XR for Learning

By Julie SmithsonTechnology Education Courses

XR for Learning episodes

May 03, 2020 Investing in the Well-Being of Educators, with James McCrary
“Pivoting” isn’t just an industry term anymore - in the wake of COVID-19, educators have had to pivot as well, quickly adopting XR collaboration and video conferencing technologies just to teach their students. Educational consultant and innovation director James McCrary explains how his most important work lately is just making sure teachers and parents are adjusting to the new norm.
Julie: Ok. Hello, my name is
Julie Smithson, and I am your XR for Learning podcast host. I look
forward to bringing you insight into changing the way that we learn
and teach, using XR technologies to explore, enhance, and
individualize learning for everyone. Today, my guest, James McCrary,
is an educator located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. And since 2012, he
began presenting at state, regional, and national conferences such as
LAC-- what--
James: Yeah, that's LACU.
Julie: LACU! And FETC and CUE
and ISTE, on topics around 3D and immersion technology. He is a
co-founder of Singularity Media Group, which specializes in spatial
awareness, and learning in augmented and virtual reality. He also
hosts the VR podcast in Simulation Live, discussing the impact of
immersion technology. In 2019, he was recognized as an Apple
Distinguished Educator and Google Certified Educator for his work
integrating immersion technology into the classroom and positively
impacting students globally. Recently, he began partnering with LSU
College of Education, Faculty and Research on virtual reality with
pre-service educators, and as the incoming president of ISTE Virtual
Environments. Thanks so much for joining me, James.
James: Oh yeah. Thank you so
much for having me. I mean, I love talking about this stuff. And so I
think podcasting just lends itself to me just kind of rambling on a
little bit, so... [chuckles]
Julie: [laughs] Amazing. Well,
there's so many things to talk about in education today. And I know
I'd love for you to share with our listeners a little bit about what
you do on a daily basis, and how you're making the biggest impact as
your role of director of technology and working with schools in
Louisiana to introduce immersive technologies.
James: Primarily, right now my
direct role is I am a director technology at -- essentially -- an
elementary school through fifth grade. And the thing that we focused
on the most right now is a augmented reality, both in terms of
consumption and creation. And I work with other schools in the area.
I'm very fortunate to have really good relationships with a lot of
other directors of technology, not just in our area, but in our
surrounding extended metro area, in our state, even in surrounding
states. And I've been kind of adopted [chuckles] by other
organizations in Florida and California that have graciously allowed
me to interact with their schools, their students, and their teachers
to kind of go beyond just AR and looking at other type of spatial
learning, using things like head mounted display, VR experiences,
both in terms of consumption and also creation and collaboration. And
so on a daily basis, throughout the day, I'm working with teachers
and students, obviously with their technology needs, but also
integrating the AR methodologies, primarily using things like
CoSpaces and Merge EDU -- that's two of the biggest ones that we use
-- but also in the evenings, and on weekends, and times that I take
off with other schools to implement those other levels of technology
that we just talked about.
Julie: That's great. I have to
ask, how has that role changed for you since Covid has changed the
way that students learn? You know, implementing that into schools is
obviously a challenge *without* having a pandemic being a part of the
solution.
James: It's-- [chuckles] Well,
I'll tell you, my sleeping schedule is very bizarre. It is not
normal. But it has been interesting. I like to consider myself a
techie. I love technology. And it's obviously what brought me out of
the classroom and into this role of technology and being able to lead
people in that. But I will tell you that even with kind of seeing
some of this coming, just paying attention to what was happening in
China, I don't think that I was physically and emotionally prepared
for what was going to come, when our governor had closing schools and
issuing the stay at home. Which -- on the record -- I'm 100 percent
behind, I think it's necessary. But I have found myself doing remote
work that I felt that I'd actually enjoy greatly. But it is a little
taxing if you're not used to it and it's a little bit of a change
from going to a physical place. And so a lot of my time for the first
two or three weeks was just making sure that our-- that all of our
teachers and administrators were okay with what we were doing. That
they feel comfortable communicating with their students, with their
parents, and then spending a lot of time during that -- and even
after that and continuing still -- talking to our parents. Are they
comfortable? Because thinking about elementary school, it's-- you're
communicating a lot more with the parents and making sure that
they're OK. Because they're staying at home, they're working, but
they also have children that they're now becoming the de facto
educator in their child's life. And you're trying to make sure that
they're mentally OK, and that they're not overwhelmed with the things
that are being sent out to them, and just trying to be mindful. So I
think the biggest shift for me during this whole process has been
less about the technology, and more about developing relationships
through distance, which has been an interesting concept to grasp.
