Virtual Possibilities

I was asked the other day what virtual reality could do beyond the obvious entertainment it provides. A bit of online research shows VR moving in a number of directions beneficial to education.  

Below is a list that covers everything from currently available software to academic research and emerging uses.  It isn't even remotely complete.

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VR for physio therapy

Phantom Limb Pain Recovery
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/phantom-pain-virtual-reality-drug-resistant-bacteria-1.3885033/mysterious-phantom-pain-cured-by-virtual-reality-limb-1.3885374

When I worked in Japan I did a lot of work with a local doctor who was researching therapeutic muscle stimulation in patients recovering from paralysis.  A lot of that physiotherapy was very hard work for both the patients and the people working with them.  VR would offer a way to produce more natural, targeted and full range interaction without the tedium and limitation of repetitive exercise.

The CBC piece above is talking about how amputees with phantom limb syndrome use VR to reconnect the neural pathways that used to operate the missing part.  Body confusion over the missing part appears to be the cause of phantom pains in missing limbs.  The immersive nature of VR allows patients to exercise those neurons and reduce instances of false pain responses.

Physical Therapy VR Research
http://www.northeastern.edu/regamevrlab/
If you've ever immersed yourself in VR you quickly become aware of how elsewhere you feel.  I've felt vertigo while standing on a cliff in Google Earth.  As a tool for balance and movement it has obvious immediate applications.

A Home-made VR Motion Sensor and Data Collection Tool

Currently, my senior computer engineering students are designing an Arduino based virtual reality movement sensor that will collect data on a user's movements while immersed.  They are programming a Java based back end in computer science to collect the data streaming from the ultrasonic sensor in order to create data-sets of movement while immersed.  This data could be used to measure the depth of immersion the user is experiencing.  More immersed people tend to physically interact more with the virtual environment - that physical interaction can be used to collect data.

Analysis of the data means they might be able to produce accurate information on how well a user is playing a game, how effectively an athlete is following a VR training regimen or perhaps if a patient recovering from an injury is making the right motions in physio.  It should be able to isolate and describe the physical limitations of a user in VR.  Unlike previous digital experiences through the window of a monitor, VR offers immediate physical feedback that we're going to record.

Digital interaction is going to be much less sedentary in the future.

VR and Autism

Floreo Autism Therapy

http://www.floreotech.com/
Founded by two dads of kids with autism, Floreo explores VR as a therapy.  I like their approach: autism isn't seen as a defect but a difference that we can support with therapies designed to allow these different thinking kids to survive and thrive with everyone else.

Austism Speaks on Virtual Reality
https://www.autismspeaks.org/science/science-news/virtual-reality-training-improves-social 

Autism Speaks is a science focused advocacy group that is encouraging a seed change in how society views the spectrum of atypical autism related thinking.  

In this article they are funding research into a VR based social cognition training in order for autistic people to function more effectively with others.  The complexities of autism means they need to proceed carefully with data collection.  VR's unique sense of immersion means they can simulate social situations (and the anxiety that arises from them) more accurately and produce responses that reflect it.  The data collected from this specifically targeted research is vital to creating tools to help people with autism practice social skills more effectively.

Having kids who are already comfortable with VR means that when this therapy is ready they won't have to get familiar with the technology before they benefit from the therapeutic value of the program.


Sensitivity Training for Neurotypicals
http://www.autism.org.uk/VR
We're currently using a 360 camera to create a VR based tour of our school.  In it students get to move around the building looking where they want in order to begin to get a sense of where everything is.  Editing 4k 360° video is a challenge - I have to use the best VR PC we have to do it (when it isn't running VR), but we'll get there.

In the meantime, I came across this immersive video made by the UK's National Autistic Society.  Designed in collaboration with autistic people, it gives you some idea of how overwhelming the world can be when an autistic child has a panic attack.  It's overwhelming watching it on the screen.  Watching it in VR I was in tears...

If you're not in VR and haven't done 360° video before, you can move the point of view around with your mouse as you watch.  As a way of trying to explain to others how it feels to have a panic attack when you're autistic, it's a powerful tool.

Using VR to Teach Autistic Teens How to Drive
https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2016/07/21/using-virtual-reality-to-help-teenagers-with-autism-learn-how-to-drive/
Another ready-now application for VR is in vehicle operation.  High performance operators such as racers use it to learn tracks.  Heavy equipment operators are using it to train people on expensive industrial machines before they ever get into the cab for the first time.  Pilots have to log flight time in a simulator as part of becoming qualified on a new plane.  As a way to get people familiar with a complex machine it's cheap and effective.

In this case VR is being used to ease the anxiety of learning to drive in teens with autism.  Every high school in our board has driving instruction starting in their parking lots.  They should all be adopting this first step in order to ease anxiety before putting any kid behind the wheel for the first time.

