Ocean acidification is not something most people are immediately passionate about. Unless they understand it, that is. When you realize that this process will effectively wipe out some of some of our world’s most beautiful landscapes, and a decimate countless species of marine flora and fauna that depend upon it, then it starts to become a bit more real. And that’s where VR comes in, because VR is very good at bringing abstract concepts to life and making them feel real for the user.

Ocean acidification could wipe out entire marine ecosystems
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The Ocean Acidification VR Experience does this by taking you on a journey where you can see where those carbon dioxide molecules go, and what they do, once they leave your car’s exhaust pipe. It shows you exactly how the CO2 we pump into the atmosphere every day has a direct impact on the health of coral reefs, and the broader ocean ecosystem. This is a project I’ve been following for quite a while now, having first met the team working on it at Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab early last year.

The Crystal Reef VR experience was popular when it premiered at Tribeca last year
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After the enthusiastic response they got from showcasing their Crystal Reef 360 video experience in film festivals such as Tribeca and I talked to the project lead Cody Karutz about how the immersive nature of VR as a medium increased people’s empathetic connection to the problem. Their research has consistently found evidence that creating such an emotional connection is a factor in getting people to positively change their behavior and therefore reduce their emissions. Since then, the team have continued their research into how this increased engagement and empathy could be leveraged as an education tool.

“360 video is good for showing the user something in a more immersive way, but it has some passive limitations. By making the experience interactive like we’ve done here it gives the user a framework for not only observing, but also relating their actions to their own situation. We still have a way to go on perfecting how that works, but it’s pretty powerful,” explains Karutz.

When they premiered that previous 360 version at Tribeca, the team asked users for their consent in collecting data about their experience: “Usually it would take us a really long time to collate that much feedback in the lab, but in the space of one weekend we got hundreds of responses,” Karutz says. And this has proved extremely useful in developing the new iteration, which was demoed for the first time at the Global Education and Skills Forum in Dubai this week. The event, organized by the Varkey Foundation, explores how education can be used to solve the worlds’ problems, and this year particularly focused on how we can equip children to become global citizens. And key part of this concept of global citizenship is caring for the environment.

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VR Experience From Stanford Shows How We’re Killing Our Coral Reefs https://t.co/S0Bfwr1jGU via @UploadVR

— Alice Bonasio (@alicebonasio) March 19, 2017

The post Experiencing the Consequences of Climate Change in VR appeared first on Tech Trends.

“It all started with a Hackathon,” Jennifer Holland, Google Apps for Education Program Manager tells me. In typical tech fashion, a bunch of Googlers thought it would be great to combine the Virtual Reality technology being rolled out with Google Cardboard with their education offering already embraced by teachers from all over the world. Throw in Google Maps/Earth/Streetview into the mix, and the idea for Google Expeditions was born.

Google Expeditions was born out of a Hackathon project
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They started testing out these virtual field trips in classrooms a year ago, and since then have worked with content partners to create more than 200 immersive experiences that take students to places like Versailles, Machu Pichu, Buckingham Palace and the Burj Khalifa building in Dubai.

In one year, Google's Virtual Reality made over 200 immersive experiences available to a million students
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Since then VR has taken off in a big way, and many companies realized the great potential of the technology to engage students in the classroom. I recently talked to San Francisco-based start-up Nearpod about how their VR lesson plans have been a huge hit with both teachers and students in the 6 months since they started incorporating the technology into their platform:

“kids go from looking at 2×4 pictures of corals to literally being immersed into a coral reef that reacts to their movements, but it goes beyond just visual immersion. The fact that students can control what they look at gives a personalized feel of exploration to their experience,” their CEO Guido Kovalskys told me.

Google also took their users underwater when it worked with Sir David Attenborough and Alchemy VR to create a virtual expedition to the Great Barrier Reef:

“Through virtual reality, I’m lucky enough to be able to share my experiences with audiences of all ages to allow them to explore and learn about these diverse ecosystems in a more immersive way,” said Sir David, who has always been a pioneer in using technology to educate the public about the wonders of the natural world.

Google worked with Sir David Attenborough to let users experience the Great Barrier Reef in Virtual Reality
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Cody Karutz from Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab also agrees that virtual reality has definite advantages in creating empathy for the environment and thus aiding conservation. His own coral-related project Crystal Reef was showcased in this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, and the VHIL created a version of it for Expeditions that Google has been using for many months now, says the lab’s Director Jeremy Bailenson.

Google says they’re “thrilled by the potential” of VR technology, and announced new partnerships with the Associated Press and Getty Images to incorporate current affairs content into the platform and give teachers more options to work Virtual Reality into lesson plans.

With companies like Facebook investing heavily VR, Google is also making larger moves towards staking its claim in that space. At their annual developer conference this week they also unveiled Daydream, their new mobile Virtual Reality platform to enable high quality VR on Android smartphones. Also significant is the announcement that they will be building an intuitive controller that works in tandem with the headset to produce richer and more immersive experiences.

Google will launch its own Mobile VR platform and build intuitive controller to create better experiences
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Next month EdTech Trends will be visiting Google’s New York office to talk to their VR and Education teams about how new products and developments will mean for students and teachers around the world, and what we can expect next in these exciting times for virtual reality, and for education. Watch this space.

To find out how to leverage VR/AR/MR in your enterprise, Tech Trends offers bespoke Virtual Reality Consultancy support

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 Taking a Million Kids on Virtual Reality Field Trips appeared first on Tech Trends.