It's more psychological in nature. So that's really been the biggest
shift that I've seen.
Julie: That's so interesting,
how something like this can shift your whole role -- essentially --
to such an important-- part of the puzzle is that mental well-being.
I have lots of conversations about the biggest investment in
education right now we need to give is the investment of well-being
for our teachers, and making sure that their knowledge transfer can
be brought to a remote presence for these children who are learning
from home. And their role continues to hold its value. And also they
transition into the demand and need that the kids are now asking of
them, as well as the parents asking of them. And then on top of that,
these teachers have their own families at home, some of them with
toddlers running at their feet.
James: Yes. [laughs]
Julie: It's an unbelievable
situation when you start to tell the story about that. So good for
you for supporting teachers that way. And I hope that is something
that's continued through every community and region and education
system globally, to recognize teachers in that sense too, making sure
they're OK. And then on top of that, making sure parents are OK.
Everybody's affected by this pandemic -- in one way or another -- in
so many different ways. And right now the ability to transfer those
lessons into a remote learning package that works for everybody
functionally is an overwhelming thought.
James: We've talked before about
that word, "pivot". It's not just for industry anymore. It
is for education. There's a lot of pivoting happening. And that word
you use -- "functionality" -- is the big component. I think
the functionality of how we're doing distance learning -- whether
it's online, whether it's analog or whatever the case may be -- you
have to be really quick on feedback on being able to pivot what
you're doing as an educator, as a leader, as a parent, as a student,
to making sure that all the parties involved are growing in terms of
not just academics, but also in relationship or most importantly,
foundationally, emotionally.
Julie: So that leads to a really
important part of what you do is immersive education, both in the
storytelling and understanding the power of being spatially present.
Last year I wrote an article, actually, and it was about "it's
time to teach in an voxels instead of pixels" and engaging into
three-dimensional learning, that we live in a three-dimensional
world, why are we not teaching it? Obviously, there's a lot of people
who have us that way. And this is the introduction to spatial
learning. And now that we're being moved into this remote presence of
learning from home -- or working from home -- being spatially present
and having that engagement and understanding the humanics behind it.
And I use that term, it's a brand new one that I'm trying to
socialize, because it's the engagement of having the ability to speak
freely, just as you and I are having this conversation. But then also
understanding the data analytics behind us and the technologies that
are taking place that immerse us into this experience. So how do we
build humanics into our spatial presence, and be engaged in these
immersive experiences to get the most out of what they're intended to
do?
James: The interesting thing--
and I love that word. I don't think I've actually heard it. And when
you said it, it resonated with me. As soon as you said it, I knew
exactly what it meant. I'm not sure if it's a real word.
Julie: Actually, it's funny. If
you look it up, if you type it into a Google doc, it will spell
"humanics" wrong, which is so ironic. You'll have to try
that, because spell check won't even accept humanics, which is almost
like-- it's the rebuttal of the robot ecosystem, they're saying, "No,
they can't learn that word!" [laughs]
James: I would tell spellcheck
the same thing that Thor said, which is "all words are made up."
OK?
Julie: [laughs]
James: So just go with that. But
I think that it really is an interesting thing to think about. Dr.