General education links

The Virtual Reality Society
http://www.vrs.org.uk/virtual-reality-education/
Based out of the UK, this group offers a great resource site to get your feet wet in VR.  They are also very interested in how VR can be used in teaching and learning and a lot of their links will take you emerging uses of this technology.

That Tim King Guy
http://temkblog.blogspot.ca/2016/11/vr-visualizing-data-and-realizing.html

There's this guy in Canada who jumped into this early and has his students building VR kits for other schools.  He's out and about often demonstrating the technology in his school, his board and his province to anyone who will listen.  He and his students have put hundreds of people through their first experience with VR.

His interest is in the engineering that creates the immersive VR experience.  It takes astonishing amounts of computing power to produce 3d immersive simulations.  Astonishing amounts of computing power are what got his attention in the first place.

Education isn't  usually responsive to emerging technologies but this guy's MO is to explore new technologies, and this one is going take immersive simulation (something he's always been interested in) to unforeseen levels.

VR and Mathematics
http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ456186
Experiential algebra in VR.  The benefits of visualizing mathematics in 3d are obvious.  This is one of many academic papers on the subject.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1012049406877
Geometry is another obvious use for 3d data visualization.  This is another academic paper on using VR in teaching geometry.

VR and Chemistry
https://devpost.com/software/chemistry-lab-vr
Chemistry is one of those hands on teaching environments that have a lot of safety oversight.  Using VR to familiarize students with the safety needs of the lab could drastically reduce damage costs.  The safety training applications school-wide in technology and science are obvious.

These guys used Unity just like my software engineering course does - this is something that capable high school students could render.  Perhaps we will next semester.

https://www.wearvr.com/apps/chemistry-experiment-vr
Drop into a chemistry lab and explore.

http://cen.acs.org/articles/94/i17/Re-virtual-reality-chemistry.html
Data visualization is a huge part of VR.  Chemistry researchers are already envisioning how it could be used to better understand advanced chemical interactions.

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.556.6123&rep=rep1&type=pdf
An academic paper on how immersive simulation can advance the learning of chemistry.

The Body VR

http://thebodyvr.com/

A trip through the body.  You can observe infections happening at a microscopic level.  It has my twelve year old talking about viral nucleocapsids - I have no idea what he's talking about.

Gender and Virtual Reality

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3452591/The-goggles-let-swap-GENDER-VR-headset-means-wearers-experience-world-eyes-opposite-sex.html

There has been a lot of talk about gender in schools this year.  The immersive nature of VR means empathy can go from difficult to access to something approaching a lived experience.  Having a red neck experience the looks of distrust aimed at a black man or a misogynist spend an hour as a woman would go a long way toward addressing inequity.  It's hard to hate or belittle someone when you've spent some time in their shoes.


Foundry10 Virtual Reality Research

Foundry10 has been a fantastic resource in our exploration of virtual reality.  They are a Seattle based research group focused on how VR might be used in education.

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Does VR have any value beyond entertainment?  It's an explosive new area of technological growth and we've barely begun to explore what it can do.  Even so, there are already hundreds of immediately useful educationally focused VR apps, and more come on line every day.

NOTES
VR as a tool for pain management

FITC: The Pitch

Dear Industry & post-secondary VR/AR Interested People,

I'm at the last day of my first FITC Conference.  I'm buzzing from talks on emerging technologies, inspirational stories of artists thriving in a complex and rapidly evolving time and futurists shedding light on what is coming next.  That last bit is the focus of this post.  

I have a number of current students and recent grads with a great deal of experience in VR, AR and the coming media evolution, and we're all eager to find people to COLLABORATE with!  

If you're in the creative industry and are interested in VR & AR but don't have much technical experience, we'd LOVE to talk to you.  If you're developing VR ready software or hardware and want to talk to us, we'd be over the moon.  If you're in Ontario post-secondary and are starting up VR/AR focused technology courses, my students are your future students and we'd love to work with you.

Sincerely,
Tim King
CWDHS Computer Technology


Here is our VR CV in glorious detail:



In 2016 the computer technology department I run at our local high school was given the opportunity by our board to explore the newly released consumer virtual reality headsets.  My background is in visual art and information technology, and my interest was in getting this visually demanding tech to work.  I'd be lying if I didn't say I also had dreams of Sword Art Online being imminent.


We purchased one of the first HTC Vives to drop in Canada and proceeded to build a PC that could run it.  Over two years ago we had working, fully interactive VR in our lab.  That summer I got put in touch with Foundry10, a Seattle based tech-in-education research group, and they helped us get into our second VR headset.  So that we could be platform agnostic we went with the Oculus Rift.

Since then we have introduced hundreds of students in our board to virtual reality.  We have done multiple grade eight technology fairs and elementary school weekend tech-days demonstrating VR to teachers, parents and students.  We're a deft hand at remote setup and breakdown now.  It never gets old watching people get floored by their first immersive VR experience.  We don't do it with phone based passive systems.  When we introduce VR our users have hands and full interactivity.

