In Japan, N High School is well into it's first academic year as the first virtual reality learning institute that has full accreditation from the Government's education ministry. The first intake of freshman numbered close to 1,500 students ranging in age from 15 to almost 90, all looking to acquire their high school certificates. While the students are located all over the Japan, the main - physical - campus is located in Okinawa prefecture far south of the main Japanese islands.  The principal of N High School Hirokazu Okuhira told The Japan Times:

“It’s a new proposal to (challenge) the conventional high school education system....Rather than teaching what they know, a teacher’s role today should be to act as a coordinator who instructs students on how to search websites and compile information into something they can express by themselves”

Though for all intents and purposes, N High School is a correspondence school, it is offering a level of interactivity that should offer up interesting questions on the possible affective and educational benefits of the uniquely immersive experience of virtual reality.

Going forward, as the various requisite technologies mature, it will be interesting to see which reality variant - virtual, augmented, or mixed - will best serve the needs of dispersed learning communities worldwide.