Technology is key to tackling the global education and skills challenge of equipping young people for the future. But to get it right, we need to get back to basics.

In spite of the fact the EdTech market is predicted to reach $252 Billion by 2020 and that over $1 billion was invested in the sector in the US this year alone, many promising initiatives in the sector fail to make any real lasting impact. This is something that Vikas Pota is looking to change by putting education at the heart of the technology discussion.

VR is the most psychologically powerful medium in history, and Immersive technologies can help close the talent gap
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After eight years as CEO of the Varkey Foundation, Pota has now been appointed as Group Chief Executive of Tmrw Digital, Sunny Varkey’s new holding company which will oversee all his EdTech businesses and investments, as well as set up a research institute dedicated to finding ways of leveraging technology to democratize access to education.

“My role at the Foundation taught me how incredibly complex EdTech is. You have this fundamental conflict between a really innovative group of technology entrepreneurs and a schooling system that dates back to the first industrial revolution.”

Tmrw Digital is a business but its mission will still help to advance the broader societal impact of the Varkey Foundation. It has inherited a portfolio of EdTech investments, with five dedicated funds in Silicon Valley having funded between 400-500 EdTech start-ups so far.

“You don’t make a quick buck in EdTech. Everything we do has to be built on a foundation of sound educational research. Educating a child is a process that takes place over many years, so why do we expect EdTech to deliver learning outcomes instantly?”

The point he makes is a good one. Perhaps we need to come to terms with the fact that Education Technology is a much slower-turning wheel. In order to get initiatives in that space to succeed, you need long-term vision and commitment.

After eight years as CEO of the Varkey Foundation, Vikas Pota takes on the role of Group Chief Executive at Tmrw Digital, which will oversee Sunny Varkey’s EdTech businesses and investments
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He demonstrated the effectiveness of this approach with his work at the foundation to raise the profile and status of teachers. In a celebrity-obsessed age, he managed to bring a host of high-profile figures – from actors and musicians to politicians, princes and even the Pope– to champion the cause of education through the Global Teacher Prize, which boasts a lavish Oscar-style ceremony where a $1 million prize is awarded to the world’s best teacher. In the space of a few years, the Dubai-based event has become known as the Nobel Prize of education, and put the spotlight on the importance of teaching, and the crisis in training and recruitment which is creating a global teacher shortage.

“To meet the UN’s sustainable development goals, Governments need to recruit 69 million new teachers, but training quality educators is something that has eluded successive governments around the world. I can’t help but believe that technology has a key role to play if we’re to meet the sheer scale of the challenge of providing every child with access to a quality education.

In order to meet the UN’s sustainable development goals, Governments need to recruit 69 million new teachers
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“In all the conferences I’ve been to around the world, you always see policymakers, CEOs, tech entrepreneurs and investors, but how shortsighted is it that we don’t ask the teachers that are on the front line, delivering education to the next generation, to be part of those discussions?”

Pota is also very keen to learn more about how emerging technologies such as VR and AR can engage learners with experiences that they might not otherwise have been able to access.

As professor Jeremy Bailenson from Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab says, “VR is the most psychologically powerful medium in history, and Immersive technologies can help close the talent gap, as almost any skill can be improved by virtual instruction. Research shows that our brains treat VR experiences in ways which are fundamentally similar to real ones. This opens up all sorts of interesting possibilities for teachers using this technology to enrich and deliver the curriculum, but also to provide students with access to places and experiences which would normally be beyond their reach due to financial, geographical or safety constraints.

Pota is also very keen to learn more about how emerging technologies such as VR and AR can engage learners
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Yet as exciting as a technology might be, there are no guarantees that implementing it will automatically advance a pupil’s education. A 2015 OECD report on EdTech highlighted that countries which have invested heavily in information and communication technologies (ICT) for education have seen no noticeable improvement in their performances in PISA results for reading, mathematics or science. One of the most disappointing findings of the report is that the socio-economic divide between students is not narrowed by technology, and perhaps is even amplified.

“Teachers go through a rigorous process of pedagogical training for a good reason; You can’t walk in as an entrepreneur and change that by presuming to flash around the latest shiny gizmo. EdTech has to stand up to robust scrutiny of pedagogical and learning outcomes. That rigor is what we are looking for. We need to ensure we have a robust evaluation of how your product actually works in the classroom.”

The crux of the matter is that market research does not equate to educational research, and as long as the measures of success for EdTech remain the same as those for other tech sectors (such as user numbers or licencing/subscription/advertising profits) instead of learning outcomes, then their impact will be limited.

“This new institute we’re setting up will encourage entrepreneurs to think like that and infuse them with the understanding of what it takes to shift those educational outcomes. Robust research and evaluation is the missing link here.”

This new will encourage entrepreneurs to think about what it takes to shift educational outcomes
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“We need to equip people with the skills of the future – Collaboration, creativity, leadership. Our unique advantage in achieving this is our network of schools, which presents the opportunity to implement these innovations directly and offer robust feedback that informs further product development. That will be very much a part of the support we offer the companies we choose to invest in.”

Teachers go through a rigorous process of pedagogical training for a good reason; You can’t walk in as an entrepreneur and change that by presuming to flash around the latest shiny gizmo
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It will be interesting to see how Tmrw Digital will operate as a business while advancing Varkey’s mission of giving access to a quality education to every child. To Pota, however, the two goals are complementary, and although their success will be measured in terms of social impact and educational outcomes, he believes that it will finally lead to a profitable, sustainable, and scalable model for EdTech.

Alice Bonasio is a VR and Digital Transformation 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 Putting Education at the Heart of EdTech appeared first on Tech Trends.

The Internet democratized knowledge, but immersive technologies like AR and VR will democratize access to experience – and revolutionize learning.

Prestigious medical institutions such as Imperial College London are using HoloLens devices in operating theatres to spot key blood vessels, bones, and muscles helping to make procedures quicker and safer.

Surgeons have traditionally used a handheld ultrasound scanner to find vessels under the skin by detecting the movement of blood. However, this is very time-consuming and still requires some guesswork
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Patients who have suffered an accident may have open wounds that require reconstructive surgery. Skin and blood vessels are taken from a healthy part of the body and used to cover the wound, enabling it to close and heal properly. A vital step in the process is connecting the blood vessels of the “new” tissue with those at the site of the wound, so oxygenated blood can reach the area.

