VR and Mathematics.

  Personally, I own a couple of Virtual Reality viewers. One is a google cardboard viewer while the other is more like the one in the picture which I got on sale at a Barnes and Noble.  I've seen so many movies and other applications for social studies but not so many for Math but the other day, I found a something that sparked my interest.

I downloaded several VR math apps from the iTunes store but honestly, I wasn't really impressed with them.  I'll go through them and tell you a bit about them.

1. VR Game Math created by Turker Guney.  In the game, the app needs access to your camera.  It flashes problems such as 1/1 with 3 dimensional numbers floating around the viewer.  The idea is to touch the answer a couple of times so the program recognizes you have grabbed the correct answer.  This appears to be for early elementary but honestly I didn't get past level 2 because the problems were so simple.  The good thing is the user does not need the internet to use it.

2. Math VR app by ACE - Learning. I didn't even try it really because the creator charges about $10.00 per month  Singaporean to use the product.  I wasn't willing to do a free trial so I do not know how it works however according to their web site they have information for simple or composite solids, volume, standard forms, inequalities, Venn diagrams, graphs of height against time, trigonometry ratios for acute angles, bearings, and 3D senarios.

3. VR Math by VR-AR Education.  This is a free app but there are indications it is still being built.  The application has some great three dimensional shots for use in Geometry that one can move around to explore the whole shape but it is missing some information to do the work.

It covers on vertices, edges, faces, shapes, volume, calculating volume, calculating area, and distance between vertices.  One big problem I see, is when you choose the activity to find the area of a cube, there is no indication of length. I have a question but nothing to tell me how long a side is.  The other problem is if you choose the wrong answer, it only tells you that you are wrong, not why.

A few topics have videos with explanations which helps.  This app doesn't seem to require internet but it does have an option to get an account.  I didn't bother  as I was able to access certain things without it.  As I stated earlier, it appears to be a work in progress but out of all three apps, this seems the best developed.  With a bit more work, the app should be great. 

I used one of the activities to show a student how the surface area of a cube was calculated.  I was able to move it around to show the faces.  I see being able to use it in class right now to supplement my teaching.  One other thing.  You do not need any fancy VR glasses to see the material. 

Let me know what you think, I'm interested in hearing.