Jeremy Bailenson -- who have just immense respect for -- he has been
talking about this video conferencing fatigue that we have. And it's
not something that's just that he's talking about, a lot of people
are talking about. And that's kind of like our stepping stone into
trying to have the spatial presence is, "Oh, I'm going to go
beyond just a phone conversation. I'm going to have video." The
problem is we are face to face with each other, almost video
conferencing things in a very unnatural way for extended periods of
time. I mean, we're not all like people in a newscast, where that's
just the norm, where cameras are our faces and we're seeing people up
close and we're having to kind of engage. And he has a solution that
he mentions on that. But it really got me thinking in terms of what
spatial presence is and what spatial learning looks like. And it's
multifaceted. But one of the components that I think about, we think
about collaboration is OK, you have Zoom, you have Google Meets, then
you have Teams, you have things like that. How can you take that to
the next level, where you can create that natural distance that you
have, like when we're having conversations face to face where you can
look away, you can pull away, or whatever. And that would be
something like Engage, which I love Engage. I think Engage is one of
the best platforms for VR that allows me to go in, and I can walk
up-- if Julie's in Engage and I'm in Engage, I can walk up and have a
conversation with you. But so-and-so is over there, and I'm going to
go, I'm walk over and talk to them. Or if I want to pull away from
the conversation, I will. I'll go and I'll sit somewhere else. And
all the while I can still engage as much as I want, but I can also
pull back from that. And that's just a little snippet of what does
spatial really mean, and what does it add to the conversation? And
how does it add to -- to steal the word -- humanics? I think that's
what it does, it allows us to be natural but also be present.
Julie: Yeah. And another thing
to add to Engage, I think one of the most momentous moments for me
when I was a part of just recently the Educators In VR International
Summit, and I was onstage with my husband and partner, Alan Smithson,
and I was being interviewed by Steve Bambury. And then Daniel
Dyboski-Bryant -- who is producing the event with Lorelle [VanFossen]
-- came on stage, and reached out and shook my hand, and it vibrated.
James: [chuckles] The haptics.
Julie: Yeah. And this is where
haptics in those interactions start to happen, where it feels real.
And I remember just feeling a tingle. And I have to say that, because
that's how I felt. Daniel was in the UK and I was here in my house in
Toronto, Canada, and I felt that handshake in my hand. And it's that
moment of, "Wow, I'm here. And I felt that." And this is
where interactions start to happen that bring us into the spatial
presence. And haptics are certainly going to play a huge part of it.
James: Sure.
Julie: But it also starts with
the mind and it starts with that mindfulness of being able to be
present, engage, and to kind of have a relationship with the
technology, that you're comfortable enough to be there. That's a huge
part of something that we're working on at XR Collaboration right
now. The project that I'm producing -- if you want to take a look at
that, xrcollaboration.com -- that's featuring over 70 different
collaboration platforms that are meant for both industry and
education. And the discovery of how to be there in a collaboration
space is a conversation that's starting to spark up a lot, because I
think we need people to feel that in order to have the success of
collaboration and communication. We have to have them feel that, or
else we're not going to reach the goals of what the purpose of
collaborating is.
James: You know, when you get
down to it -- and I don't want to nerd out too much on this -- but
there's no difference between what we have in the touch sensory, like
the energy that travels through to let us know from our senses that
we're touching something, versus the electronic signals that are sent
over long distances over the Internet from one controller to the next
to create haptics. There's not much difference. The only thing is the
input methodologies are not as advanced as what they're going to be
in the coming years. But when you felt that you were probably the
same way when I felt that the first time was, "Wow, that's
amazing." But instantly you start thinking about what the
potential is from that.
Julie: Yeah.
James: And you go, "Oh my
gosh. This is where we're at right now. What is it going to be like
in four years, five years, 20 years from now? What is that going to
look like?" And you start to really understand that something
like this pandemic happens again in 20 years. We may be -- as a
world, as humans -- be more prepared for that, in terms of the impact
that social distancing is having on us emotionally right now, the
impact it's having on education right now, the impact it's having on
the economy right now. Where, "Okay, great. All right. Well,
we're just gonna continue doing what we're gonna do, and we're gonna
do it using digital spatial presence."
