This week’s curated content includes links exploring the following:

• The importance of play for adults
• the future of presentations
• the power of VR for disabled people
• What personalized learning really means
• Research on elearning effectiveness
• What Google is doing to make VR and AR development easier

Here’s the content for this week:

Why Adults Need to Play More Often by Derek Beres
The value of play as a way for children to learn is widely accepted. And yet, the value of play for adults is often lost in the seriousness of day-to-day life. As this post explores, this not only minimizes our opportunities for learning, it in many ways reduces our opportunities for living as well.

Sorry, PowerPoint: The Slide Deck of the Future will be in AR by Arielle Pardes
The word PowerPoint doesn’t just describe a piece of software. It also describes in many ways an experience – that of a presentation. Regardless of the program you’re using to create a slide deck, there’s a fairly standard paradigm attached to how presentations are given. That could change with the normalization of AR, as presenters can truly immerse themselves into the content they are presenting.

Paralyzed man walks, skis through virtual reality via Sacramento Bee
Virtual reality has the power to create entirely new and immersive experiences. In some cases, it can recreate an experience that people once had but no longer have access to. This brief video showcases the power of one such experience.

A Brave New World of Learning by Bob Mosher
Personalized Learning is a term that continues to grow in usage and interest, even though it’s meaning could still be up to debate. This article touches on a critical component of the discussion that I think is too often left out. Personalized learning is about learning activities, not about the activities we build within training or education. Changing that mindset may be the key factor in harnessing the potential of this new trend.

Major Research Review on eLearning Effectiveness by Will Thalheimer
Is elearning effective? As effective as classroom instruction — more or less effective? What about blended learning — when elearning and classroom learning are combined? These questions and more are explored in this new report from one of the leading research voices in our field.

Google is launching an AR and VR object library called Poly by Adi Robertson
There’s a lot of excitement surrounding the possibilities AR and VR provide for learning, but the one major concern that many people have is about the content. Specifically, learning professionals wonder where the content will come from, as the development skills needed to create these experiences are outside the traditional L&D skillset. This project by Google is an example of efforts that are being made to flatten that learning curve and make AR and VR development more accessible to mass audiences.

What’s NEW at Learning Solutions?

Learning Solutions 2018 expands the conference you already love by adding even more to the mix including Global Perspectives, more hands-on BYOD (Bring your own device) sessions, curated paths for those new to the field, more opportunities to connect with people from your industry and more.

And there’s more to come. Check out what’s new at Learning Solutions this year.