Marvin is the BBC’s newest foreign correspondent, and you can get inside his head.

This week the BBC released a new two-part virtual reality news documentary series called Damming the Nile, which was produced in partnership between BBC News and the newly launched BBC VR Hub headed up by Zillah Watson.

“Viewers will have enjoyed 360 news pieces from the BBC before, but never like this. The film is in full immersive VR, is stereoscopic and features fully spatialised audio. Audiences can enjoy the sheer scale and beauty of the Nile, alongside the major infrastructure projects that have shaped its past and will continue to shape its future,” Watson explains.

Audiences can enjoy the sheer scale and beauty of the Nile, alongside the major infrastructure projects that have shaped its past and will continue to shape its future
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This is an interesting case study for VR content because it’s a crossover of several genres, bridging news reporting, documentary filmmaking, historical narrative and adventure. Even while you’re taking in the beautiful sights and sounds as you fly above waterfalls, you’re made aware that this is where the world’s first war over water could be fought as a major new project – the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam – threatens to upset the balance of power between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan.

This is an interesting case study for VR content because it’s a crossover of several genres, bridging news reporting, documentary filmmaking, historical narrative and adventure
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“We want to create high quality mobile VR pieces that give audiences experiences they can’t find anywhere else,” says Watson. “Damming the Nile VR does this by making you feel like you’re there, unearthing the story as you go, and getting a better understanding of the different cultures and points of view at play.”

Your guide through this complex experience is BBC Africa Correspondent Alastair Leithead. You join him and his crew as he interviews ministers and hear the perspective of locals in the street corners of Sudan and cafés of Khartoum. Viewers are able to explore the controversial dam up-close and fly in a hot air balloon to see the ancient pyramids and Egyptian temples, before finally landing back in the bustling chaos of the Cairo streets.

Your guide through this complex experience is BBC Africa Correspondent Alastair Leithead
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“As a foreign correspondent, my job is to introduce people to new and fascinating places, challenge stereotypes and explain how countries are growing and changing. Virtual reality means films like Damming the Nile VR can actually take our audiences there,” says Alastair Leithead, who in a BBC Radio 4 programme recounted how, the first time he ever tried VR, he thought to himself that “here might be the future of news. Why tell people about something when they can see and experience them for themselves?”

Viewers are able to explore the controversial dam up-close and fly in a hot air balloon to see the ancient pyramids and Egyptian temples, before finally landing back in the bustling chaos of the Cairo streets
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So when the chance came for him to film his Nile assignment in VR, he was enthusiastic about exploring the possibilities of the medium, and fascinated by the power of “Marvin” – the nickname the crew gave the 360 camera rig that captured the footage for this experience – to capture the essence of the moment in much the same way as a person would. This even went so far as ensuring that Marvin had his own seat cafés as they chatted with the locals.

Technologies come and go, but there’s something about this that does exactly what a foreign correspondent should do: Takes you to a place, helps you understand it, and shows you why you should care
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“It’s a little bit weird being Marvin, being inside his head, and even weirder with me in there, whispering about what you should be looking at,” Leithead muses, yet given the fact that he’s exploring the possibility of whether his role might become redundant, he’s very positive about the technology, and seemingly willing to welcome Marvin as a worthy colleague rather than a threat.

“Technologies come and go, but there’s something about this that does exactly what a foreign correspondent should do: Takes you to a place, helps you understand it, and shows you why you should care. Maybe the future lies with Marvin, our own Virtual Correspondent.”

Both parts of Damming the Nile can be viewed on YouTube with or without a VR headset like a Google Cardboard. As well as accessing it on the BBC VR app or the Oculus Gear VR store, viewers can also watch the documentary on the BBC’s brand new site dedicated to VR content, which also showcases previous immersive productions from the corporation such as the award-winning The Turning Forest and Easter Rising: Voice of a Rebel. You can also see Himalayas: A Trek to School and Home: A VR Spacewalk before riding a supersonic car as it attempts to break the world land speed record in Bloodhound. A special 360° version of the films will be available to view to watch through the BBC News website and on Facebook. The story will aired as a news documentary on BBC TV channels, and will be available to read on the BBC News website.