Julie: Exactly. Let's draw back
to our little K-12s. The future of all of this entire ecosystem and
the future of humanity. And how do we engage with them with some of
the barriers that we have, not just only with the school systems and
Privacy Acts and things like that, but how do we use this technology
to the best benefit? So I'd love to hear about some of the things
that you're discussing, and how do you suggest to introduce K-12 into
your immersive technology?
James: It is-- one of the
things, and especially my teachers, when they hear this, they'll
probably say "Mm-hm!" I'm a real stickler for things like
privacy policies and terms of service, because I'm really interested
with how the data that is being collected. Because now that data is
en masse, like it is a ton of data, especially when it comes to
spatial learning. There's a lot of data that is occurring. And how
much of that is user data versus programming data is up for debate,
but I'm really concerned about that, especially for our young
students. And so that is kind of tied in with my fascination that I
have with federal regulation and guidelines. One of the things that I
really like to do is examine number one, new technology comes out.
Let me see what they say their terms of service are as it relates to
the age groups. And if they say, yes, we are COPPA compliant, which
-- I won't bore people with a lot of acronyms -- but this is
something that went into effect in the early 2000s. It was a part of
the CIPA that came in, which was Internet privacy protocols, or to
protect students from inappropriate things on the Internet. But COPPA
was really for vendors, when they're creating things to say, "No,
children under the age of 13, we are not collecting data from them,
that we know of." And that's kind of a little caveat. Or
sometimes they'll say, "If you're under 13, you can't use it
all, because we're not really monitoring what type of-- what age
groups of data we're getting from, or that's not gonna be a part of
our thing." And so that creates some difficulties for up to
seventh grade, for the most part, with trying to figure out what
tools to use. I'm very fortunate to live in the day and time that we
do where the world, even though it is growing, it is getting smaller
by connectivity. And so these companies, it's really easy to reach
out to them and say your terms of service are not quite aligning with
what you're marketing towards these age groups. And I think your tool
is great, and what you're providing is a great experience. But can we
do some things to get your terms of service in line with usage for
these age groups? And so I work with companies to help frame that and
to bring that to their attention. In some companies that haven't even
had an EDU model, they have switched over to EDU models -- and not
just because of me, there's other educators that are hounding on them
to do this, too -- to be able to give these experiences to the
younger age groups, where public schools, independent schools,
private schools, parochial schools can all use this with younger
ages. And for the most part, that deals with augmented reality.
Without getting to head mounted display VR -- that's a whole other
story -- but AR is really the entry point for those age groups. And
the tools that are used to experience and also create multiples out
there that are fully compliant, not just with COPPA, but if you're in
the EU, the GDRP. Companies like CoSpaces EDU, which is wonderful.
Based out of Munich, it's a wonderful company. Eugene and crew,
they're phenomenal people, they listen to a lot of feedback. And
they're fully COPPA compliant here in the States, and they're GDRP
compliant in the EU, and it can be used for all age groups. And so
you can experience augmented reality, even room scale augmented
reality, which is really fun, especially for those that really want
an immersive experience. You can throw it out in AR, which you can
actually have buildings blow up, so you can actually walk around and
through buildings. And companies like Merge EDU, their terms of
service for things like their Merge Cube and stuff like that, and
their Explorer platform are really conducive to those younger age
groups. And so that's really where I concentrate the most on, with
those age groups. And of course, you kind of get into a head-mounted
display stuff with companies like what Google does with Expeditions,
down to the age of seven. So you have a little bit of that. And
certainly, you can work with companies and you can get parents to
sign off on waivers and schools and districts to allow usage of
head-mounted display as long as it fits, physically, the children's
IPD and stuff like that. But that's really when they start to get
older.
