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Many people associate virtual reality and computer simulations with science fiction, high-tech industries, and computer games; few associate these technologies with education.

Computer simulations and virtual reality are potentially powerful learning technologies by themselves, offering teachers a means to concretize abstract concepts for students and provide them with opportunities to learn by doing what they might otherwise encounter only in a textbook.

Computer simulations are computer-generated versions of real-world objects (for example, a sky scraper or chemical molecules) or processes (for example, population growth or biological decay). They may be presented in 2-dimensional, text-driven formats, or, increasingly, 3-dimensional, multimedia formats. Computer simulations can take many different forms, ranging from computer renderings of 3-dimensional geometric shapes to highly interactive, computerized laboratory experiments.