These days,

more and more students can -- and do -- opt out of animal dissection

in science classes, and not just because formaldehyde smells awful.

As fewer kids are morally comfortable with chopping up an amphibian

in the name of their education, an alternative will be needed.

VictoryXR's Steve Grubbs offers a solution through VR, and chats with

Alan about how XR can be used to enhance education in other ways,

too.

Alan: Today's guest is Steve

Grubbs, founder and CEO of VictoryVR, one of the world leaders in

virtual reality educational product development. To date, they have

created over 240 unique VR experiences, spanning over 50 different

learning units, with educational partners like Carolina Biological

and Oxford University. They have been able to develop brand new

educational encounters for VR users around the globe. Steve is also a

member of YPO and was recently featured in an article entitled

Virtual Reality Is Transporting Students to the Next Frontier in

Science Education. You can learn more about Steve's company at

VictoryXR.com. Steve, welcome to the show.

Steve: Alan, thanks for having

me. I appreciate it. We've been working in XR Technologies -- first

virtual reality, and then augmented reality -- since 2016. I first

tried to headset on near the end of 2015 and it struck me that this

type of technology would change the world. And so, we struck out and

decided that our field would be education. And so we dug in and

figured out how to do it, because at that point it was very difficult

to find people; you couldn't just hire people off the street who knew

how to create virtual reality technology. We set to work figuring it

out. In September of 2016, I attended a group meeting with some folks

in Dallas, and then by January of 2017, we had our first major

product in a school. I felt pretty good that we were able to move

quickly on that first experience.

Alan: That's incredible. Let me

ask you a quick question. What was the first experience that you

tried that inspired you to start VictoryVR?

Steve: Well, it was a MetaVRse

product that I downloaded to my phone some time, in Google Cardboard.

I am pretty sure I went to the iPhone store and tried a roller

coaster -- and this had been a few years now. And then I tried The

New York Times 360 News reporting on my phone and they both were

great, amazing, cool, and so I said, this is something I want to be a

part of.

Alan: For those people that

don't know you and VictoryVR, maybe just give us a 10,000-foot view

of your mission and why you're doing what you're doing, and where you

see the company going. Describe your company, the products, and the

platform that's being used.

Steve: We believe that we can

change education in a positive way around the world. If you think

about it, for decades -- I used to serve in the Iowa legislature, and

I was chairman of the Education Committee, and we spent a lot of time

addressing, how do we improve education? And there were a lot of

things we did on the input side, but at the end of the day, what we

all know is that if students love to learn, they love what they're

learning -- like all of us -- then there's no work in it; you just

love to do it, and you immerse yourself in it. We believe that XR

Technologies -- VR and AR -- are the solution to having students love

what they're learning. So we're creating as much content as possible,

aligned to standards, so that teachers can integrate it into their

lesson plans, or parents can just simply pull it off the shelf and

use it. I have a background in technology. I started my first tech

company in 1997, building web sites. I bought a book called "Web

Sites for Dummies," read it over the weekend, and announced to

my friends I was a web site builder and--

Alan: Ha!

Steve: