AR, VR, MR, XR...all acronyms which may easily be understood by what name they represent, but not necessarily what they mean. The world of immersion tech can be complex and confusing...and that is just the terminology...not the actual technology. So how can educators navigate through this “virtual jargon” in order to start utilizing this awesome technology for the purpose of learning?
While the universe of immersion tech can be difficult and the challenge of overcoming barriers can be a gauntlet, We as educators will do what we do best in the face of adversity and opposition...fight for what is right for students. Join us in our journey to demystify the world of immersion.
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Isolation. Unreal. anti-social. Introverted. All words that you may have heard about virtual reality. The negative stigma of digital technology, especially immersion technology, can be hard to overcome. The introduction of how to emotionally and socially interact with technology didn’t really come with an instruction manual. Bad habits became mythology, such as screen time and violent gaming. But is there a way back for immersion technology to provide solutions to life’s problems instead of contributing to them?
The answer is absolutely. Virtual reality is a new way to collaborate with others despite geographic barriers---whether for education, or personal connection. Watching movies with a loved one deployed around the world, pairing two classrooms on opposites side of the country to tackle solutions to world problems, or attending virtual conferences with perspectives from all continents represented should be enough to put out the isolation myth. Though in an unreal environment relationship building, strong connections and real world impacts start inside of us. Virtual reality has become a facilitator of the impossible that ripples into the tangible. In February of this year The New Yorker released an article entitled “Limiting Your Child’s Fire Time: A Guide for Concerned Paleolithic Parents.” Limiting fire time, having a set room in the cave where fire time occurs, and committing to non-fire family time, are all tongue-in-cheek criticisms that parallel the modern screen time debate, and being a newfangled technology, virtual reality also falls under this scrutiny. However, virtual technologies are becoming more sophisticated everyday. The rules are changing. And the new rules are being forged by those willing to trailblaze through the fire and highlight the benefits, regardless of misplaced blanket statements of technology use without understanding the impact on each individual. Companies and educational entities are starting to realize the impact cutting edge technology can have not only on education, but society as a whole. Conferences such as ISTE are bringing together some of these trailblazers, from business and education. In this episode we will provide guidance to be a trailblazer yourself by focusing on ISTE VR prometheans: educators, vendors, and companies that are coming together in one place to share ideas on immersion technology. Whether it is sessions, playgrounds, or social networking, we hope you find a recommendation to fan your immersive sparks into flames.
Cardboard & cell phones, tethered headsets with USBs and HDMI cables. All promises of access to a powerful technology: virtual reality. When thinking about this promise, it was difficult to not get excited. It was also difficult to put into words what the experience was like or how it affected me on such a fundamental level of humanity. Thanks to friends, I was reminded of a movie my family, especially my daughter, thoroughly enjoyed...The Greatest Showman. What an awesome story. But, the lines that struck me most in the movie resonated in the same way that experience with modern virtual reality did. The lines are from a song, A Million Dreams…in fact, they are the opening lines.
“ I close my eyes and I can see
The world that's waiting up for me That I call my own Through the dark, through the door Through where no one's been before But it feels like home”
VR feels very much the same to me, a world I can call my own…a place no one has been before, but feels like home. Of course, equity in access to this technology has not been that easy. Cardboard brought it more to the masses, but only the masses with a capable smart phone. And those in education began the dance of finding phones that would work while still at a small price point. We became familiar with terms like pyrometer and accelerometer as we bought prepaid and unlocked Android phones that had mixed results for VR use. The cost aside, the smartphone didn’t give the greatest experience either. Low resolution and shoddy experiences would create another issue in what would be called virtual reality sickness. Many factors lead to this ache outside of the quality of experience, but it does play a large role in that disoriented sick feeling
So what about today? Over a year ago, you could hear educators proclaiming one possible solution, and it was so clear to those in education what needed to be done. Cell phones were becoming more powerful, but increasingly expensive for the simple fact it connected to a cellular service provider…something not really needed in a VR experience. What about a self contained device that didn’t require inserting a cellphone into a headset? A standalone vr experience that would have the strength of the most powerful cellphones, but not the expense of a cellular enabled unit. And maybe this standalone could even rival the tethered units someday. Shortly after this grassroots idea spread, Google announced their plans to develop a standalone VR device. They were not the only ones to come forward with such an idea. PICO released their own three degrees of freedom headset, the Goblin and Oculus announced they too would develop a standalone unit called Oculus Go. What do these lower cost standalone units mean for education, business, humanity? It means more diverse peoples can to experience virtual reality as I did.
“ I close my eyes and I can see
The world that's waiting up for me That I call my own Through the dark, through the door Through where no one's been before But it feels like home”
After our four part series on RP1, we thought it would be good to discuss what the VR podcast is and how it can be an awesome place of sharing and spreading ideas. But I do want to shout out to all those who have been so encouraging and provided feedback for our project we call The Virtual Reality Podcast. We take feedback to heart and try to improve with each episode based on your comments…so keep them coming!