Surgeons have traditionally used a handheld ultrasound scanner to find vessels under the skin by detecting the movement of blood. However, this is very time-consuming and still requires some guesswork as to where the vessels are and their path through body tissue, explained Dr Dimitri Amiras – a Consultant Musculoskeletal Radiologist at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust – as he walked me through the demo.

Prestigious medical institutions such as Imperial College London are using HoloLens devices in operating theatres to spot key blood vessels, bones, and muscles helping to make procedures quicker and safer
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The technology allows surgeons to take CT scans that have previously been completed and overlay 3D digital models of them onto a patient’s limb during reconstructive surgery
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The technology allows surgeons to take CT scans that have previously been completed and overlay 3D digital models of them onto a patient’s limb during reconstructive surgery. It has been used to help surgeons successfully move blood vessels from one part of the body to another in order to help open wounds heal more quickly.

At the Global Education and Skills Forum (GESF) in Dubai I got a chance to try it out first-hand, and it was pretty amazing, specially knowing that the Holograms I was looking at were based on real CT scans. Patients so far have included a 41-year-old man who injured his leg in a car crash, an 85-year-old woman who fractured her fibula and a person who developed an infection that required surgery.

“Mixed reality offers a new way to find these blood vessels accurately and quickly by overlaying scan images onto the patient during the operation. This technology allows us to experience the data that we have collected from patients before their operation in the most realistic and natural way. You look at the leg and essentially see inside of it; you see the bones and the course of the blood vessels,” he said.

Dr Philip Pratt, a Research Fellow in the Department of Surgery and Cancer at Imperial, said using the HoloLens is allowing surgeons to understand a patient’s unique anatomy very quickly and accurately and to collaborate more efficiently in teams as multiple surgeons wearing the headsets can also see what their colleagues are specifically looking at.

As well as a powerful visualization and collaboration tool for working surgeons, immersive technologies can also help solve a growing problem: the global shortage of such professionals, specially in the developing world
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As well as a powerful visualization and collaboration tool for working surgeons, immersive technologies can also help solve a growing problem: the global shortage of such professionals, specially in the developing world. Training facilitated by immersive technologies can be instrumental in addressing the chronic shortage of trained professionals in areas such as teaching, healthcare and the digital economy.

Bassem F Hashash, from Augmented Reality training and collaboration platform Proximie, says an estimated five billion people worldwide do not have access to surgery This is due partly to the chronic lack of specialists available to perform such procedures, and the difficulty and expense involved in training new surgeons.

An estimated five billion people worldwide do not have access to surgery
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At the Global Education and Skills Forum #GESF in Dubai I got a chance to try it out first-hand, and it was pretty amazing, specially knowing that the Holograms I was looking at were based on real CT scans
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Training at scale is a real challenge, specially in areas such as healthcare, as you can only fit a small number of students in an Operating Room, and observation and practice is how one learns the crucial skillset necessary in such professions. Yet with immersive technology is possible for experts and students to virtually transport themselves into settings which allow them to flexibly collaborate and train. They can, in other words, become a democratizing force in education, by enabling students to virtually access experiences that would otherwise be out of their reach.

Using the HoloLens allows surgeons to understand a patient’s unique anatomy quickly and accurately and to collaborate more efficiently in teams
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According to Richard Vincent of Fundamental VR who was also showcasing his haptic Virtual Reality application at GESF (which let me have a great time literally messing around someone’s insides) it isn’t a matter of virtual training being “better,” but of enabling the benefits of experiential learning to become more widely accessible, allowing training to move beyond the limited model of “See one, do one, teach one” and opening up the possibilities for students to practice and perfect their skills in a safe and accurate environment.

Training at scale is a real challenge, specially in areas such as healthcare, as you can only fit a small number of students in an Operating Room, and observation and practice is how one learns the crucial skillset
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People all over the world will be able to easily access realistic experiences and simulations, learning and practicing new skills in entirely new ways
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In developing his own HoloLens application, Vincent has seen evidence that working with Mixed Reality tends to trigger different parts of the brain through immersion, so that content is assimilated more quickly and “sticks” with learners for longer, hence its potential to add to, enhance and accelerate learning. And Moore’s law, he adds means that his company’s current training simulation system costs one tenth of what it did a few years prior, and he expects that exponential driving down of cost to continue to increase sharply over the next five to ten years.

“As the technology progresses it will become more affordable and more integrated into our everyday lives. Just as most people here are carrying some sort of smartphone, the next step will be some sort of augmented reality device,” says Dr Amiras

“This is the new interface between computers and humans. What happens with technology is that when it works well, it disappears,” agrees Vincent. “Immersive Technology in the future won’t be about a bulky headset. What we have today is the equivalent of the Motorola phone of 1987. It will be glasses and contacts. This might feel scary now but in 10 years time it will feel as natural as carrying a smartphone in your pocket does now.”

All this means that people all over the world will be able to easily access realistic experiences and simulations, learning and practicing new skills in entirely new ways. Much in the same way as the widespread adoption of the Internet facilitated broader access to knowledge, Immersive technologies can enable broader and more egalitarian access to experience itself, and that’s pretty exciting.

This article was originally published on VRScout

Mixed Reality and Medicine: Virtual Practice Makes Perfect via @alicebonasio https://t.co/3wnwW02uLq pic.twitter.com/9hkWbH2dsI

— VRScout (@VRScout) April 16, 2018

For companies looking to get into Immersive technologies such as VR/AR/MR/XR our Virtual Reality Consultancy services offer guidance and support on how best to incorporate these into your brand 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 How Virtual Practice Makes Perfect appeared first on Tech Trends.

How a group of high school students used VR to bring their coursework to life.

The most exciting possibility that Immersive Technologies bring are to accelerate and supplement learning in ways that simply haven’t been possible, practical, or scalable before.

Students are now able to showcase their imagination, creativity and content mastery in new ways, allowing teachers to recognize the extent of their understanding, and classmates to learn in an intensely immersive experience.

VR allows students to showcase their imagination, creativity and content mastery in new ways
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This was in fact one of the themes that emerged from the Immersive Learning Showcase at the 2018 Global Education and Skills Forum, (GESF) where one of the discussions explored how virtual storytelling could be leveraged as a learning tool in many interesting ways:

As more people start using the technologies like VR, we will see it become an increasingly personalized tool. And that is exactly how a group of 3 students at Beaver Country Day School – Mila Contreras, Samantha Shapiro and Annika Hardy – used the InstaVR platform to create an experience that showcased their research in a unique way to their entire class.