Both parts of Damming the Nile can be viewed on YouTube with or without a VR headset
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Tech Trends offers comprehensive Virtual Reality Consultancy services to support businesses looking to adopt VR/AR/MR technologies into their brand and communications strategy.

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Is VR the Future of News? appeared first on Tech Trends.

A scalable and sustainable initiative is empowering teachers to deliver better learning outcomes in some of the most deprived areas of Africa.

Many children in sub-Saharan Africa – over 400,000 in Ghana alone according to 2014 UNESCO estimates – either don’t go to school or eventually drop out of education altogether. The scale of the challenge is considerable to say the least, yet one successful program has recently shown how directed investment in technology can make a significant impact within a relatively short time.

The results from an independent evaluation of Train for Tomorrow demonstrated how higher quality teaching can help reverse such negative trends and inspire more children in the world’s most deprived areas to attend school and complete their education.

Over 400,000 children in sub-Saharan Africa don't access education
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Many teachers in countries like Ghana don't have any formal training
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What makes programmes like this so crucial is the fact that such a large proportion of teachers in countries like Ghana haven’t received formal training. According to the Ghanaian Ministry of Education, 45 percent of primary school teachers and 30 percent of those teaching junior high are untrained. This amounts to a staggering 90,000 working teachers in need of acquiring such skills.

Under the Train for Tomorrow programme – which is run by the Varkey Foundation and funded through a $2 million USD grant from philanthropic organization Dubai Cares – 40 ‘hub’ schools were provided with solar powered video-link equipment. This enabled highly qualified teacher trainers based in the country’s capital Accra to hold regular interactive training sessions at those hub schools, where head teachers and school leaders from surrounding areas come to receive their training.

Train for Tomorrow enables qualified teachers to share their knowledge remotely
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The focus of those sessions was on best practice teaching methods and techniques which have been proven to deliver better quality educational outcomes, such as group work, critical thinking, use of higher order thinking skills, reflection and analysis.

40 schools were provided with solar powered video-link equipment
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The program relies on a ripple effect whereby the head teachers and school leaders who participate in the hub school sessions then repeat the training in their own school for other teachers. This strategy managed to amplify the reach of the programme to nearly 5,000 teachers and their 90,000 students. Initially operating from three studios, the foundation has now expanded that number to five larger facilities, all equipped with the latest technology.

An evaluation conducted by Dalberg Global Development Associates showed that teachers going through Train for Tomorrow demonstrated statistically significant improvement in instructional performance. Teachers in the 40 hub schools showed significant improvement in their teaching techniques, demonstrably encouraging cooperative learning – which enhances retention of learning through group work – increased from 13% in the baseline analysis to 60%

“The results of this independent evaluation clearly demonstrate that pioneering EdTech can improve learning in parts of the world that are often off the power grid, have limited access to the internet and have few resources to share,” says Vikas Pota, CEO of the Varkey Foundation.

Pota also added that he hopes the results will encourage more investors to support similar projects, as well as inspiring technology entrepreneurs to come forward with fresh ideas that are hardy enough to improve education where it is needed the most.

Teachers going through the programme significantly improved their performace
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This technology, which earlier this year was used to deliver the world’s first satellite-enabled interactive distance learning project to a Refugee Camp, was also successfully deployed by the Varkey Foundation for the Making Ghanaian Girls Great! (MGCubed) project.

MGCubed is a three-year pilot project funded by the Department for International Development (DFID)’s Girls’ Education Challenge (GEC) which used interactive distance learning technology to deliver Maths and English lessons daily to more than 10,000 pupils in 72 of Ghana’s most deprived communities. In addition to delivering after-school club activities covering crucial topics such as reproductive health, financial literacy, entrepreneurship, career guidance and the environment, the MGCubed model was shown to have a significant positive impact on literacy and numeracy skills.

