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VR injects vitality to teaching

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Wang Lili felt she had penetrated into a human body by wearing a pair of glasses.

XinhuaUpdated: July 2, 2018

Wang Lili felt she had penetrated into a human body by wearing a pair of glasses.

"Bones, veins, ligament, marrow... all the anatomical structures are very clear in three dimension," said Wang, a resident of Shenyang, capital of northeast China's Liaoning Province.

At the 10th APEC Small and Medium Enterprises Technology Conference and Fair held in Shenyang from Wednesday to Friday, Wang tried the virtual reality (VR) glasses and anatomy teaching software.

"It's amazing. I did not expect VR would help with my studies," she said.

The software is designed by Kmax, a technology company on VR and augmented reality (AR) based in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province.

Zhou Yihui, sales manager of the company, said the software has included over 4,600 anatomical structures as well as 1,200 questions for tests, turning students into "researchers," instead of mere "knowledge receivers."

Other teaching software they have developed covers astronomy, botany, geoscience, microbiology and zoology.

China's VR market expanded 164 percent in 2017 to 16 billion yuan (2.5 billion U.S. dollars).

With wearable screens and wired gloves, VR/AR software has enabled students to interact with virtual environment, surmounting traditional teaching.

Adopting VR into education has become reality. In Sichuan University, southwest China's Sichuan Province, atoms and molecules have been displayed to students in a smart teaching environment.

With the mixed reality (MR) technology, students can not only see images of the chemical structures, but also stretch and distort them with their fingers touching the screen.

Wang Yulian, deputy dean with the Inner Mongolia University of Finance and Economics, said VR, AR and MR combine technology with education, and help realize a kind of situational teaching.

"Under a simulated and interactive environment, students are able to 'communicate' with knowledge," she said.

Chen Lijiang, a primary school teacher and visitor of the fair, said technology is about to change traditional teaching mode.

"By making the previous two-dimensional obscure knowledge three-dimensional, technology definitely will make study more efficient," he said.