The key difference in using VR, they explain, is that their audience was able to engage with the experience on their own terms, choosing the path they liked best as they experienced the topics.

As more people start using the technologies like VR, we will see it more of a personalized tool than a pre-established experience
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Yolanda Wilcox Gonzalez – the 10^th Grade History Teacher responsible for the course the project stemmed from – recalls the experience that first showed her the power of VR to engage students through creating an empathetic bond with the experience. In 2016, they visited an immersive technology exhibit from the international group Doctors Without Borders, which (similarly to the AR experience by the International Red Cross recently featured on Tech Trends) highlighted the global refugee crisis through the lens of those who are displaced on a daily basis.

“Their exhibit exposed my students to the plight of the reality refugees experience from the moment they are confronted with being forcibly displaced from their homes due to war, extreme conflict and / or violence. As we went through each exhibit, students were faced with having to make choices around what to take, what to give up and what was most important for survival as we journeyed across borders with the hope of reaching a refugee camp. Once finished with our simulation, students entered a 30 foot diameter dome which projected an immersive 360° film of locations throughout the world where we saw the reality of the people and places where issues displacement and the refugee crisis were currently happening.”

Gonzalez says that there are many pedagogical opportunities to be explored at the intersection of using immersive technologies and promoting empathy in classroom practices, another key theme that emerged at the GESF Immersive Learning Showcase:

Many pedagogical opportunities to be explored at the intersection of using immersive and promoting empathy in classroom practices
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“I believe that immersive technology could be used to create an environment that people would most likely not experience otherwise. If young students were placed in an environment where living conditions are hard, at a young age they were faced with the questions “what can we do to help?” rather than reading about it, they are less likely to brush the problem aside,” says Mila Contreras.

Immersive technologies can go beyond telling someone about the past and actually show them what it was like
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Shapiro says the best way for teachers to support this learning process is to encourage students to be creative. “The way we came up with this idea was that we knew the basics of technology and coding from school and then we were assigned an open-ended project and instructed to be creative. Given these same guidelines for any assignment, I think students could come up with some really diverse innovations.”

The best way for teachers to support learning with Immersive Technology is to encourage students to be creative
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“Immersive technologies can go beyond telling someone about the past and actually show them what it was like. Experiencing something, rather than being told about something, is more powerful and more likely to be something you remember,” agrees Annika Hardy. “When you learn about something through an immersive technology like virtual reality, you are given the opportunity to not just be told something but to actually live the lessons. It might make more of an impact on students because instead of memorizing material they can create a memory of their own.”

Hardy says that working with immersive technologies allowed her to use and connect all her interests: art, problem-solving and people. “The creative aspect of designing a virtual reality experience is similar to creating a piece of art or directing a movie. You have to make creative decisions that make the viewer’s experiences reflect your message. The technological piece of virtual reality allows me to use math and coding to experiment and problem solve until I get the outcome I want. The social aspect of immersive technology gives me an opportunity to work with the emotion and psychology behind the virtual reality experience.”

The creative aspect of designing a virtual reality experience is similar to creating a piece of art or directing a movie
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The experience opened Hardy’s eyes to how much she could accomplish with these tools, and she says it inspired her to consider a career working with immersive tech to help people in need.

“Schools can facilitate creative thinking by giving students the time to experiment and create projects that center around invention and art,” continues Hardy. “I feel that immersive technology offers a hands-on, more interactive way for students to learn. For me, I have always been captured and intrigued by subjects that I am passionate about, but that are also presented to me in new ways. That’s the information that has really stuck with me and I feel that Virtual Reality offers the same engagement. Next, I would like to combine my interests in fashion design and social justice and use Virtual Reality to create another experience.”

Teachers need to be given opportunities to learn how to utilize the technology for bringing mixed reality into the classroom environment
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“When teachers take on the role of facilitator in classroom, students are provided with an educational opportunity to engage with themes and topics from the course that focuses on their interests while at the same time providing students with multiple access points for learning about topics across a given theme. Students become more engaged, take ownership for their experience and become inspired to dig deeper into learning when they too are part of the equation,” concludes Gonzalez. “Immersive technologies will certainly play a role in the future of education but teachers need to be given opportunities in which they too are exposed to learning how to utilize the technology that allows them to learn about the instructional practice for bringing mixed reality into the classroom environment.”

Tech Trends’  Virtual Reality Consultancy services offers support for companies looking to get a foothold in the growing Mixed Reality spectrum and enhance their brand strategy with immersive technologies. 

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 Creating Personalized Virtual Experiences appeared first on Tech Trends.

Those looking for the VR OASIS of Ready Player One should head out to the deserts of the UAE.

It’s a truism among VR creators that the best use of the medium is to allow you to do things that are either impossible or extremely difficult to experience in real life. By that yardstick, Mission 828 certainly passes with flying colours, specially if – like me – you’re petrified of heights.

I was in Dubai last week for the Global Education and Skills Forum (which this year also had a big focus on immersive tech for learning) so I thought I’d use my free day to check out the new experience at the top of the world’s tallest building – the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

The mission gives the whole thing a structure and sense of urgency
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Mission 828 is an interactive HTC Vive experience delivered in specially designed pods, which also add multi-sensory elements like spatial audio and simulated wind. These pods sit at the highest level of the tower which is accessible to the public, but that’s not the actual top; that’s where the VR comes in.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to prevent an impeding cyber attack by – you guessed it – climbing up the very tip of needle-like structure using suction cups and one of those nifty hook-gun thingies Batman always in his utility belt. During that climb, you’re artfully warned that it might be best not to look down. Being human, of course that’s precisely what you do, and I’m not ashamed to say that I squawked and froze for a good few seconds when I did. The sheer drop is horrendously realistic, specially given the fact you’ve been looking at the real thing out the windows before entering that virtual environment.

It’s a truism among VR creators that the best use of the medium is to let you do things that are difficult or impossible in real life
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Once you do manage to get to the top, you’ll need to align a special device with the approaching satellite in order to disable it. Job done, but what goes up must also come down… Luckily, there’s a nifty parachute to hand, so all you need to do is step off the edge and base jump to the ground. The whole thing only takes a few minutes, but it felt like a very long time, and I was definitely in need of recovery by the time I “landed”.

