BY State Rep. Jeff Hilovsky
I recently traveled to New Jersey to meet with Rowan University Chancellor Dr. Tony Lowman and the Dreamscape Learn Team.
Dreamscape Learn is an Extended Reality (Virtual Reality) experience that builds interest, sparks curiosity, increases participation and attendance, and directly involves students in the learning process by immersing them in a 3D virtual reality environment.
I had the opportunity to tour the facility, speak with faculty, and experience two lessons: one on Chemistry and the other on Art History. Both lessons were interactive and gave me opportunities to grasp concepts, learn facts, and spark questions that left me curious, wanting more information, and anticipating the coursework that followed to build the learning needed for the next VR experience.
In a time when many are questioning education’s relevance, and where and how jobs will be created in this exponentially changing world, one must wonder: how is it possible we are teaching essentially the same way (one teacher/20 students) as we did in the 1700s?
This is not about thinking outside the box. This is about using “force multipliers” like Extended Reality and VR to help educators prepare our students, each of whom may learn and think differently, to succeed in an ever-changing world.
Dr. Lowman was clear and took me on a private tour to show how he plans to expand this opportunity to many more students in the near future.
As the legislative session ended in June, the House passed House Substitute 1 for House Bill 404, 36 to 4, which I wrote with Delaware Education Secretary Dr. Cindy Marten and her team to integrate Extended Reality and AI into the classroom responsibly. The measure included strict guardrails, with state officials providing legal and technological oversight to protect student privacy and safety.
Unfortunately, in the early morning hours of July 1st, the Senate Majority Leader and Senate Pro Tempore refused to bring the bill to the floor for a vote for purely partisan reasons.
I will soon meet with the DOE to discuss a hands-on demonstration in Delaware.
Please watch the two-minute video here that illustrates the promise of this approach.