Julie: Yeah. So I guess that
kind of leads to the fact that the younger generation is learning a
lot faster, too. And that's a whole big pack of worms. And the fact
that kids now have access to technology that provides them with
learning faster and the tools that are becoming available, they're
becoming-- I don't want to say smarter faster, but smarter at a
younger age, that they're able to take on different things, that age
group of 13. I can't even imagine. My daughter's only 12 right now.
And I can't imagine not having that technology available to her later
than that. There's quite an age difference and an age gap, that we're
going to have to fill that with technology engagement some way in
order to number one, keep them engaged, that we don't lose them into
the abyss of not liking learning, because they don't have access to
anything that's applicable to their lives. But that's something that
certainly needs to be addressed too, is this earlier age in this that
kids as young as 14, 15, 16 are coming up with solutions to world
problems, that we should be listening to them, right?
James: We need to be
encouraging, especially those that we know that the hardware itself
and the software itself allows for comfort and for our terms of use
for this. We really need to be using that with students a lot,
because they are going to-- maybe it's just consumption. But even
from that consumption, the ideas that are sparked from that spatial
presence that's felt in this type of technology, it could change
someone's life. And it may not be something big. It may be something
small like a little pebble that causes a lot of ripples. It may start
them down a path to where they could truly impact humanity on a large
scale, just because at an earlier age they were exposed and they
experienced things, that when me and you were their age, we wouldn't
have been able to experience because we were lucky if we got a field
trip to the other side of the city. So, yeah, I think it's really
important that we harness this technology, especially when companies
have created it for their age groups, and you have developers that
are making things that are applicable to those age groups. I think
it's vitally important that we do that.
Julie: Well, James, thank you so
much for our conversation today. There's so much that we can go down
the path of. And I'd love to bring you back into another session down
the road, where we start to see some of the different things that are
happening in the schools. I know that even my daughter's schools are
changing the way that they're teaching. And there's so many different
conversations about the content, the curriculum, the methods, the
responses of the students, and that sort of thing. So I think we need
to schedule a part two to this, as we try and focus on that
micro-learning part. Let's get everybody digesting on this. I'd love
to have you close off with some lessons for our listeners, advising
on what you're seeing and how to get through these next few months.
James: Probably the most
important thing -- especially to the lessons from now until where we
can all meet back face to face -- is focus on being kind to each
other and having patience. That's probably at the basis of it. But
then from that point, it's now a time that we can be a little more
exploratory, because there's a lot of lax on summative assessments
that are happening and standardized testing that's happening. So now
is the time that we can actually encourage our children and our
students to explore things that maybe they don't have an opportunity
to normally explore in school. So things like going and checking out
things that are in AR if you're in elementary school, absolutely. I
mean, even if it's something as simple as going into the App Store or
Google Play store or typing in "AR" and seeing those
options that come up, or checking out CoSpaces EDU for things that
are out there. You can check Twitter for teachers that are created
things, or students that have created things. I've got one on my
Twitter page. It may be the pinned tweet that talks about
storytelling in AR, and how you can create fragmented and branched
storytelling in augmented reality. Or if it's something like even
about empathy development through VR for older age groups. You can
literally just go to YouTube and type in "empathy 360" or
something like that, or you just Google it. Steve Bambury has a
really good site, VirtualiTeach, where he talks about some really
good empathy experiences in VR. So go check out Steve Bambury's site
and look at that. But these are the times where we can start to look
at these alternative things, or what has been seen as alternative.
They're actually really impactful.
Julie: Well, that's a great way
to end off this podcast session. Thank you so much, James, for
speaking with me today on the XR for Learning podcast. If you know a
teacher or parent that's struggling, reach out to them, because
they're certainly going through some heavy changes personally, I'm
sure, as well as professionally.
James: Thank you so much, Julie.
I appreciate it.
Julie: Thanks so much. James.