Overall it’s a really well designed experience made by British company Inition, which was also behind the vertigo-inducing experience where you can virtually slide down the Shard in London launched last year.

The mission premise gives the whole thing a structure and sense of urgency, and you’re given clear instructions every step of the way and are challenged to use a variety of movements and look around as you fulfil each task. With a lot of VR experiences users often get frustrated when fumbling around with unfamiliar controls and instructions, but this all felt fairly intuitive, and watching a variety of people go through it they were all managing to complete their missions too.

Inition’s CEO Adrian Leu says there were particular challenges given the Burj’s extreme height, where the team had to use flying drones to capture 3D 360-degree footage and then stitch that together with CGI to achieve the final effect of climbing the structure and finally base-jumping off the top.

Leu adds that this is part of a broader trend for top tourist attractions to tie in immersive experiences to expand and enhance the value of the physical ones, but in Dubai it also feels part of another trend you notice everywhere: a general enthusiasm towards emerging technologies, and VR is a big part of that. Just around the corner from the Burj Khalifa is a brand new 75,000 square foot VR & AR entertainment center which opened earlier this month.

I tried a range of different experiences at the park, ranging from APE-X (which puts you in a sort of King-Kong-like role where you battle bots as a massive weaponized cybernetic ape to Payday, a “full bank robber experience” to John Wick Chronicles where you play the legendary assassin. There are also indoor roller coasters and a carousel for the little ones, but it’s fair to say that most of the experiences at the moment revolve around some form of shooting.

And although I enjoy blowing up zombie’s heads as much as the next gal, I do hope that as the concept evolves we will see the park exploring some of the more creative uses of VR. The closest I came to that during my visit was, funnily enough, as I was blasting said zombies in the Walking Dead experience, where you wake up in hospital, wheelchair-bound after having your legs amputated. As your companions wheel you out, both your hands are occupied working the shotgun that’s keeping the walkers at bay, and the sense of helplessness really adds to the urgency and panic of the whole thing. More of that, I say.

This new VR Park is housed in the Dubai mall, which currently holds the record for being not only the largest, but also the most visited mall in the planet. Over 51 million people a year roaming its 1200 stores, which are spread over an area roughly the size of 50 football fields. It quickly becomes apparent that in Dubai, superlatives are the norm, and that if they set out to build something, chances are they’re aiming for it to be the first and/or biggest or its kind.

The vibe you get in Dubai is a general desire to rush toward the future
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Currently in construction in the Emirate, for example, are the world’s longest indoor ski slope, and the Ain Dubai, the soon-to-be largest Ferris wheel anywhere. Not to mention they’re building a mountain (you heard that right) from all the construction rubble, which they also hope, will serve to increase rainfall in the region.

On my way to the mall, just after we passed said mountain, my taxi driver gestured towards the impressive skyline to our left and said that none of those skyscrapers had existed three years ago. The entire place is in a permanent state of construction boom, and there are no signs of slowdown. In 2017 alone, almost 11 billion dirham (US$2.99 billion) worth of construction contracts were awarded to the city, with around 120,000 apartments expected to come to market by 2020. Among these is the observation tower at Dubai Creek Harbour, which will overtake the Burj Khalifa’s as the world’s tallest structure at over 3,045 feet (just shy of a kilometre high). It is expected to come in at a cost of around $1billion.

This new VR Park is housed in the Dubai mall, which holds the record for being the largest and most visited mall in the world
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The vibe you get in Dubai is a general desire to rush toward the future in any way they can. The Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) of Dubai (RTA) has set a target of having a quarter of all the journeys in its system be driverless by 2030, as part of its broader Smart City strategy.

Virgin just unveiled its Hyperloop pod prototype which proposes to carry passengers at speeds of up to 760mph between Abu Dhabi and Dubai in just 12 minutes (a journey that currently takes about 90 minutes by car). The Hyperloop is a system that uses an electromagnetic propulsion system to accelerate levitating pods through a vacuum tube. Each pod is designed to accommodate up to ten passengers and the service would be able to carry 10,000 passengers per hour in both directions and is set to open in around two years, at about the time the city will be hosting EXPO 2020, which is expected to attract around 25 million visitors to the city.

“Dubai makes perfect sense for Hyperloop because this is the 21st century’s global transport hub and its leaders understand that,” says His Excellency Mattar Al Tayer, director general of the RTA. This is an opportunity to help transform the UAE from a technology consumer to a technology creator, incubating expertise for a new global industry, in line with the UAE’s Vision 2021.”

Looking around at what they managed to build in the real world, it’s hard not to take them seriously. If they turn out to be as good at building in virtual worlds as they have in the physical one, we could soon be seeing the sort of Oasis envisaged in Ready Player One emerging from this surreal desert city. Pretty appropriate, really.

Dubai makes perfect sense for Hyperloop because this is the 21st century's global transport hub and its leaders understand that
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This article was originally published in VRScout

Exploring Virtual Reality in Dubai https://t.co/fP5wcFJRrt w/@alicebonasio pic.twitter.com/aMILMsUFtL

— VRScout (@VRScout) March 26, 2018

For companies looking to get into Immersive technologies such as VR/AR/MR/XR our Virtual Reality Consultancy services offer guidance and support on how best to incorporate these into your brand 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 @alicebonasioon Twitter.

The post Emirates Embracing Emerging Tech appeared first on Tech Trends.

How do we tackle the challenge of making educational technology that works for everyone?

According to UNESCO, 264 million children do not have access to schooling, while at least 600 million more are “in school but not learning” constituting what the World Bank calls a learning crisis.

According to UNESCO, 264 million children do not have access to schooling
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This is the problem that drove the Varkey Foundation to create the Next Billion EdTech prize, which recognises leading EdTech start-ups making an impact on education in low income and emerging economies.

The three finalists - Dot learn, Chatterbox, and TeachMeNow were each awarded $25,000 and the opportunity to pilot their tech in partner schools
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Awarded to “the most innovative technology destined to have a radical impact on education in low income and emerging world countries,” the competition saw over 40 start-ups from all over the world pitching to a panel of judges including venture capitalists, philanthropic investors, experts in EdTech and learning sciences, and senior education policy makers.

“The new wave of EdTech is clearly about to hit its stride,” said leading judge and TechCrunch Editor-at-Large Mike Butcher. “It was clear to the judges that emerging market EdTech is going to be one of the hottest tech sectors in the world for the next few years. The majority of the start-ups we saw during the competition clearly have enormous potential. It’s fantastic that GESF is throwing the spotlight on this exciting sector.”

The prize identifies, spotlights and celebrates the world’s leading EdTech start-ups that have shown through ingenuity and innovation that they can improve learning in parts of the world where there is limited access to good quality teaching.

Over 40 start-ups from all over the world pitched to a panel of judges including venture capitalists, philanthropic investors, experts in EdTech and senior education policy makers
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“Over a billion young people – a number growing every day – are being denied what should be the birth right of every single child in the 21st century, no matter where they live: a good education that allows them to make the most of their God-given talents,” says Sunny Varkey, Founder of the Varkey Foundation.

“We have launched the Next Billion Prize to highlight technology’s potential to tackle the problems that have proven too difficult for successive generations of politicians to solve. Our fervent hope is that the prize inspires practical and persistent entrepreneurs the world over to come forward with fresh tech ideas. These ideas must be hardy enough to improve education in regions where young people are denied access to a good quality teacher and a great learning environment”.

The three finalists – Dot learn, Chatterbox, and TeachMeNow were each awarded $25,000 as well as the opportunity to pilot their technology in partner schools in Western Cape, South Africa. The overall winner – UK-based start-up Chatterbox – was then chosen by popular vote by delegates at the Global Education and Skills Forum (GESF) which took place last weekend in Dubai.

We have launched the Next Billion Prize to highlight technology’s potential to tackle the problems that have proven too difficult for successive generations of politicians to solve
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Chatterbox is an online language school which harnesses the wasted talent of unemployed professionals who are refugees, offering them work as on-line and in-person language tutors. The problem it solves is not only that of refugee unemployment and integration, however; In the United Kingdom alone, language skills shortage are estimated to cost the economy £48bn every year, so the services the platform provides are very much in demand. So much so, in fact, that the company already counts several universities, major non-profits and corporations in the country among its clients.

“I was three years old when I arrived in the UK as a refugee with my mum Patuni. She was a civil engineer who spoke English and three other languages fluently,” recalls Chatterbox CEO Mursal Hedayat. After we had to leave Afghanistan because of civil war, I watched her become unemployed in the UK for more than a decade. Refugees with degrees and valuable skills still face shockingly high levels of underemployment. An idea like Chatterbox has never been more urgently needed,” she concludes.

Fellow finalists Dot Learn, which is located in Nigeria, makes online video e-learning accessible on slow, expensive Internet connections for users in low-income countries. Its technology reduces the file-size of learning videos, requiring 1/100th of the bandwidth to watch. At current data prices in Kenya and Nigeria, this means a student or learner can access 5 hours of online learning for about the cost of sending a single text message ($0.014). It offers content providers the opportunity to reach potentially billions of users for whom online learning would otherwise be impractical or ruinously expensive.

Another positive aspect to emerge from the competition was the diversity of backgrounds among the competing start-ups. Of the six finalists to pitch on Sunday, five were led by female founders.

TeachMeNow Managing Director Thea Myhrvold agrees that this diversity is of crucial importance: “As a female entrepreneur, I felt it was important to create positive stories for and from the Middle East. That’s why I came back to the UAE to start TeachMeNow. The first class using our technology had a Venezuelan teaching Spanish to a Saudi student. Now, we empower tens of thousands of teachers, entrepreneurs, schools, institutions to reach students all over the world.”

Of the six finalists to pitch on Sunday, five were led by female founders
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The prize was the focal point of Tomorrow, a new EdTech summit which took place for the first time at GESF.

According to Sunny Varkey, this was be the first EdTech summit in the world which joined the most important players from the spheres of education and technology together, giving start-ups access to every type of stakeholder – from Silicon Valley venture capitalists to former and current education ministers, foundations, academics and the world’s best teachers. “They can draw on their expertise and support to build products that will work as well in the classroom as they do in an elevator pitch,” he concluded.

This article was originally published on IDG Connect

Scaling EdTech to reach the next billion learners https://t.co/haICbWfc8R via @CIOonline

— Alice Bonasio (@alicebonasio) March 23, 2018

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 @alicebonasioon Twitter.

The post Reaching The Next Billion Learners Through EdTech appeared first on Tech Trends.

Experiential learning enabled by technologies such as VR and AR are set to disrupt education as we know it, but what will the future of learning actually look like?

Photography by Tom Atkinson @R3Digital

There is a lot of speculation about what will be the VR “killer app” but for me that’s actually asking all the wrong questions. For starters, it’s not all about just Virtual Reality, or Augmented Reality for that matter.

Technologies that immerse you in various scenarios so that the experiences and actions within it feel naturally like your own will be a powerful vehicle for training skills and sharing knowledge
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There is a whole spectrum of immersive technologies out there – and whether you choose to call that spectrum Mixed Reality or XR (which in turn can stand either for Cross Reality or Extended Reality, depending on who you ask) it encompasses a variety of ways in which we can blend the physical and digital worlds. Or as HoloLens inventor Alex Kipman puts it – the world of atoms and the world of bits.

There is a whole spectrum of immersive technologies out there encompassing a variety of ways in which we can blend the physical and digital worlds
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If you held my feet to a fire and made me choose one area I thought held the most exciting potential for immersive tech, I would have to say learning
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But the main problem with that question is that it misses the point that these technologies are not about one application, they represent the evolution of personal computing and will revolutionize the way we interact with machines.

Yet if you held my feet to a fire and made me choose one area of application which I thought held the most exciting potential for immersive tech, I would have to say it was learning.

Immersive tech represents the evolution of personal computing and will revolutionize the way we interact with machines
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We all instinctively realize that it’s much easier to learn something by doing it yourself than by watching, reading, or being told the same information. So it isn’t really that surprising that technologies that immerse you in various scenarios so that the experiences and actions within feel naturally like your own will be a powerful vehicle for training various skills and sharing knowledge. I firmly believe that experiential learning is the future of education.