According to the Varkey Foundation, this is a highly replicable model
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Professional Learning Networks have long-lasting impact on teachers’ development
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According to Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) pupils participating in that programme were able to read between 3.21-3.74 more words per minute than those in regular classes, and in numeracy tests MGCubed teaching has been found to increase average scores by the equivalent of one school year.

Professional Learning Networks encouraged by such projects have been shown to have long-lasting positive impacts on teachers’ professional development, and form the basis of scalability and sustainability of the initiatives. Since participants will be able to rely on one another for advice, evaluation and support for the continuous improvement of their own practice, their experience and expertise can be constantly communicated and amplified.

According to the Varkey Foundation, this is a highly replicable model, since the educational and technical expertise deployed create a significant body of assets that can be reused either within the original hub schools, or through installation of the technology package in further schools. The nature of the model means that after the fixed infrastructure costs are paid for, operating costs are minimal, therefore making the long-term effects far reaching and enduring.

“With Train for Tomorrow, our aim is to improve the quality of teaching, and create a positive teaching and learning experience for children in Ghana, through an innovative program model utilizing technology,” adds His Excellency Tariq Al Gurg, Chief Executive Officer at Dubai Cares. “The learnings from the final evaluation of the program which has concluded, will contribute to the growing evidence surrounding teacher training modalities, helping strengthen the design and delivery of teacher training programs in developing countries.”

This article was originally published on The Huffington Post

How Pioneering EdTech is Empowering Teachers in Africa https://t.co/Hcitr4BQWv via @HuffPostBlog

— Alice Bonasio (@alicebonasio) November 20, 2017

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Amplifying the Impact of Teaching Through Technology appeared first on Tech Trends.

Only one in eight people in the world have access to a motorised vehicle. The OX is looking to change that.

Imagine an affordable, flatpack, utility vehicle, purpose-designed for use in all manner of difficult terrain and flexible enough to perform a multitude of humanitarian tasks. Designed by partners The Norman Trust, The Global Vehicle Trust and Gordon Murray Design, the OX is set to change the face of transport in the areas of the world where this is most needed.

“You go out to Africa, the third world and most people don’t have mobility, access to transport, it’s shocking. The OX is practical but also a great vehicle to drive,” says Frank Coppuck, Technical Director at GMD

karlmackie.com

The vehicle is designed to be as capable and flexible as possible in difficult conditions so features generous approach and departure angles and a high clearance. Each wheel of the two-wheel drive system is independently suspended to allow for the roughest of trails and the OX is also light, with marine grade plywood used wherever possible to ensure minimal fuel consumption. The prototype OX I saw was fitted with a 2.2Ltr petrol engine but this can be swapped out easily to an engine suited to the available local fuel supply. River crossings or flooded roads are no problem as the air intake is 1m off the ground, but make sure you take your swimming trunks if you go that deep!

The vehicle is designed to be capable and flexible in difficult conditions
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karlmackie.com

Across the developing world, and Africa in particular, there is an intense need for improved transport both for everyday living as well as emergencies. Even though 15% of the world’s population lives in Africa, there has never been a vehicle specifically designed and manufactured in volume to meet the rigours of the continent. Food, water, medicine, schools and transport are dependent for their daily needs on unreliable vehicles and uncertain availability. The vehicles that are available are often designed for quite different purposes, are too heavy, too complicated and unsuited to local conditions.

Frank went on to explain that the OX is designed to be as simple as possible to fix as facilities to repair and modify vehicles are basic or non-existent in Africa. No on-board computers here and the literal nuts and bolts are all standard, universal sizes that basic tool kits can deal with. It is designed for an everyday person to be able to fix and repair and features some cunning bits of design to allow for dealing with common problems.

karlmackie.com

Changing lives through a revolution in all-terrain mobility”
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The air intake filter is simply a chunk of plastic foam that can easily be removed, the dust banged out and replaced in seconds while the windscreen is made of three identical plastic panels that can be swapped around if one is broken or cracked by flying stones. Simplicity is the name of the game here, and the entire top half of the vehicle is modular, to enable conversion to whatever purpose the user needs, be it a portable school, a water transport or an ambulance.

The OX is a highly unconventional ‘flat-pack’ all-terrain light truck,  which will benefit people living in remote villages and townships across Africa and other parts of the developing world.

• A vehicle that will provide mobility for rural areas in developing countries with poor infrastructure
• Lightweight, rugged and durable to maximise payload for goods and people
• Capable of operating in adverse terrain and hostile conditions
• Low cost, designed for simple maintenance with fewer parts
• Designed for self-assembly using simple procedures and instructions
• Supplied fully assembled or flat-packed for easy shipping and local assembly

karlmackie.com

The Ox was conceived by one of the UK’s leading philanthropists, Sir Torquil Norman, who is recognised for his charitable work with disadvantaged young people through his charity The Norman Trust. To take the idea off the drawing board Professor Gordon Murray, designer of the McLaren F1 supercar, jumped on-board and threw some of the design team from his automotive technology company GMD behind the project on a not-for-profit basis.

“Sir Torquil came with the concept and said this is what I’d like to achieve, Gordon loved it and this is the result!” enthused Coppuck

The Trust and GMD have spent approximately £3 million bringing the OX to the working prototype stage. Preliminary engineering design, extensive component selection, benchmarking and testing was undertaken by GMD to increase confidence that the OX will cope with all of the environments that it is likely to be put to work in. The prototyping stage of the OX development has seen three versions built: XP1, XP2 and XP3.

“This is proof of concept. Now we need to get it into production, to get it from 95% bulletproof to the 100% stage. We want them to be so robust, so durable, we want them to last forever.” Coppuck explained

karlmackie.com

The next stage is further engineering improvements and updates followed by testing on the ground in Africa. To fund this The Norman Trust and The Global Vehicle Trust are seeking £450,000 via a Crowdfunder.co.uk campaign. Check out the video below to hear Sir Torquil and Professor Gordon Murray discuss their passion for the OX and the benefits it could bring to developing countries.

The next stage will be to test it on the ground in Africa
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Ox to Africa from H28 on Vimeo.

“I think I can quite honestly say the OX is the best thing I have designed; it certainly was the hardest challenge. There’s nothing else like it on the planet.” Concludes Professor Gordon Murray.

Millions of people around the world who don’t have access to mobility.
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Tom Atkinson is a Digital Producer & Photographer at R3Digital and Reviews & Dept. Editor at Tech Trends. Connect on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter @R3Digital

The post This Crowdfunded Flatpack Vehicle Wants to Democratise Motoring appeared first on Tech Trends.

The world is in desperate need of more qualified, motivated, and empowered teachers, as education is the key to achieving global development goals. How can tech help achieve this?

Here’s one statistic that’s hard to wrap your head around: In order for every child to receive a primary education by 2030, we need to recruit and train 25.8 million school teachers. To put this into some perspective, that’s the equivalent of recruiting and training over one third of the entire population of the United Kingdom, and to do so across some of the most poorest and most remote areas of the planet.

We need to use technology to help bridge the logistics gap where it comes to teacher training
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The solution, some argue, is to leverage technology to bridge that logistics gap and stretch existing resources to meet the demand.

Yet although this might seem like an impossibly ambitious goal, there is no shortage of passionate individuals willing to join the teaching workforce. The crucial obstacle, however, is the chronic lack of training capacity to empower those individuals to teach.

Demand for teachers in sub-Saharan Africa will grow by over 50 percent in the next decade
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This problem is most evident in sub-Saharan Africa. The region currently needs 2.7 million teachers and with a fast-growing school-age population this demand will grow by nearly 50 percent in the next decade or so. The Ghanaian Ministry of Education estimates that around 63,000 of the country’s primary school teachers and a further 31,000 secondary school teachers remain untrained.