Starting last year we began building VR ready computers and packaging them with headsets to hand out to other schools.  We've built dozens of Vive based sets and this year we swapped over to cheaper but equally capable Samsung Odyssey VR based systems.  We have built mobile, laptop based VR systems and desktop PC  systems on a variety of different platforms.  We have become very adept at making VR work in a variety of circumstances.

While all that was going on we also started developing VR ready software for the hardware we'd built.  Our earlier work was built on Oculus and Vive but with the amalgamation of VR platforms on Microsoft's Windows 10 Creator's Update last fall, we are now able to build across multiple platforms simultaneously.  This spring our senior software engineering class is building two VR based titles.  You can check out the 3d models students are turning out on our Sketchfab site.

Freddy Falcon by CWcomptech on Sketchfab

Meanwhile, I've been presenting and demonstrating VR to teachers and educational administration across the province.  I've attended the Educational Computing Organization of Ontario's annual conference the past two years, demonstrating and presenting on AR and VR.  That led to an Ontario Ministry of Education grant in student led VR and AR research.  Our groundbreaking work is helping to decide how VR will be used in education in the province.



Last summer I presented at the Ontario Teacher's Federation summer conference on Pedagogy and Technology.



We're always looking for other ways to diversify stereoscopic 3d digital interaction.  This past year we built school-branded 3d Google Cardboard viewers using a company in Toronto. We've also been in contact with Lenovo's Educational outreach over the Google Daydream platform that's about to drop and would love to get our hands on a Hololens, but that's a bit too rich for a public high school.  Which leads me back to the start.

We're tech-handy, more VR experienced in both hardware and software than most VR startups, and eager to COLLABORATE!  If you're able to reach out online, you could be anywhere, but we'd especially like to make connections with industry and post-secondary programs who are exploring this emerging medium in Ontario.  My students will become your post-secondary students and eventually the people you hire when you're developing in augmented and virtual reality in the coming years.  We'd LOVE to hear from you.  If you can help enable us, we'll floor you with what we can do.

Here are some links:

To The Department:
CWDHS Software Engineering (VR development) page
@CWCompTech on Twitter
CW CompTech on Google+

To Tim King, the teacher:
On Google+
On Twitter
Direct to my work email
On 360 degree video capture - if that isn't extreme enough, how about 360 on a motorcycle?

To current student work:
To Cameron: our valedictorian who is already working on his second VR game title AND a Unity based construct for embedding 360 immersive video into - he already has experience on half a dozen 360 camera rigs from basic consumer Samsung 360s to the Insta360 professional quality 8k 360 camera.
To Nick:  also working on his second VR title and the winner last year of a specialist high skills major award for introducing a new coop program where high school technical experts go back to their old elementary schools and help them improve digital fluency.

Both Nick & Cameron are part of the Cybertitan team who are in the national finals of ICTC Canada's cyber security competition.

To Eric, one of our top 3d modelers


To recent grads:
To Zach, now at Mohawk for IT and Networking (so he's already better than he was) - he was pretty good in high school too, winning the Ontario Skills Canada provincials for IT & Networking with one of the highest technical scores in the competition  Zach can get anything to work.

To Charles: top 5 in Ontario in IT in high school, but also a metal shop work par exellance and a giant anime nerd after my own heart - Charles has the technical skills (more so now after graduating from college) and a bizarre mix of creative interests that make him able to produce truly unique digital art.

To Jake: one of the founding students that designed our software engineering program on year one - his foresight and ability to see where technology was heading was what allowed us to produce the program we enjoy today.  Jake has gone on to post secondary in coding and has hundreds of thousands of users playing his mobile game apps through Android and iOS.  He is a founder of Vulcron Games. 

To Maddi, who has gone into 3d modeling and video game design.  She was producing stunning work three years ago, I can't imagine what she's up to now:

Here is Maddi's portfolio of work to date... 

Speaking of which, I've been moving mountains to try and get more girls into our digital tech program (an uphill struggle in conservative, rural Ontario).  Our electronics expert in Skills Ontario (7th last year, aiming for a medal this) is the only girl in the competition.  Getting in contact with women in tech who are interested in mentoring the next generation would help support me in this.

Please don't hesitate to contact us!

Tim King

The Future Coming Into Focus

This isn't the end, it's just a stage of evolution
(an annoying one).

We quickly get used to the idea that things will always stay the same.  For a while there it looked like we'd all be on desktop computers, then laptops became more common and wireless internet matured in response to it.  With stable wireless data, computers shrank again and changed form into smartphones.  We're still living in the age of handheld touchscreens but that too is beginning to change, and I've been lucky enough to get a glimpse of what's coming next.