But predicting what that future will look like isn’t straightforward either, because immersive technologies can be used to teach almost anything to anyone. And that was the idea behind the Immersive Learning Showcase at the Global Education and Skills Forum (GESF) that took place this weekend in Dubai.

We all instinctively realize that it’s much easier to learn something by doing it yourself than by watching, reading, or being told the same information
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Immersive technologies can be used to teach almost anything to anyone
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The event, which is an initiative from the Varkey Foundation aims to improve access and quality of education for people around the world. This year the forum focused on how we can prepare young people for the world of 2030 and beyond, and educators debated ways to make technology part of the solution.

One way to do that is to use emerging technologies such as VR, AR (or whatever flavour or alphabet soup you opt for) to engage learners with experiences that they might not otherwise have been able to access.

There is almost no skill that cannot be taught or improved by simulation
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And the Immersive Learning Showcase at GESF demonstrated just how broad the range of those experiences can be. From empathy-inducing pieces by Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab (VHIL) to visiting heritage and historic sites on the newly launched Cyark, entering an Amazonian shaman’s state of trance with Awavena to performing surgery with realistic haptic feedback in virtual simulation programmes designed with direct feedback from surgeons, as was showcased by FundamentalVR, showed that – as VHIL’s Director Professor Jeremy Bailenson puts it in his latest book Experience on Demand – there is almost no skill that cannot be taught or improved by simulation.

the Immersive Learning Showcase at #GESF demonstrated how broad the range of learning experiences enabled by this tech can be
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Around the corner from those demonstrations at the Future Talks stage, we also saw a range of discussions happening amongst educators, authors, researchers, technologists, creative content makers and tech journalists to unpick what exactly immersive technologies were already achieving in the learning space, and trying to shine a light on what might come next. See below for an overview of the highlights and full videos of the talks.

Which is why if I get asked that old killer app question I always say learning, but what many forms that learning will take is yet to be decided, and it will be decided by the sort of people that were lining up to try those immersive experiences at GESF – teachers, students, and policymakers. In the end immersive learning will be literally whatever we want it to be. The possibilities are – in a very real sense – virtually endless.

Practice makes perfect – widening access and accelerating learning through VR

Immersive technologies can help close the talent gap, as almost any skill can be improved by virtual instruction. Research shows that our brains treat VR experiences in ways which are fundamentally similar to real ones. For example, children who had been given a VR experience of swimming with whales often formed “false memories,” and came to believe and remember that they had physically been to SeaWorld to see an Orca. This opens up all sorts of interesting possibilities for teachers using this technology to enrich and deliver the curriculum, but also to provide students with access to places and experiences which would normally be beyond their reach due to financial, geographical or safety constraints.

 

VR is the most psychologically powerful medium in history because it allows learners to achieve both psychological presence and leverage embodied cognition. People learn better by doing than by watching, and learn best by realistically simulating motor actions in the brain. Unlike speech, nonverbal behaviour is automatic, a direct pipeline to our mental states, emotions, and identities, which influence cognition. Access to knowledge and training via these technologies can therefore be instrumental in tapping the vast amount of untapped potential in the world, and address the chronic shortage of trained professionals in areas such as teaching, healthcare and the digital economy. Immersive technologies could go a long way in opening up real opportunities to millions whose talents aren’t currently used and truly democratizing learning on a global scale. Where the Internet democratized knowledge, immersive technologies will democratize experience.

Will Virtual Environments Replace the Classroom?

Immersive technologies could play a crucial role in modernizing our current education systems, moving away from the 1800s model to something that is more accessible to students everywhere and also more suitable for teaching skills relevant to the digital age. In his novel Ready Player One, Ernest Cline sets out a powerful vision of a virtual classroom, but how close are we to achieving this, and is that indeed the most desirable outcome? There is an argument to be made for slow, steady, and considered integration of immersive technologies in the classroom, yet how is this to be achieved without jeopardizing the benefits afforded by structured, in-class learning?

Virtual Super-Teacher – scaling up personalised learning

Imagine teaching a class with hundreds of students, yet being able to pay perfect attention to each one, detecting the slightest hint of confusion and projecting the appropriate reaction accordingly. This would effectively give teachers super-powers they could not dream of leveraging in a normal classroom environment. And this scenario is much nearer than we might think.  Since VR technology relies on motion capture to work, it already has inbuilt mechanisms that are capable of analysing the body language of both teachers and pupils. This analysis creates a digital footprint that can be used to assess learning behaviour and personalize learning for maximum impact. In the not-so-distant future, AI and machine learning will be able to use this information to predict the future performance of students and to adjust materials accordingly. It is the fulfilment of the vision that futurists such as Isaac Asimov have predicted, which makes it possible to infinitely scale one-to-one instruction, giving students and teachers (quite literally) the best of all worlds.

Teaching digital skills through Virtual Storytelling

Computing and storytelling is currently changing, expanding from a 2-dimensional frame into more 3-dimensional and immersive platforms. However, the students that have access to these new technologies (such as augmented, virtual, and mixed realities) still suffer from wide inequity gaps.  How can we ensure that youth from all communities have access to these new mediums and are prepared for a future workforce that might rely on them? How can leaders in the content creation industry bridge the gap to educators to assist with this process?

Teaching Empathy

When one imagines the world from another’s perspective, the gap between oneself and the other decreases.  This is why VR is particularly effective in imparting so-called soft skills, which have traditionally proved difficult to train. It has the power to literally make you walk in the shoes of another. Empathy is something we can choose to experience, and arguably something that we all need to be trained in if we are to achieve meaningful societal change. VR experiences can be designed to avoid stereotypes and false narratives and thus tackle bias. Will educators look to incorporate such mechanisms in the curriculum, and if so, what are the considerations and potential pitfalls in doing so? And can VR actually be used to teach students undesirable skills? Can you teach violence as well as tolerance? Where do we draw the line between education and indoctrination?

For companies looking to get into Immersive technologies such as VR/AR/MR/XR our Virtual Reality Consultancy services offer guidance on how these technologies can enhance and support your brand 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 @alicebonasioon Twitter.

The post Immersive Tech Transforming Learning appeared first on Tech Trends.

How the world’s most beloved scientist taught us about life, the universe, and everything.

I once met Professor Stephen Hawking as he was coming out of the elevator at the John Lewis store in Cambridge (UK – The original one), where we both lived at the time.

