student trips over a backpack while dodging a virtual object, and another student feels dizzy after 8 minutes of play due to sharp turns. As the technical manager of the classroom: a) Justify the technical and physical causes of both incidents (guardian system boundary and sensory mismatch due to latency). b) Design the classroom safety protocol: calculate the minimum clear area required per user (assuming a movement radius of 1.2 m) and determine the recommended rest guidelines to prevent visual fatigue and motion sickness.

The school management proposes canceling a field trip for collecting and classifying botanical specimens to replace it with an immersive VR visit and save bus costs. You are asked for a technical report: a) Refute the proposal by justifying two irreplaceable technical and sensory limitations of VR for that specific activity. b) Design a learning scenario in Technology or Science where VR does offer an indisputable technical advantage over a real-world trip (for example, due to risk or inaccessibility) and justify why.

A "digital twin" is a virtual copy of a real place that can be used for testing. Imagine a digital twin of the school gym to test where to place new equipment: explain what data would be needed to build it, what tests you would carry out with it before moving anything, and what savings it would provide.

During the school's cultural week, you are going to set up an immersive VR experience that simulates crossing a catwalk between two buildings at a height of 100 m. a) Justify which technical factors of the headset (field of view or FOV, 3D spatial audio, and refresh rate) trick the brain into inducing such a realistic feeling of vertigo. b) Design a technical and safety protocol for the station: delimit the required physical space, define the role of the peer assistant, and describe the immediate emergency stop procedure if the user loses their balance.

A headset manufacturer claims: "with our VR app, you learn 50% faster than with the traditional method". Checking the fine print, you discover that they compared 15 students using an interactive VR game for 30 minutes against 15 students reading a text on black-and-white photocopies without images for the same duration. a) Detect two biases or methodological flaws in this study that invalidate the advertising claim. b) Design a rigorous experiment (defining a control group, variables that must be kept identical, and an evaluation method) to test whether VR truly accelerates learning compared to other interactive digital resources.

In a 50-minute Technology class with 30 students, you only have 2 standalone VR headsets. Each student must complete a 5-minute individual hands-on activity: a) Show by calculation whether it is possible for all students to use the headsets in a single session, knowing that the handover, adjustment, and disinfection of the headset takes 1.5 minutes between students. b) Design a workstation organization system so that the remaining 28 students work productively while waiting for their turn, calculating how many full class sessions will be needed in total.

Choose two professions (for example, surgeon, pilot, firefighter, architect, store clerk) and analyze how virtual or augmented reality is changing the way they train and work. Conclude by explaining which digital skills should already be practiced in middle school.