Last year we got some SHSM funding to explore virtual reality in our software engineering class.  Students quickly integrated the HTC Vive we got into their software engineering process and were able to turn out 3d environments that they could then explore and perfect in much higher resolution within the immersive VR space.  This year we've joined Foundry10, a VR research group, and are participating in research into how students react to and assimilate VR into their learning (it's a powerful tool).

There are moments when technology pivots rather than simply modifying an existing process, and VR feels like one of those moments.  The way we design interfaces and software as a whole will have to evolve to meet the demands of VR.  Repetitive models and game-play might work on a screen (that kind of game-play itself evolved out of the even more passive watching of television), but it doesn't work in VR.  Immersion demands better everything.

If you think desktops take up a lot of room in a class,
you ain't seen nothing yet!  Don't cross the tape when
someone is immersed in VR!

I've only had the Vive up and running in the classroom for a couple of months, but hundreds of people have passed through it, experiencing VR for the first time, and their response never gets old.  The sense of immersion can be quite profound.  As you move your head you remain in the digital space, you can't see past the edges of a screen.  At this point your mind does a lot of the heavy lifting, placing you within the elsewhere that you find yourself in a way that no window-like monitor ever could.  Students coming out of VR often look like they are awakening from a dream.

VR is the whole shebang, you're somewhere else.  With headphones and goggles on you might forget you're in a classroom at all (students have).  The Vive is heavy, and wired to a powerful desktop PC, so there are limits (now being addressed), but as a first step into a new form of media immersion it raises a lot of interesting questions.  A student who reads about D-day might have a minor emotional response to a well written piece on it.  That same student watching the opening scenes in Saving Private Ryan will have a more visceral response.

A student in a well made VR simulation of D-day might end up with a virtual form of PTSD.  That kind of VR experience doesn't exist yet, though developers are hard at it and I give them only a couple of years until we've re-jigged software development to catch up with the demands of VR.  When that happens we will be able to experience history (or fiction) first hand in a visceral way.

The kind of immersion VR offers raises a lot of questions, but it also creates some unique learning opportunities.  If you need to grasp 3d scientific principles, like, say, how elements bond in chemistry, a VR headset would be invaluable.  If you want to grasp geological concepts in a real world (ie: 3d) context, then a VR headset can place you inside an earthquake.  It's in the softer disciplines, like history or literature, that opinion can creep in.  VR, with its sense of immersion and involuntary emotional response, would make a powerful tool for indoctrination.

Google Glass was a jab into a future we weren't ready
for.  Future augmented reality lenses will seamlessly
allow us to flit between the real and the digital.

I, for one, am just happy to see the end of a touchscreen in everyone's hands period of distraction.  In 20 years people looking at smartphones will be a gag everyone laughs at (can you believe we did that?).

Immersive screens don't just mean alternate realities, they also mean augmented realities.  When we aren't experiencing deep, emotionally powerful virtual experiences, we will be accessing digital information without taking our eyes off the world around us.  A digital revolution that is about enhancement and powerful immersion is going to be an educational treasure trove.

Why bring a prototype technology to an #edtech conference?

I'm just wrapping up this conference in Toronto and it's another week before we're back at it in class.  This is a small conference where you get to meet and talk to many of the participants.  By the end of the three days you're familiar with a lot of faces, which doesn't happen at the bigger events.

I was invited to demonstrate virtual reality research my students and I have done in class over the past year.  Bringing all the kit involved in setting up multiple VR sets is like bringing all you'd need to project a movie... in 1930.  These are the heaviest, most awkward VR sets people will ever experience and it took a car load of tech to set up two headsets.

This 'state of the art' technology that is a pain to set up and far from perfect might seem like an odd choice to bring to a teacher technology focused conference.  Where everyone else is showing off cloud based software tools or simple electronics, I'm here with this astonishingly complex and expensive technology that clearly isn't for everyone, but that's why I brought it.

If you'd have shown up at an education technology conference in 2008 with a touch screen tablet that could run apps, create digital media and replace 80% of the work you do on a desktop computer, you'd have looked a bit mad.  Everyone there would wonder why you're showing off this stuff from Star Trek since it'll never be used in a classroom.  Eighteen months later Apple would produce the first ipad and everyone's mind would change.

When I first tried the latest evolution in virtual reality last spring I was surprised at how accessible it had become.  From bespoke systems that cost tens of thousands of dollars we suddenly saw Oculus and then HTC Vive appear with thousand dollar headsets that would run on a decent desktop computer.  It's not often you see an evolutionary leap that drastic and effective in computer technology (think ipad levels of advancement over a PDA).  The prices have since dropped again to under $600.

Bringing VR as it is now (big, awkward, complex) to an educational conference on technology was an opportunity to show people where we'll be in the next five years.  Heavy, hot, wired and expensive VR sets with lots of setup and complication won't be how many people first experience VR, but it's important for educators to be ahead of mass adoption and think about how media is evolving so that we're able to effectively harness it when that ipad moment happens.