And although I’ll admit this might be far from the most interesting Stephen Hawking story out there, it’s still one of my favourites. Being in his presence was an incredible feeling. I felt ridiculously honoured to have bumped into him in this ordinary shop.

What made Stephen Hawking so special wasn’t just the fact he was a genius. He was, above all, a fantastic teacher
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Now, after his death, I feel much the same way about having had the honour of sharing the same time-space with him. In an age of fake news, President Trump and imminent Brexit, he was our steadfast voice of reason. Right to the end, he advocated for the things he felt passionate about, such as defending the National Health Service against the likes of Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt who – with a level of misguided arrogance I can’t begin to comprehend – actually chose to argue with him (with entirely predictable results).

And all this he achieved with wit, wisdom, and a wicked sense of humour, which endeared him to millions around the world. When combined with the inspiring way in which he defied an illness that should have killed him and transcended the disability which left him only able to move a few muscles on his face, he is indeed a formidably inspirational figure.

But what made Stephen Hawking so special wasn’t just the fact he was a genius. He was, above all, a fantastic teacher. Someone who found a common language for incredibly complex ideas, so we could all share the infinite wonders he saw in this universe of ours.

The world without Stephen Hawking feels like a much scarier place
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As I return to Dubai to cover the Global Education and Skills Forum, I find myself amazed all over again by the many stories of how teachers inspire and enable us to reach higher and become better people. Which is why I’m an enthusiastic supporter of the Varkey Foundation’s Global Teacher Prize, which recognizes their monumental contribution to society, so often underappreciated.

So it wasn’t really a surprise when I found this video of Professor Stephen Hawking, announcing the 2016 finalists of that prize and talking about how he, too, had been encouraged and nurtured by a teacher at a crucial point in his early life.

In an age dominated by megalomaniac leaders, the fact that arguably the smartest man in the world never took himself too seriously was enormously refreshing, and that world feels much emptier and scarier now that he’s no longer amongst us.

I remember when I went to watch the Monty Python comeback show in the O2 a few years ago, one of the sketches had Brian Cox popping up on the giant video screen on stage, ranting against the scientific inaccuracies of the Pythons’ “Galaxy Song” only to be run over by Hawking, who was then sucked up into the ether to sing out the rest of the song while surfing through a brilliantly animated universe. That is how many will remember him, and I don’t think he would have minded.

In an age dominated by megalomaniac leaders, the fact that arguably the smartest man in the world never took himself too seriously was refreshing
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A fan of cult comedy Sci-Fi series Red Dwarf, Hawking also graced several episodes of hit geeky TV show The Big Bang Theory and was the only guest to ever appear in Star Trek playing himself. Most people will also recall his appearance in The Simpsons, and an action figure of his incarnation from the show sat proudly on his Cambridge desk as he featured in John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight, in a segment aptly entitled “People Who Think Good”

This Tweet from a BBC reporter sums up that sense of humour beautifully, as he was certainly not adverse to playing a prank:

Hawking story was doing rounds at Newsnight. Producer left in room setting up for interview. Pulled out lead for light and Hawkins slumped forward in chair like disconnected something vital. Producer runs for help, returns to room to find Hawking chuckling. #RIPStephenHawking

— Jim Reed (@jim_reed) March 14, 2018

The world without Stephen Hawking feels like a much scarier place. You somehow felt that if aliens invaded or a meteor was hurtling inexorably towards earth, he’d be the one on speed-dial, the sort of person who could come up with a “42” type of answer to our troubles, like in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Yet that also feels a bit selfish, because he gave us so much, and maybe it was just time for him to go on a new adventure. So I will echo President Obama’s wish, and picture him, much like in the Monty Python song, happily gallivanting through the universe.

Have fun out there among the stars. pic.twitter.com/S285MTwGtp

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) March 14, 2018

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 Remembering Stephen Hawking appeared first on Tech Trends.

We’re heading over to Dubai for the biggest event in Education Innovation.

#GESF 2018 will see the launch of The Next Billion Prize - awarded to the Ed-Tech project destined to impact the developing world
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Now in its sixth year, the Global Education and Skills Forum is an initiative by the Varkey Foundation. Tech Trends was at last year’s event, and we’re excited to see what’s in store for this year, where the theme is “How do we prepare young people for the world of 2030 and beyond?”

Ed-Tech has the huge potential to change young people’s lives for the better - @sunnyvarkey_
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As that implies, technology and innovation will be a big focus at GESF 2018, as in the Digital Age they must play a big part in the Varkey Foundation’s mission of improving the quality of education for children throughout the world.

Start-ups from all over the world will pitch their EdTech products to a panel of expert judges including Tech Crunch Editor-at-large @mikebutcher
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Hence the fact that a large part of the conference will be dedicated to EdTech. The GESF FutureZone is billed as the largest ever showcase of innovative tech dedicated to education, and will feature some big players in the tech space such as Blippar CEO Ambarish Mitra, who will be talking about the potential of emerging technologies such as Augmented Reality and AI to democratize access to learning all over the world.

From digital tests to new subjects, this is how technology will be changing the #classrooms of the future https://t.co/vrRvTlWNBB #GESF pic.twitter.com/HqsHgUkh4t

— Global Ed & Skills (@GESForum) March 11, 2018

The FutureZone will feature an Immersive Learning Showcase, where there will be demonstrations of VR/AR/MR applications and a series of Future Talks exploring how Immersive Tech will transform education, and will also host the launch of The Next Billion Prize – the first prize of its kind that will be awarded to the Ed-Tech project destined to make the biggest impact in the developing world.

Technology and innovation will be a big focus at #GESF 2018
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Dozens of start-ups from all over the world will pitch their innovative products to a panel of expert judges including Tech Crunch Editor-at-large Mike Butcher. The winner will receive a US $50,000 prize in addition to expert mentoring and support in implementing and scaling up their solution, conducting pilots in public schools in selected countries for a year to demonstrate proof of concept and access new markets and opportunities.

“In a world where access to quality education is a real issue for millions of children, Ed-Tech has the huge potential to change young people’s lives for the better,” says philanthropist Sunny Varkey, Founder of the Varkey Foundation. “ The FutureZone will showcase the latest innovative Ed-Tech poised to make a real difference in emerging markets and the developing world where problems of accessing education and getting the best quality teaching are most pressing. The event will also help the creation of a community of practice around education technology,” he concludes.