25 min
April 26, 2020 Empowering Educators by Getting Immersive, with apelab's Emilie Joly
We often say that some concepts can only be taught to students spatially, and getting them inside some VR is the best way to do it. Emilie Joly from apelab visits with Julie to explain how that same concept, applied to educators, inspired Zoe.com.
Julie: Hello, my name is Julie
Smithson, and I am your XR for Learning podcast host. I look forward
to bringing you insight into changing the way that we learn and teach
using XR technologies to explore, enhance and individualize learning
for everyone. Today, my guest is Emilie Joly, and she is a CEO by
day, an interaction designer by night, co-founding apelab, a Swiss-US
software company bringing immersive technologies to the world. And
with her co-founders, they launched an exciting remote learning
platform called Zoe for teachers and schools around the world.
Students are able to learn and build their own immersive experiences
around curriculum-based subjects, using their visual soft programming
tools and Unity game engine. Thanks so much for being with me here
today, Emily. Welcome.
Emilie: Thank you, Julie. It's a
pleasure to be here.
Julie: That's great. Well, why
don't you tell me a little bit about the history of apelab, and then
dive right in on how Zoe is helping people learn.
Emilie: I co-founded apelab six years
ago now -- so it's been a while -- with two other great peers of
mine. We founded the company when we were still at university. Our
background is we're interaction designers, and we wanted to build 3D
interactive experiences using our iPhones on 360 degrees. But there
were no tools. We used the Unity game engine at the time, but it was
still very early. And so we decided to build our own software tools.
And the goal of those tools was to help non-coders, creative teams,
creative people to build immersive 3D content without having to code.
And so that's how we started the company. We worked with different
partners in the immersive space like Facebook, Google, HTC, did some
work there. And then recently we decided to put all of our software
tools in a platform called Zoe. And that platform is for teachers and
students to take advantage of what we've built in the edtech context.
Julie: So can you tell us a
little bit about introducing the concept? Because what you're telling
me is it's a new way to tell stories. It's a brand new way of
storytelling. It's three dimensional learning. It's something that I
felt very passionate about, how to introduce three dimensional
learning into our classrooms to explore spatial presence and
understanding, since that's what-- where we live in today. So maybe
can you share some of the concepts that you use at Zoe to introduce
why do we need this spatial understanding and three dimensional
interactions?
Emilie: There's something about
being in a virtual space -- in a 3D space -- that makes so much
difference. We are used to flat interfaces, but when you put students
that are younger -- like 12, 13, 14 year olds -- into a 3D
environment where they can fully interact with the space, and then
you put them back into 2D flat interfaces, they don't understand why
we haven't been using those 3D interfaces in the first place, because
it's much more natural. It makes a lot more sense for learning, and
for creating, and also just for sparking imagination. These 3D
spatial environments are very unique in terms of what, how, and what
you can learn. And I think at least our approach is that we're
interested in giving-- empowering the students to build their own
experiences in that 3D world. So they are the ones creating the
learning material for others, they are the ones telling stories, they
are the ones building the stories. Like they would if they were doing
an essay, or having to do an argument with other students.
Julie: So this is where the
teacher's role would come in to guide that education on what they
need to create. Then, are there assets and tools in your platform
that offer guidance?
Emilie: We were really focused
on the professional learning aspect of things. So we work with
educators directly. They're helping us also shape the curriculum for
different classes. But we have different kinds of educators we work
with, whether it's art teacher, computer science teacher, someone
working on social impacts. There's kind of a wide range. And Zoe is
really made for educators to channel that creativity in students in
different parts of the curriculum. So we also offer that whole
professional learning side of things where to learn how to use
virtual augmented reality in the class. How do you deal with the
hardware? How do you setup a VR creation class quickly? So those kind
of things we're definitely working on and that's an inherent part of
Zoe.
Julie: Do you take the current
curriculum that the systems are using already, and try and match it
with how Zoe can support it?
Emilie: Yeah, we're trying to
find where in the curriculum the soft skills like collaboration and
creation are the best fit. And to be honest, a lot of the inspiration
for curriculum comes from the educators themselves, that are excited
about bringing this into their classroom. And so they are the ones
also kind of guiding us towards "Oh, I think I could really use
this in that context." And so trying to align as best we can in
different types of subjects. So maybe I could give you also an
example: last summer we did a summer camp with a school in San Diego.
And the students were 12 to 15 years old. And it was a class from the
US and a class from China working together. And the goal is they had
to collaborate on creating an experience around the United Nations'
sustainable development goals. And so the first day they had a little
bit of lecture, someone came in to explain how to work sustainably in
agriculture, things like topics like that. And then the each had to
team up in pairs of two, and they had four days to to create an
experience around one of the United Nations goals. And the goal of
the pilot here was to see with the teacher how would the students be
able to create something from scratch. They had to do everything.
They had to think about the experience, what they wanted to say, how
the user was going to interact. They had to model all the 3D models
they needed for their experience. They had to do the voice-over of
their experience and then program it, in about four days. So that was
super exciting and we ended up with four or five amazing projects.
One of the team wanted to teach Chinese farmers how to unpollute
their soil. That was their topic they wanted to cover. So they
created this whole training session to teach farmers how to do it.
And then at the end of the workshop, they wanted to go and sell it in
China. So that was kind of cute. [laughs]
Julie: Wow. I'm sure-- yeah, you
see some of these different solutions that were never even considered
before. And I think that's the power of youth today, is that with
their creative abilities, they can come up with these solutions and
they can start to envision how to solve a problem. And that must be
very exciting from your perspective of seeing how creative tools are
leading the path to that.
Emilie: This is also where a lot
of the educational department goals are to foster those 21st century
skills: the problem solving aspect of things, entrepreneurship
programs, things like that. And the future of work as well, these are
skills all students will need in the future. Personally, I think
virtual reality, 3D spatial learning, they're just the perfect tools
to do that kind of things and make it easy and make it interesting.
So hopefully with Zoe we can also get educators excited about
bringing this and pushing this more.
Julie: One of the big pain
points -- especially as we're going through Covid-19 right now, and
it's the elephant in the room -- the support for educators and their
place and how they're changing the way that they teach. Coming back
to what you just said on how educators were saying, "Oh, this
will be great to use with this classroom." I really think that
vision and impact that teacher wants to have, that's that
transformative nature they need to take personally to be able to be a
great teacher in this new world, and complete with the respect and
knowledge of the environment. But being able to introduce an
immersive experience like this to a student must be very powerful.
And if we can encourage teachers to do that more and more, I think
that's where the power of the classroom with a mentor and teacher
like that has unlimited possibilities. So maybe you can just
reiterate again how you support the teachers and the system to accept
that they need to engage with spatial learning.
Emilie: Almost 100 percent of
what we're doing is is dedicated to the teachers, because they are
the ones that are using this in very-- and they already-- I've met
educators doing some really amazing things already, or are having
ideas on how to do things. But then again, maybe the problem is the
time that they have or maybe some of this is sometimes a bit too
technical. And so we're just trying to make all of that really easy.
And also just fun for them, as well, to participate in that sort of
community that we're building is also exchanging ideas. Like if the
educator works on something with students, then being able to share
that with another school. And so we're just trying to build that type
of community and making it easy, basically. Trying to guide things
and then keep it open again so that they can have their own ideas.
But just guiding through all the basics, like the hardware, the
software, what you can do, what are the possibilities? And then
taking it from there.
Julie: So maybe we can just
touch base on the hardware side of things, because that's obviously
another big piece of this puzzle. And how do you help educate the
educators about the hardware? What hardware does your software
support, and what are those tidbits of advice on HMDs that educators
need to know before bringing this into the classroom?