VR is evolving so rapidly that it has reached a kind of critical mass with research and development support.  Money that used to go elsewhere is being focused on VR development which is further accelerating an already hot technology sector.  This means you'll be using VR in your classroom a lot sooner than you think.  Wouldn't it be something if teachers knew something about it before that happens?

I had a lot of people walk up to the station and ask me what company I'm with, even though this was a Minds on Media event and that means it's run by teachers for teachers.  There is a lot of subtext in the question.  The assumption that I had to be some kind of engineer with a VR company comes from a place where teachers assume they aren't experts on tech, but many are and we should make a point of recognizing those skills as they are a key to improving technical fluency in Ontario education.  The other assumption became apparent when people asked me how I could possibly have put this together in an Ontario classroom.

I'm lucky there.  My school board makes a point of exploring emerging technologies with the Specialist High Skills Major program.  Without that support my expertise as a former IT technician is wasted, but with that support we have an example of an Ontario classroom exploring the leading edge of emerging technologies.  The first thing we did after figuring out how to get VR working (and this was a team effort with myself, our board IT department and my senior computer engineering students) was to begin building and setting up VR sets for other schools.  This capacity building led to one of my students returning to his elementary school as a coop student and assisting them with their VR research which in turn led us to becoming an ICT SHSM program for the first time.  There is a virtuous circle when we enable the technical skills of Ontario teachers and use it to actively engage with evolving educational technology rather than waiting for it to surprise us.

I tend to shy away from turn-key digital substitutions of existing class work.  If it is relying on computers and networks you've introduced so much complication into something that achieves the same learning goal more simply that I don't bother.  If a poster making session in class would do it, why bother going digital?  But there are moments with technology where it offers you something so profoundly different from what you could do in an analog classroom that it begs you to use it.  VR did that for us with an opportunity to build digital 3d models and design software for VRspace.

Running Tiltbrush for art teachers from elementary to senior high school always prompted the same result.  Artists get excited by a new medium and this is that.  If you've never sculpted with light before, you can in VR.  Using something as immersive and tactile as VR is much better than explaining it.  After explaining VR many asked me what the point of it was.  After trying VR most of them were lit up by it, suddenly imagining all the possibilities, and that's what I was there for.  I'm not selling you on a platform, or a company, or a carefully designed analog replacement, I'm offering you a glimpse into the future.  If you left full of excitement at the possibilities, and pretty much everyone did, then my job was done.

VR offers 3d, immersive interaction with a digital world we've only been able to peer at through a 2d monitor before.  This will change everything, again.

Dozens of links and lots of information on how to get started in VR in your classroom, check it out!

The Diversifying Consumer VR Landscape

One of our student built PCs immersing a UGDSB
educator in To The Beat: a student built VR game.

We started exploring virtual reality almost two years ago in my senior computer technology classes.  In that time we've completed a Ministry of Education research grant, presented at several conferences and built over a dozen VR sets for other schools in our board.  VR checks a lot of boxes for me:

• it's technically demanding in both hardware and software so it challenges my students with real world problems they wouldn't otherwise get to see
• it's a new medium that has yet to be defined, so there are no established rules or right ways to do things. You can't ask for much more as a media creator and teacher.
• it's rapidly evolving and because we early adopted we are playing a part in that evolution

With all that going for it, I've enjoyed the past could of years working out how best to get it to work, and we're not remotely done.

In October Microsoft blundered into VR with their fall Creator's Update.  Up until that point Microsoft had been quietly developing its very expensive Hololens (we tried it last year at the 2016 ECOO conference) while others went to market.  We settled on the HTC Vive as the best of the first wave of classroom ready fully immersive VR systems.  I've since put hundreds of people through their first experience with it and 99.9% of them come out of it amazed.  It never gets old watching someone experience VR for the first time.

Last year building our Vive VR kits meant building a reasonably strong spec desktop computer (a fairly simple ask for my seniors) and then installing the SteamVR drivers and updating all the firmware on the Vive before installing software.  After that we had stable, ready to roll systems that knocked out astonishing VR experiences.  Headaches were few and once up and running the systems have performed flawlessly, which isn't always the way with emerging technology.

This year Microsoft added all sorts of VR ready software to this Creators Update which has made our fall roll-out of seven VR sets for other schools a massive headache.  What once took ten minutes of installing mature, stable SteamVR drivers is now an hours long odyssey of trying to untangle immature Windows 10 VR kits that try and run the Vive as a Microsoft Mixed Reality headset (which it isn't).  I'm sure this is no accident.  If Microsoft can destabilize HTC's market dominance with the Vive by making the running of it a misery on Windows, then they would (and did).

My frustrated seniors and I were doing multiple re-installs and trying all sorts of driver voodoo to get things working.  Microsoft's sudden interest has borked our VR installs on non-Microsoft gear, but guess what works?  Microsoft's new Mixed Reality headsets.  Coincidence?  Probably not.

