Google harnesses the power of photos and street view to deliver simplified VR development for teachers and students.

The benefits of using immersive technologies as teaching tools have been widely documented and extensively discussed, specially in recent years with the rapid development of Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed reality hardware and applications.

The benefits of using immersive technologies as teaching tools have been widely documented and extensively discussed
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Yet the biggest obstacle that often keeps teachers from adopting these technologies in the classroom is not necessarily cost – there are, after all, many entry-level budget ways of experiencing Virtual Reality which use fairly pervasive and accessible mobile technology such as the Google Cardboard – but the lack of relevant content with which educators and learners alike can identify beyond the level of an amusing novelty.

Many educators and academics do believe that this technology will eventually become as commonplace as computers and mobile phones are today:

Speaking at the Global Education and Skills Forum in March, Jakki Bailey – a researcher from The University of Texas at Austin who focuses on the psychological and social experiences of Virtual Reality – said that as the technology becomes more affordable, it will seamlessly intersect with the physical world. Whereas now we tend to refer to the physical and digital worlds as separate entities, we are inexorably moving towards a blending of the two. This is the new reality that educators need to prepare themselves to proactively use it rather than reactively adapt to it.

Technology companies are also recognizing the need to better enable the creation of content that will empower teachers to leverage the benefits of the technology in a coherent pedagogical context. At its annual I/O Developer Conference in Mountain View, California Google announced the launch of Tour Creator, a new tool that easily allows anyone to create interactive content in Virtual Reality.

Much as the Internet facilitated broader access to knowledge, Immersive technologies could enable broader access to experience
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Educators and academics believe that Immersive technology will become as commonplace as computers and mobile phones today
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This follows from the company’s introduction three years ago of Google’s initial foray in educational VR – Google Expeditions – which first introduced the idea of taking students on virtual reality field trips using basic equipment such as Google Cardboard. Since 2015, Google Expeditions has brought students to places like the Burj Khalifa, Antarctica, and Machu Picchu with virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR).

Tour Creator builds upon this success – over three million students used the service so far – by allowing people to create and customize their own experiential content. As Jen Zurawski, an educator with Wisconsin’s West De Pere School District, puts it: “With Expeditions, our students had access to a wide range of tours outside our geographical area, but we wanted to create tours here in our own community.”

Using simplified web-based interfaces, Tour Creator is meant to be an accessible tool for everyone, regardless of their experience or technical background. Users simply search across Google Street View for their desired locations – or upload their own 360-degree photos – and easily stitch that content together to form “scenes” to which they can add various interactive elements such as buttons that activate additional information at certain points within the scene, and embed the whole experience onto the school’s website, for instance.

“Being able to work with Tour Creator has been an awesome experience,” says Jennifer Newton, a school media coordinator in Georgia. “It has allowed our students from a small town in Georgia to tell our story to the world.”

“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, so that will filter down into classrooms as well,” adds Dr Dimitri Amiras, a consultant at Imperial College who has been working on clinical and training applications of Microsoft’s HoloLens Mixed Reality technology who also participated in the discussion at GESF examining the future of immersive technologies in learning environments.

Much in the same way as the widespread adoption of the Internet facilitated broader access to knowledge, Immersive technologies could enable broader and more egalitarian access to experience. However, this potential can only be realized once both content and hardware becomes universally accessible, and initiatives such as these by Google help teachers advance towards that goal

“The technology gets out of the way and enables students to focus on crafting fantastic visual stories,” explains Charlie Reisinger, a Pennsylvania educator. And that, in fact, is the ultimate goal of any transformative technology. For as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella put it in his keynote at Microsoft Build in Seattle this week (quoting the father of ubiquitous computing Mark Weiser) “The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of our daily lives.”

This article was originally published on IDG Connect

Empowering educators to create immersive learning experiences, by @alicebonasio from @CIOonline https://t.co/HRC0SuUFOv

— IDG Contributor Network (@IDGCN) May 11, 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 Creating Immersive Learning Experiences appeared first on Tech Trends.

Immersive tech and training go back 50 years, but how has that relationship changed? Are we in for disruption or just another buzz-term?

By Daniel Fraga and Christophe Mallet – Somewhere Else

As VR is evolving, we’re not only learning skills safely through simulations anymore. We have started to improve cognition and retention of knowledge through immersive learning environments. Tomorrow, with the advent of AI, we will be able to retrain vast portions of our workforce towards better human relationships-driven jobs.

At this point in 2018, to affect behaviour with VR is fast becoming less of a sci-fi question and more one of scalability
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The Past – Learning Skills through Simulation

Throwback to 1966: The Beatles release “Revolver”, the Vietnam war rages on and Time Magazine reports on the effects of a strange new substance called LSD. In another mind-expanding event, Thomas A. Furness III creates the first visual flight simulator – and takes the first steps into Virtual Reality (VR) Training.

Furness created these simulators to train US Air Force pilots. He built head-mounted displays so that trainees could experience real-world scenarios too costly or dangerous to recreate in reality. Pilots repeated key tasks and learned incident management tactics in simulated conditions. This is an example of what we call the Skills-Based Model of VR training – teaching practical skills by using the body as a natural interface, and thus developing physical memory through repetition. With the cost of hardware having dropped in the past few years, the model of the flight simulator is quickly being replicated across multiple task-based jobs. Firefighters, Crane Operators and Couriers can be trained in VR today.

The value proposition of Skills-Based VR training is clear. Any number of people can receive first hand skills-training on-demand and on-location, by using virtual or augmented reality solutions. VR removes significant travel & infrastructure not to mention the need to recreate costly and potentially hazardous simulations. However, there is more to immersive training than teaching practical skills.

We have barely scratched the surface of how Immersive Technologies will impact the way we learn throughout our lives
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The Present – Improved Cognition & Memorability

Edgar Dale built his Cone of Experience theory in 1969 based on the premise that the medium in which training is delivered is key to learning efficiency. We remember 10% of the material we read, 20% of the information we hear, but a staggering 90% of what we do. So where does VR fit in the cone?

Image Credit: Edgar Dale, Cone of Experience

Researchers in China tested the effects of VR on children’s performance in school. They compared the test results of students that learned about Astrophysics with and without VR. 90% of the students who learned with VR passed their test vs. 40% of students from the other group. Both short-term retention (+27%) and long-term memorability (+32%) improved.

This is the Knowledge-Based Model of VR training. The content is replaced in its spatial context, enhancing cognition. In the classroom, we’re taught through passive learning. In VR, we learn through interactions. It is mere common sense, for example, that subjects like anatomy or cosmology are more easily studied by interacting with 3D models than by deciphering 2D sketches. 

90% of the students who learned with VR passed their test vs. 40% of students from the other group. Both short-term retention (+27%) and long-term memorability (+32%) improved
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One of the biggest challenges faced by Fortune 500 companies today is the alignment of their employees around a common culture and shared knowledge systems.This is largely due to the difficulties of implementing change quickly and accurately across complex organisations. With virtual reality, companies can now provide continuous expert knowledge-training across their ranks. It helps them create a common, company-wide context, based on continuous learning.

Individually, they create knowledge. Collectively, they build culture.

Image Credit: Virtual Speech, Experience Snapshot

The Future – Changing Behavior

Today, VR training platforms are built on the Skills-Based or Knowledge-Based models. With automation threatening to replace millions of what McKinsey calls “predictable physical jobs”, vast portions of the workforce will need to be retrained towards less automatable jobs. Those jobs include management, customer service and other kinds of sophisticated human-to-human interactions. Can we use VR to train for human interactions? To teach empathy? To cure us of a variety of biases?

In the latest wave of VR adoption, the service industry has started training retail, customer service, and insurance staff with basic social simulations
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At this point in 2018, to affect behaviour with VR is fast becoming less of a sci-fi question and more one of scalability. VR already uses the body as natural interface, which allows us to simulate social, emotional and even near-spiritual experiences. So from powerful experiences, we can engender perspectives.

In 2013, The Virtual Human Interaction Lab (VHIL) at Stanford University tested the link between VR and empathy in the Superman experiment. Two groups of students, one playing the role of doctors in a helicopter and the others being Superman, were tasked to find and help a child as they flew around a city in VR. Even after the experience, subjects who played Superman continued to show significantly higher levels of empathy than their doctors counterparts. This went to show how subtle VR experience design can create empathy on a subconscious level. Make way for the Behavior-Altering Model.

We have started to improve cognition and retention of knowledge through immersive learning environments
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In the latest wave of VR adoption, the service industry has started training retail, customer service, and insurance staff with basic social simulations. Beyond the service industry, experiences following the Behavior-Altering Model can address the biggest issues of today – and tomorrow. As conversational AI progresses, we will very soon be able to simulate human relationships in immersive environments and train social and humanitarian workers, law enforcement officers and pretty much anyone who has to interact with humans as part of their daily jobs. VR ‘experience design’ will soon be ‘human experience’ design.

Image Credit: Somewhere Else, 3 Models for Immersive Learning

We have barely scratched the surface of how Immersive Technologies will impact the way we learn throughout our lives. As we create our immersive tools and our environments, they affect and design us in return. Immersive technology training offers us the chance to deeply design human behaviour. The medium is the message, and our medium is reality itself. With this future fast-approaching, ask yourself: What kind of reality will you build?

Christophe Mallet and Daniel Fraga are respectively Co-founder and VR Designer at Somewhere Else, a London-based innovation agency specialising in immersive technologies (VR/AR/MR). Somewhere Else exists to partner with brands, agencies and innovators to help them navigate and reach their full potential in the Age of Experience. Check out their latest work recent work with adidas, Three and France Télévisions.

The post Expert View: 3 ways VR is transforming Learning & Development 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.