We are big fans of VR! Starting this year we have several VR/AR kits we will be loaning to our school libraries, complete with lesson plans they can use to connect classes with all kinds of great resources.

Sure, it’s fun to play with these. But VR is playing an increasingly important role in a lot of other areas. We are going to look at a different use each week, so you can work with your community members to help them learn about the great things possible for them today, and tomorrow.

This week we are admiring an article about a student turned entrepreneur from MIT who is using VR headsets to help patients with dementia to help with depression. Check out the excerpt below, and click the link to get all the information.

Thanks to Student’s Hunch, Seniors With Dementia Are ‘Coming Alive’ Again With the ‘Magic’ of Virtual Reality

“As Reed Hayes stood inside an assisted living facility in front of an elderly man struggling with dementia, he wasn’t quite sure what to expect.

The man sat slouched in his wheelchair, unmoving, his eyes barely open. Hayes had enrolled in MIT’s Sloan School of Management with the idea of helping older adults overcome depression and isolation through the immersive world of virtual reality. Now he needed to test his idea.

Hayes turned on a virtual reality experience featuring a three-dimensional painting by Vincent Van Gogh and a classical piano playing in the background. Nervously, he placed the headset on the man. What happened next stunned everyone in the room.

“He just came alive,” Hayes remembers. “He started moving around, tapping his feet, laughing. He was all of a sudden much more engaged in the world, and this from someone who was slouched over, to now kind of bouncing around. [My classmate] Dennis and I looked at each other like, ‘Holy cow, we might be onto something.’ It was remarkable.””

Check out the rest of this story here!