As usual GESF attracts a host of high-profile attendees and there are plenty of familiar names on the speaker list such as Al Gore, Simon Schama, Nicolas Sarkozy and Rory Bremner to name but a few. And if last year’s Global Teacher Prize ceremony – where the trophy was delivered by a parachuting Bear Grylls and winner Maggie MacDonnell was announced from the International Space Station and congratulated by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – is anything to go by, we can expect a few surprises for this year too. The fact that none other than Bill Gates announced sets the tone:

The FutureZone will feature an Immersive Learning Showcase highlighting how VR/AR/MR technologies will transform education
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Held under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, GESF 2018 Takes place at The Atlantis, The Palm from the 16^th to the 18^th March 2018. Follow the latest right here and on Twitter @techtrends_tech

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 Tech Trends at #GESF 2018 appeared first on Tech Trends.

Have a technology innovation that could change the world of tomorrow? Here’s your chance!

As we gear up for this year’s Global Education and Skills Forum (GESF), the Varkey Foundation – a not-for-profit organisation that aims to improve education for underprivileged children throughout the world – has launched a call for the best EdTech companies out there to step up and make the world a better place through education!

Tech is playing an increasingly important role in tackling problems such as the global shortage of trained teachers, through innovative use of scalable and practical technology solutions
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Tech Trends will be at #GESF2018 and very much looking forward to seeing who will be crowned this year’s winner of the Global Teacher Prize. This year, there will be a strong focus on digital literacy and the role of teachers in preparing the next generation with the skills of the future.

The Varkey Foundation has launched a call for EdTech startups that want to change the world through education innovation
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Tech of course plays an increasingly important role in tackling problems such as the global shortage of trained teachers, through innovative use of scalable technology solutions.

The competition will bring together some of the world’s most innovative Education Technology startups in front of a panel of expert judges including Mike Butcher MBE
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The “Tomorrow” initiative aims to start building a community of EdTech innovators to create opportunities for students in the developing world. The competition – which will take place in Dubai next month, will bring together some of the world’s most innovative Education Technology startups in front of a panel of expert judges including Mike Butcher MBE, Editor-at-Large at TechCrunch.

The Tomorrow summit by the Varkey Foundation aims to start building a community of EdTech innovators to create opportunities for students in the developing world
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The three chosen finalists will have the opportunity to pilot their technology in the developing world. Every startup invited to participate will get the chance to meet with some of the top venture capitalists in EdTech, as well as having the Teacher Prize cohort trial and critique their technology.

The three chosen finalists will have the opportunity to pilot their technology in the developing world
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The finalists will be announced at the Varkey Foundation’s annual Tomorrow forum in 2018 in Dubai on March 17th and 18th.

The competition is free to enter, but all entries must be received before February 15th 2018
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The competition is free to enter, but do hurry, as all entries must be received before February 15th at 23:59 PM GMT.

You can apply via this this form

#EDTECH STARTUPS!
Could you educate the next billion people to come online? The @Varkeyfdn non-profit has a competition with $ prize, pilots in two countries & the chance to meet @TeacherPrize winners https://t.co/l2cF71GIsk

— Mike Butcher (@mikebutcher) February 1, 2018

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 Calling all #EdTech Startups appeared first on Tech Trends.

Awbie is a strawberry-loving, super-cute monster that teaches your kids how to code. I met him at the Global Education and Skills Forum (GESF) in Dubai, and lost track of time as I got caught up into playing the Osmo Coding game, which was developed as a partnership between Northwestern University’s TIDAL Lab and Tangible Play.

This seamlessly blends the physical and digital world through a very simple and satisfyingly tactile interface where you combine colourful modular puzzle pieces, turn levers and press various buttons to direct the actions of Awbie on a tablet in his endless quest for more strawberries.

But as adorable as Awbie was, I was curious to see the other offerings from the Northwestern University booth at FutureZone, an area dedicated to cutting-edge EdTech at GESF.

I had heard of the recent collaborative programming exhibit they had made for Silicon Valley’s Computer History Museum called Frog Pond, and was able to demo the smaller “travel” version of it. Like Osmo, it is visually rich and vibrant, and the interface is very smooth. More importantly, however, there is no learning curve. It only takes a few seconds to figure out how it works, which is basically teaching the principle of giving a computer sequential instructions. A lot of people get very intimidated seeing vast incomprehensible lines of code and never move beyond that, but once you get your head around that cornerstone of coding logic (holy Eureka, Batman!) it literally all starts to click into place.

The highlight of the show for me, however, was Deep Tree. This based on Darwin’s original ‘tree of life’ drawing, and is made up of over 70,000 species that visitors can explore using a deep zoom interaction interface which feels much like Google Earth’s interface. Children (and grownups) can literally fly through the vast tree to find out more about any species, and their origins, all the way to 3.5 billion years ago and back to the present day. They can also see how any two species are related, no matter how far-fetched that combination might seem. At which point in the evolution process did frogs and birds go their separate ways, and what was their common ancestor? The tree tells you in an instant. Dr Michael Horn, who led the project at Northwestern University, tells me that visitors get really into trying to find the most unusual combination of species they can possibly think of.

The researchers also developed a companion game called Build-a-Tree which teaches children through game play about relationships between different groups of organisms as well as the traits that help define those relationships. Kids can build their own evolutionary tree and compare it to the scientist’s version. The tech had so far only been piloted in museums, so this was its first international public demo.

A research study showed this interactive tech to have tangible learning benefits. The study, conducted at two natural history museums where visitors collaboratively explored the tree of involved 247 children aged 8–15 years, randomly assigned in pairs to one of four conditions. In two of the conditions, pairs of youth interacted with different versions of the tree of life table top exhibit for a fixed duration of 10minutes. In a third condition, pairs watched a 10minute video on a similar topic. Individual responses on a 53-item exit interview were then compared to responses from a fourth, baseline condition. Contrasting with the baseline condition, visitors who interacted with the table top exhibits were significantly more likely to reason correctly about core evolutionary concepts, particularly common descent and shared ancestry. You can watch Tree of Life in action below.

With Tree of Life you can quickly find out how any two species are related
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DeepTree Exhibit at CalAcademy from Michael Horn on Vimeo.

The post Exploring the Tree of Life at #GESF 2017 appeared first on Tech Trends.