Having a dedicated VR pilot
at home lets me test all sorts
of software and systems!

We got a Lenovo Explorer last week when it was on sale at the suggestion of a very VR experienced teacher in our board.  It's pretty lousy using the Microsoft mixed reality software (there is barely anything there and the drivers are immature), but running it on STEAM has been reasonably problem free (the odd tracking issue with the handsets but otherwise OK).

Today I tried out Space Pirate Trainer, probably the most demanding interactive title we've tried, on the Lenovo Explorer using Windows Mixed Reality and it works a treat.  That's a $400 kit doing what an $800 HTC Vive kit with external sensors does almost as well with much less set up.  It'll only get better as those Microsoft drivers mature.

As it stands now we build a VR ready desktop for about $1400 and then get the enterprise version of the Vive for another $1500.  For three hundred bucks less we could buy the equivalent Samsung Microsoft Mixed Reality Headset and compatible laptop.  That'd be a kit that is mobile (laptop and no external sensors means easy transport and setup), and similar in resolution.

It bothers me that Microsoft has used its operating system monopoly to elbow out an existing system, but it's also a step down the evolutionary chain by not having the external sensors of the older Vive system.  That's what you get for not being first in with an emerging technology, you get to edge them out with an evolved product.

With all the driver headaches some of my students (and myself) had moments when we wondered why we're doing this to ourselves.  I finally said, "hey, if you wanted it easy you'd stick to the established technology that everyone else uses.  If we want to work with emerging tech, we've got to be ready for a fight."

The fight continues, and Microsoft's one-two punch of a simpler but effective platform and aggressive monopolistic software has got me thinking about moving on to a better solution.  Sometimes doing what the Sith Lord wants is the best way forward.

LINKS:

Lenovo's Explorer Microsoft Mixed Reality Headset.HTC's Vive: up until recently our go-to VR headset.

Microsoft Mixed Reality.  
And for Canada.

It's already gotten more diverse than it was when we presented this at ECOO last month.

Microsoft is pretty cagey about the specs for Mixed Reality.  They say any typical laptop or desktop can do the business, but our school's Dell i5 laptop wasn't sufficient.  If your 'typical' desktop costs north of $1500 and your 'typical' laptop costs beyond two grand, then yeah, you're ready to experience mixed reality.  They also require Bluetooth which most desktops don't have, so add that in there too... and the controllers need AA batteries, which the Vive doesn't.  

Curious to see if your typical PC can do it?  Here's the link to check your hardware.

When eLearning Evolves from Electronic Learning to Enhanced Learning via VR

I got into virtual reality way back in 2015, to the point where my secondary computer engineering program was making VR systems for other schools in our board and we developed a board-wide Ministry funded research project on it.  Having worked with this emerging technology from the very first commercially viable system, I've watched with interest as the field matures and it has me thinking about how we can move beyond the prejudices in our very conservative education system and toward a mindset where the 'e' in elearning stands for 'enhanced' rather than 'electronic' and is considered a necessity for a superior pedagogical experience rather than an evil to fight against or an excuse to cut funding.

Back in 2017 the only way you could do VR was with the processing power of a desktop computer.  We built those machines to spec and then set up a variety of fully interactive, high resolution headsets on them ranging from HTC Vives to Microsoft supported setups by Samsung through our board's SHSM program.  I'm still providing hardware support for those machines years later.

We travelled to other schools and conferences around the province demonstrating immersive VR for students, parents and other educators.  In most cases they got stuck on the games, but games are often the early adopters, like the first-returners after a forest fire, they push technology and create systems that are adopted by later industries, like education.  Many people turned their noses up at VR even as they were stunned by how immersive and engaging it could be simply because it's 'all about gaming', but (of course) that isn't the case.

At Skills Canada Nationals in Moncton in 2016 I wandered the floor while our IT & Networking finalist duked it out in competition.  I came across a VR training system to operate one of the all-in-one lumber cutting systems (the kind that grabs the tree, cuts it, trims it and stacks the finished poles for transport).  These complex mechanical systems cost millions and the only way to train on them was to train on them, before VR got involved.  The VR training system they had cost upwards of $80,000 to put together, so it was far from cheap, but what it did was allow the company to train operators prior to putting them on the real multi-million dollar equipment and it reduced user-error in new operators by over 80% when they finally got into the real machine.  The end result was millions saved in broken equipment and lost productivity.

In applying immersive VR in our classroom I've come across instances where students with special needs could suddenly express their genius and I've had students produce complex VR based games that gave them the portfolio they needed to move on into high-demand post-secondary digital media programs.  It has also reframed for me how 3d modelling and emerging digital media have their own literacy requirements that many people are oblivious to.  This ongoing work culminated this year when we won Skills Ontario provincials in 3d animation and then went on to win Skills Canada nationals to become the top 3d animation school in the country.

All of these experiences and development feels like it's leading somewhere, and that somewhere is beginning to come into focus.  A digitally enhanced classroom offers many benefits and improvements to pedagogical practice, but it requires staff and students who are fluent and proficient with the technology.  This is an ongoing problem in an education system that diminishes the potential of technology and clings to old ways, usually to the benefit of the organizations involved in public education.

Things have been, let's say 'rough' during COVID as the system fell into repeat rounds of remote learning without any kind of plan or expectations of success.  The new normal became to just do and expect less as the limited and atrophied format of elearning became evident to all, but any educator who approaches the job from that angle should probably be looking elsewhere for work.  As things come back toward some kind of normal I'm hoping we can explore virtual and digitally augmented learning without the entrenched prejudices surrounding webpaged based/screen delivered elearning because this emerging media offers some powerful opportunities.

In the time we've been in pandemic-limbo VR technology has moved along.  Those 2017 'coming soon' stand alone systems are no longer lower resolution options and they are now pretty much where a desktop top driven wired system was in 2016, for one quarter the price.  The evolution toward fully interactive, high-resolution virtual reality will continue and education needs to get over its e-prejudices to better understand and leverage it.

My son gave the Hololens a go back at the ECOO conference in 2016.  It was very much a prototype-proof-of-concept device, but the idea of eye glasses sized headsets is where VR is headed.  Along with a pair of haptic gloves and other IoT type sensors, we should be seeing portable, capable, fully interactive systems in the next couple of years that continue to expand the bandwidth between us and our rapidly expanding digital infrastructure.  Interacting with digital information through a two dimensional low-resolution/screen will look as archaic as dot matrix printers in a decade.

During the pandemic I got to try Meta's latest Oculus Quest 2 headset.  These are completely wireless, have school-day long battery life and offer interactive, immersive digital media access for close to the price of a Chromebook.  Early adopting programs (like mine) will be able to offer VR experiences much more easily with this gear, but it's the next step that is most exciting:  the convergence of virtual, augmented and mixed reality into a readily accessible digital media-scape for most subjects of study.

"Education will be transformed into something far more vivid. History teachers will transport their students to the beaches of Normandy or the Cu Chi tunnels of Vietnam. In biology class, the entire room will become the inside of a mammalian cell."

- https://futureof.org/sports-2016/ar-vr-roadmap/2025-arvr-convergence/

We're getting to the point now where the hardware engineering isn't the limitation.  The next few years will be about developing the software engineering in this new medium because having the tech in hand doesn't help when the media isn't there to make use of it.  The focus I've placed on our game development program has always included a big push beyond games as students develop increasingly complex digital portfolios.  It's why we've crept into animation and 3d modelling in our engineering as well, because these skills are going to be in short supply to fulfill the needs of this emerging medium.

The Future of Media is 3d, but barely anyone is teaching it!

Our success with Skills Canada this year in 3d animation lies very much in the realm of digital media as this kind of 3d media is exactly what is needed for both virtual and augmented reality experiences to work:

Made over 2 days (2x6 hours), our team of 2 had to storyboard, script and animate an 11 second video.  They were allowed to pre-model and rig 3d character models (the loon and the beaver) but the metal pot was a wild-card model that had to be made in the competition window.  All sounds were prescribed for all teams, so the animation is storyboarded to fit them.

Our success at Skills (and the fact that it was 2 grade 11s who achieved it) means we're integrating 3d animation into the game development training curriculum next year.  This all grew out of me pushing for better narrative structure in last year's game, Rigged.  That led to several students (including our Skills competitors) branching off and forming animation teams to better frame the narrative in the game:

All the modelling, animation and sounds in that video were made from scratch in our classroom by grade 11/12 students in our TGI3/4M Software Engineering/Gamedev class.  We were unable to develop a VR based game as we have in previous years due to COVID restrictions, but I'm hoping to get back to it sooner than later.

It won't be too long until you see teachers asking students to take out their headsets and join a virtual classroom where avatars allow students to be whatever they wish and the level of interactivity means teachers will be able to know whether or not a student is engaged and present.  Many online teachers during the pandemic experienced the 'logged-in-but-absent' student.  That kind of low-resolution online interaction would be rendered obsolete once Meta and the rest of the industry has education-ready virtual reality ready to go.  If you're inhabiting an avatar online you can't hide behind privacy as an excuse to not participate, and an inactive avatar in VR would look like an inactive student in class, making avoidance much more difficult.

This also means that the idea of a brick and mortar classroom as we know it is going to quickly become irrelevant and our schools as we know them will require rethinking - something that the drag-inducers in education (the vested interests in how things run right now) aren't going to want to cooperate with.  I fear the public education system in Ontario is going to need a hard reboot to make this happen.  That may be the only way to break our ties with a past that makes little sense in the 21st Century and craft a 'world class education system'.  Thinking that the way things were is the pinacle we need to get back to is a big part of the problem.