First, we are planning multiple ways for you to get information you want about immersion technology. Of course, this podcast is the home base, but we also have others. Right now, we have a blog that accompanies every episode from RP1 and we will continue that tradition with our next podcast. We DO special event where we not only capture audio, but video. These can be seen primarily on our youtube channel. We also do livestream on FB…just look for @thevirtualrealitypodcast. In fact, you will find a video we just did with the four of us in Oculus Rooms using the new Oculus Go on YouTube that we recorded using FB livestream. And then we have our website, thevirtualrealitytpodcast.com. It has all this information, plus embedded audio from the latest podcast, the blog, podcast venues you can find us on, like iTunes, Google Play, Anchor, Stitcher, and a host of others. If you have a favorite podcast application and we aren’t on it, DM us on Twitter or message us on FB…we will get our content on those platforms! We also have other social media we are slowly venturing into, such as Instagram and LinkedIn. The links to those can be found on our website. Another area of our website that we are getting closer to launching is our resources area. This will be chopped full of information on VR, AR, MR, AI, 3D, and anything else immersion tech. We will also have ideas for application in education and in business…and probably other enterprise solutions as well. If you would like to blog on our site or add a resource, let us know! We love highlighting what others are doing in immersion tech…mainly because we are complete geeks when it comes to this tech. But moving beyond the ways we will make our content available, we want to engage with the community. We are building ways for this to happen and will be unveiling more in the coming months. For instance, we use the commonly used #vrpodcast hashtag to allow you to ask questions or post ideas on Twitter. We aren’t the only ones to use this hashtag, so other vr podcasters can also see your questions, comments, or ideas. This is what we want. We want to engage all of our community, including our brothers and sisters using like hashtags, such as #vrpodcast. Two groups that use this hashtag are VRHounds, I encourage you to check them out on YouTube by searching VR Hounds…they livestream under multiple usernames of the different hosts, and the very popular Voices of VR, which you can find on iTunes or at their website, voicesofvr.com. And this is just the first way we are engaging our community. We just recently got back from ImmersED 2018 in Marian Del Ray, California where we sat down with vendors, developers, school administrators, VR legends, and other immersion tech enthusiasts to share their story and pick their brain on immersion technology. One video is up already with guest Michael Fricano of I’olani School in Hawaii. Make sure to check out that vid on our channel and also Michael by going to edtechnocation.com or on twitter @edtechnocation. We will be posting more videos from ImmersED over the next few weeks, so be sure to subscribe on youtube to get updates. One of the beautiful things about Youtube is commenting, so please leave comments on the video, immersion tech, or about the virtual reality podcast. We are experimenting with interactive questions on our medium as well, so make sure to check out that Oculus Go video. One thing I forgot to mention about that particular video is what we shared. We each looked at an app we thought could have some educational implications. What was so awesome was Rooms actually ended up being the most impactful…and we didn’t realize it til we were in it. So I encourage you to get your hands on an Oculus Go to try out Rooms. If you do, and you try other apps, hit us up on social media with the #vrpodcast hashtag to share your experience. If you want to connect with us in person, we have some events coming up, with the biggest being ISTE from June 24th through the 27th. Thats a Sunday through Wednesday, but a lot of people start arriving on Saturday. I know I will, and I think Amanda Fox and Steven Sato will be coming in that Saturday as well. And I think Alex Chaucer is trying to work out the timing to also be in attendance. We are going to be capturing audio and video…and having playground time with some awesome tech. Stay tuned for times and locations for that. Also, a couple of us are presenting at ISTE, so come on by and connect with us there. Make sure to mention the podcast so we can recognize ya. I think there are other events in between now and ISTE, so make sure to follow us and the #vrpodcast hashtag to see when and where. And all of this is to showcase the awesome things happening in immersion tech. Whether you are a educator, student, administrator, sales rep, or a CEO, we want you to share your story and thoughts on immersion tech. Make sure to reach out if you want to come on the podcast, do a video with us, or just talk shop. We love connecting with others that have the same passion for technology. As for what comes next, get ready for some cool series of episodes on the VR podcast, on location videos, and even video stream from inside virtual reality. We are so excited to share our passion and cannot wait to connect with all of you!
First, players had to find the hidden URL in the book that took players to a newly developed Atari 2600 Game called Stacks, another nod to Wade Watts’ (the book’s protagonist) community. The second was playing a Facebook game. And the third was setting a world record on one of various retro games. What would the prize be? Sticking to 80s nostalgia, Cline revealed that the competition's grand prize would be a 1981 DeLorean, similar to the one used in “Back to the Future”. While not a DeLorean, Ready Player One also received prizes: the Alex & Prometheus awards.
The day after the book rights were sold, the film rights were sold to Warner Brothers. It would be another 6 years or so before the book made it to the big screen, but the wait was worth it. Advances in available technology made the film visually spectacular, and its release compliments the current state of immersion technology. Hardware companies are releasing virtual, augmented, and mixed reality-ready gear at an exponential rate while developers are liberated by advanced software like Unity, which just so happens to be free.
But there is also another sector where VR has been emerging more and more with the increasing saturation of technology…and that’s education. With more schools increasing bandwidth and investing into 1:1 programs, it is a breeding ground for immersion technology experiences. With this influx of hardware, software, and experiences, it is inevitable that education will feel the shift and need to be prepared for what comes with such great power: great responsibility (shout out to Uncle Ben). Students are hungry to pioneer in the world of VR, but administrators and teachers must consider the effects of its usage, both positive and negative.
Our team discusses the impact VR has on both of these fronts, business and education, and shares insights on what can be expected now and in the future. As for Ready Player One, it certainly will help infuse virtual reality technology in the classroom. We just need to be prepared for it!
Thank your joining us on this journey. We hope you come back and listen to future episodes. We also want you, YES YOU, to join in on the conversation. Use #VRpodcast to ask questions or comment on VR, immersion technology, or even about The Virtual Reality Podcast.
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