As the number of primary school teachers in Ghana rose sharply by 61 percent over the last decade according to UNESCO the available training resources simply could not keep up and schools were forced to hire teachers with little or no training. This meant that the percentage of trained teachers fell from 72 percent to 53 percent from 1999 to 2013.

That trend is only set to increase as the demand for teaching soars. To meet its agreed Sustainable Development Goals of providing every child with 12 years of quality education by 2030, Ghana needs a further 189,000 teachers, in addition to training existing ones.

Ghana needs 189,000 teachers in addition to training existing ones.
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The lack of resources and the challenges of reaching teachers in remote and geographically dispersed areas makes this a daunting task, all but impossible to achieve using traditional training methodologies, which are time-and-labor intensive by nature.

The solution is to leverage technology to bridge that logistics gap and stretch existing resources to meet the demand. And this is precisely what a project called Train for Tomorrow, which was launched by the The Varkey Foundation  earlier this year, aims to do.

Train for tomorrow is Africa’s first interactive distance learning program aimed specifically at teachers. It works by enabling two-way interactions between trainers and teachers in geographically remote and dispersed locations, meaning they can be reached at a much lower cost. Over the next two years it will use the $2 million grant it received from Dubai Cares to train around 5,000 teachers in Ghana.

Train for tomorrow is Africa’s first interactive distance learning program
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The project was inspired by an earlier initiative called Making Ghanaian Girls Great (also known as MGCubed) which successfully used solar-powered computers and projectors to broadcast live lessons by master teachers to schools in deprived and isolated areas.  Funded by the UK Department for International Development, MGCubed taught basic numeracy and literacy to over 8,000 boys and girls, and also provided additional after-school club activities to vulnerable girls on issues around early pregnancy, early marriage, girls’ rights, and financial literacy. The results showed improved maths scores across the board as well as significant attendance increase from 54 percent to 80 percent in less than two years.

TFT was inspired by an earlier initiative called Making Ghanaian Girls Great - also known as MGCubed
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What this shows is that there is no need to reinvent the wheel where it comes to using edtech to impact global development. The collaboration and viral spread of content that the internet facilitates is most evident in social media, but it goes far beyond cat memes and clever quizzes. The same technology can be used to create simple and effective solutions, which can be leveraged at relatively low cost to reach a large number of people. And the greatest impact is undoubtedly to be found in empowering teachers, since the ripple effects of knowledge distribution are rapidly multiplied as each trainee is empowered to better teach many children in turn.

Each trained teacher is empowered to change the lives of many children
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The science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke once famously said that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”; enabling every child in the world to access education would indeed be something magical, but it’s also not beyond the realm of reason. The most exciting thing about using technology in education is that, once a concept has been successfully tested, it can usually be scaled at relatively low cost. That’s why projects like Train for Tomorrow are worth watching, because if they can train 5,000 teachers across Ghana in the next two years, it is not actually that large a leap to imagine that similar initiatives could reach the 2.7 million teachers needed across sub-Saharan Africa, or indeed the 25 million around the world. We will be watching with interest.

enabling every child in the world to access education would indeed be something magical
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This article was originally published on EdTech Digest

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Can We Use Technology to Train 25 Million New Teachers? appeared first on Tech Trends.

“Evangelist” is an overhyped term in tech, yet Chief Evangelist Aape Pohjavirta makes it work.

His enthusiasm is contagious, and after a few minutes chatting about Funzi – the start-up he founded two years ago – I feel like I’ve been drinking the Kool-Aid. Maybe it was the strong Finnish coffee that gave me that buzz, or perhaps it was the fact that Aape can use terms like ‘futurification’ without making it sound like empty nonsense. This is clearly a man on a mission, which he casually outlines as we sit in a swanky Helsinki coffee shop:

“We want a world with no wars, where everyone is healthy, happy and has a job.”

But what, I ask, are his more ambitious goals?


He laughs, but there’s no mistaking that the goals are deadly serious, he’s got an  impressive track record to back them up. Having been involved with education technology since the 80s, he collaborated with some of the early Apple pioneers. Over the decades that followed, he experienced the hype around e-learning and multimedia as well as the meteoric rise of social media and mobile. But, he says, they all failed to live up to the promise of truly revolutionising education.

“The education industry is fragmented and works in silos. There is no global driver. When you look at EdTech companies they usually start off by segmenting themselves by topic, language and geography, so you cannot scale, you’re always just jumping from niche to niche.”

As a friend of his – Chief Technology Officer at Stanford University’s School of Education Paul Kim – once put it, the current education system is simply incapable of reforming itself because everyone in the system is already a product of that system, so disruption needs to come from outside.

“You don’t need any new inventions in order to digitise the whole system of education delivery. Everything you need is already there. The only reason why this hasn’t happened is because publishers of educational books have always been hugely profitable, so disruption in that space won’t come from them. We’re doing to education exactly what Google did to search. We’re destroying other people’s business because other people’s businesses have been wrong.”

We want a world with no wars, where everyone is healthy, happy and has a job
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In order to really shake things up, they started by first looking at how people were using their mobile devices, and how they would best learn through them. Funzi essentially works on the premise that when people can focus on learning the things that they’re good at, and that they’re interested in, education – delivered through technology – can have a much bigger impact

“It’s not about doing the same things better, but about doing better things. We’re using mobile to liberate people from education so they have the freedom to learn.”

Their business model is based on learning outcomes, where user have access to all the content for free, but pay for certification if they wish to validate that learning externally. It’s a powerful concept, since users can be confident that the course works for them before ever making a payment – if they make it at all. And looking at the numbers, that strategy does seem to make the product very ‘sticky,’ meaning that 20 out of every 100 users that try it come back the next day, week and month, with sessions averaging 8 minutes. Impressive stats in an age of information overload and short attention spans.

“It’s a false choice between free learning and monetising, you can have both in this system. We can optimise the way that any learning is delivered anywhere, and we can do this at not cost to the user while still enabling the creation of valuable content and lucrative businesses.”

Another false paradigm, he says, is that EdTech is a competitive market: “This is a 6 trillion dollar a year industry that has to be digitised. 1 percent of that is still $60 billion. Divide that among a thousand different companies and that’s still $60 million each, so could you please tell me where the competition is?”

It’s not about doing the same things better, but about doing better things
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“We’re empowering people with skills to build their dreams” Aape says, pointing to the fact that over 40,000 people have taken their entrepreneurship course in Iraq alone. “We see from implementation how practical knowledge drives the birth of new communities and adds life to existing ones. It’s the desire and curiosity to learn new things that keeps us humans alive.”

At the same time, the global refugee crisis broke out, and like many in the tech community, Funzi felt compelled to help in any way they could (TechCrunch Editor Mike Butcher has been organising such global initiatives under the Techfugees umbrella since last year), so they leveraged the platform’s capabilities and scalability to help streamline the arrival and assimilation process for refugees—from finding reception centres and applying for asylum, to figuring out schools, work permits and the local language.

We’re empowering people with skills to build their dreams
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The next step in scaling up will be working with partners to reach users and deliver learning that’s relevant to them. “We know, for example, that there are 471 million Facebook users on mobile who said they were interested in education. Those are the people we’ll be targeting,” says Aarpe, who’s also cautiously optimistic about Facebook’s own education ambitions:

“We were at F8 (Facebook’s Developer Conference) this year and when I listened to MZ’s (Mark Zuckerberg) keynote it sounded like he was using my script,” he recalls. “From what I heard, he understands the huge responsibility that his organization has. I don’t know if it’s good or bad, right or wrong, but I do know he has a genuine interest in pushing the envelope in the only field that can ever really change the way the world works, and that’s education. At least he’s doing something… And when you look at the proposition, to deliver personalised, free learning to anyone, anywhere, what could be more beautiful, or more democratising? That’s exactly what we’re going to enable.”

To deliver personalised, free learning to anyone, anywhere, what could be more beautiful?
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Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Funzifying Mobile Learning appeared first on Tech Trends.