I’ve been cautiously optimistic about VR’s potential in the classroom. It’s hard not to get excited about technology that promises a leap in immersion and hands-on learning. Here’s the reality from our experience with VR at McKinnon.
Our First Foray: Windows Mixed Reality
We initially chose Windows Mixed Reality (WMR) headsets because they allowed teachers to monitor students’ VR experiences in real-time. While we eventually got a setup that “worked,” it was a heavy lift: each class required IT support, and the system was prone to crashes. Microsoft’s WMR was plagued by bugs and driver issues, and Microsoft ultimately discontinued the product. This experience drove home a critical point — VR tech in schools must work reliably every time if it’s going to become a dependable classroom tool.
Who’s Left? Meta and the Content Gap
With WMR out of the picture, Meta has become the main player in VR hardware. However, Meta’s focus remains heavily consumer-oriented, leaving out essential education features like classroom management tools. Educational content is also sparse — a handful of good apps have emerged, but it feels like we’re looking at the same apps we were excited about a decade ago, without a steady stream of new, high-quality, curriculum-aligned material. Then there’s Apple’s Vision Pro, which could have reshaped the landscape but has stumbled out of the gate. While innovative, its design isn’t classroom-friendly; it’s prohibitively expensive, and each headset requires a custom fit, making it impractical for shared use in schools. Instead of simplifying things, the Vision Pro’s rollout highlights just how far VR still needs to go to be manageable and affordable in education.
The Management Challenge: VR in the Classroom
Setting up VR for students is no easy task. Managing headsets in a classroom requires coordination, a tech-savvy teacher (or two), and plenty of patience. We tested several VR management platforms, but most were still limited, requiring labor-intensive setup for each device and manual app management. Even high-end options like ClassVR, though effective, come with hefty price tags and a lack of compelling, curriculum-driven content for high school students. The question I keep coming back to is:
“ How can VR deeply integrate with the curriculum?”
In our classrooms, VR often felt more like fun activity than targeted learning. This is understandable, given the reliability issues and the lack of tools for teachers to control the experience and scaffold learning. Add to this the need for a tech support member on standby to troubleshoot, and it’s clear that until reliability and management tools improve, VR in education will remain challenging to scale.
The Promise of VR — and Its Reality There’s no shortage of exciting VR ideas out there. Apps like Google Earth VR promise to let students explore the world as never before. Experiences like “Becoming Homeless” provide an immersive way to understand social issues, while creative tools like Tilt Brush hint at what might be possible for budding artists. Yet many of these experiences are incomplete or abandoned, even a decade in. Google Earth VR, for example, never fully supported our controllers, crashed frequently, and saw no updates in the three years we used it. When VR did work, it was often simpler, “on-rails” content — essentially VR videos — that ended up being the most reliable. There’s also the question of creation within VR.
Most experiences still lean toward passive consumption. Apps like CoSpaces offer a glimpse of what’s possible with student-created content, allowing users to build and explore their own VR worlds, but they often work better on a computer than inside the headset. So, Is VR in Education Worth It? Despite the struggles, I’m not ready to throw VR out entirely. It still holds potential, but right now, the reality does not match our expectations. Schools should to be aware of the challenges and limitations upfront and plan accordingly. VR is worth exploring if you’re clear about your goals and have the right hardware and content available. But any investment should come with the understanding that VR is still very much a “work in progress.”