Instead of passive information delivery, interactive, immersive learning opportunities mean students will experience history, science and literature first hand, bringing formerly static information to life and allowing them to explore it rather than have it land on them.  Living Lord of the Flies is much more memorable than reading it.  I did a role play of it over a decade ago in an English class and former students still talk about it today.  Interactivity is the key to engagement with modern students as this is the mediascape they live in when not in class.  They will no longer be forced to step back a decade in terms of media in the classroom if we can engage with emerging digital mediums like VR.  If you're digging your heels in about VR, then artificial intelligence and machine learning (already far more prevalent than you think) will knock you right over.

In the book (and film) Ready Player One, after the collapse of an oil based transport economy virtual reality becomes the default schooling option.  A better future would be a bit less apocalyptic but the idea that VR would augment learning and help teachers produce engaged classrooms with interactive and powerful learning opportunities also suggests that we don't need to burn tons of diesel every day transporting students to remote schools since any local school could provide the digital tools needed, and eventually perhaps not even be needed.  Even in augmented situations where students are building in technology classes or experimenting in science, augmented reality could offer insight and direction that would enable far more students to enjoy success while also making our schooling more green; yet another aspect of our pre-pandemic public education system that never was.

From the early days up until now, virtual/immersive/interactive digital tools have offered the hope of a future that finally removes us from a low-resolution, 2d, screen-based relationship with information.  In our increasingly information rich (or overwhelmingly information overloaded world, depending on how you look at it) we need to find better ways to engage with and make effective use of the information all around us, and this augmented, virtual mediascape will be the key to that as well with it's immersive, three dimensional, highly interactive interface.  That these digital tools also offer a solution to our wildly unsustainable educational transport habits is icing on the cake, and that's not even considering how artificial intelligence and machine learning and going to radically change things in the next two decades.  Now it's just a matter of getting a system mired in historical political self interest to move forward and use these emerging tools.

VIRTUAL REALITY EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES

VR isn't the only emerging digital technology that can empower our pedagogical practice. Artificial Intelligence is also opening doors to radically individualized learning opportunities that would benefit all students and make our rows of desks in overcrowded classrooms look positively medieval:

https://temkblog.blogspot.com/2022/07/dancing-in-datasphere-2022-edition-ai.html

Virtual possibilities back in 2016 (education has made little effort to engage in any of them):
https://temkblog.blogspot.com/2016/12/virtual-possibilities.html

2016 Working with Foundry10 https://www.foundry10.org/ on researching the possibilities of emerging VR technologies:  https://temkblog.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-future-coming-into-focus.html


Our MoE grant research into VR in 2017. No follow-up there either:
https://temkblog.blogspot.com/2017/07/replies-to-our-moe-experiential-student.html


2017 Building our own school branded VR viewers for use with student DIY devices:  https://photos.app.goo.gl/0dqJ9SdBqxii8qcw1


Reaching out to industry at the FITC conference in 2018. Industry doesn't know how to engage with the prickly world of public education either:
https://temkblog.blogspot.com/2018/04/fitc-pitch.html


2018 Minds on Media state of art VR review:  https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1yZjG-on50qT1zE1Pj9me5u5UUC_qUhVBwPnUWT1SEDU/edit?usp=sharing

In 2016 I was looking to escape the staid and restrictive world of #edtech in order to try and explore emerging technologies. Six years later we're churning out national champions in fields ranging from cybersecurity to 3d animation:
https://temkblog.blogspot.com/2016/11/ecoo16-virtual-reality-diy-school.html


Meta's Project Cambria, the next gen in VR:
https://www.pcgamesn.com/oculus/project-cambria-release-date-price-specshttps://www.pcgamesn.com/oculus/project-cambria-release-date-price-specs


Facebook is morphing into Meta in order to drive a more complex interface with digital information:
https://about.facebook.com/company-info/


VR in education:
https://www.classvr.com/virtual-reality-in-education/


10 best examples of VR in education (Forbes):
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2021/07/23/10-best-examples-of-vr-and-ar-in-education/?sh=4c2777871f48


Guy Huntinton's future vision-quest where digital tools mean equality in educational opportunities for all:
https://hvl.net/pdf/LearningJourneyofTwoYoungKidsInARemoteVillage.pdf


Guy exploring how our relationship with technology needs to change in order to fully leverage the coming technology revolution:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/coming-classroom-revolution-guy-huntington/


In case you were unaware, we're on the edge of the technological singularity and things aren't going to slow down as it continues to roll over us:
https://perell.com/essay/the-singularity-is-here/#:~:text=The%20Oxford%20Dictionary%20defines%20the,focus%20on%20%E2%80%9Cdramatic%20and%20irreversible


AI assisted coding is already available:
https://www.wired.com/story/openai-copilot-autocomplete-for-code/