Emilie: On the hardware side,
there's definitely the-- today, there's difficulties in just
acquiring the hardware these days. I don't know if you've noticed,
but some of the headsets aren't even-- you can't even order them
right now. But some of the things that we're addressing-- we have
partners, we're partnered with most of the hardware people. So we're
trying to help the schools connect to some of the headsets. The one
that we work with the most are Oculus, and the Oculus headsets:
Oculus Quest, Oculus Rift. And then the HTC headset. So we're focused
on the higher-end type of headset, because Zoe allows you to build
within virtual reality, so you need controllers and you can walk
around and things like that. So these are the headsets we're
supporting. But one thing we also did -- I think might have been due
to the pandemic, and the remote learning aspect of things -- but we
also worked on a mobile version of Zoe. So that is going to make the
hardware side of it easier, meaning that you can have-- sometimes
students can't stay in the headset for too long. It's not
recommended, either. So we're trying to make it so that you can build
with Zoe from the Oculus Quest. But you could also continue to work
on your smartphone and collaborate with other students in that way.
Julie: Is that live today?
Emilie: So the mobile version is
not alive today, but it's coming soon. The schools we've subscribed
already on Zoe, they'll get access to it and will be able to try it
out and tell us what they think. And it'll be completely in sync with
the virtual reality app. So if you've build an experience inside the
virtual reality software, then you can easily take it on your phone
and then back to VR. So these are things we think are important to
also -- in terms of hardware -- being as cross-platform as it can be
when relevant. You don't get the same experience on mobile, but we're
used to getting from one hardware to the other. And it depends on
what you're working and when.
Julie: The education piece
behind teaching three dimensions and being immersed in a 360
environment. Can you speak to a little bit of the actions that can
take place, and what the potential of working in a three dimensional
environment is like? And I'm referring to-- I'm looking at an article
actually about you guys -- I think it was released through Qualcomm,
actually -- just looking at a screenshot that you have. And I think
this is also really important that people understand when you can
grab from a distance or when you can transport or when doing some of
these actions that make you feel more immersed in the spaces. Do you
have a particular section in your class or instructional that you
talk about these different interactions a little bit more?
Emilie: We as a team, we are
interaction designers, so we built this whole Zoe system around
interaction, what we call interaction design. So in Zoe, when you're
in 3D, there's multiple things you can do. You can -- and that's
valid for any 3D VR tool as well -- but you can walk around, you can
move around, you can grab objects. And what's really neat is you
can-- you're doing an art class or a 3D modelling class, you can
build all your environment and then you can start setting up
behaviors with all your objects. So let's say that you're creating --
I don't know -- an experience around farming. Then maybe you created
a shovel and you created a tree and you built -- I don't know -- a
water bucket or whatever you need for your experience, then you can
start adding behaviors to those. And that's what Zoe does well is you
can really be like in real life, you're just there in your garden
that you just created yourself. You can walk around, you can pick up
the objects and you can add behaviors to them. So you can say -- I
don't know -- if I grab this water bucket, an instruction comes up
and says, "Oh, please, water plant in that." So you can
really create like a training session. And it's very, very
interesting to do it directly within a virtual reality headset. Like
it changed a lot, being in that 3D space. And then the other aspect
that I think is really key is being able to connect with other people
from anywhere in the world. So you can have someone in India working
with someone here, in the same 3D space and just talking to each
other as if we're all together there and being creative.
Julie: And I think that's key,
being in the same space with somebody else, that's the collaborative
piece right there, of being able to communicate and work on something
in real time and have all of the creator tools at their fingertips to
be able to design, mold, envision, and use that technology to see
what they want to create. One of the things that I would like -- if
you can -- is maybe just give us a rollout of -- if you've got an
education system listening -- what would first, second, third steps
be of engaging with you. How does it-- what are the steps to be
onboarded into your program, and how do you take off with a client?
Emilie: The onboarding, it's go
to Zoe.com. That's the first thing to do. We have one-- there's just
one signup form in there, where we ask jut some questions about if
there is already VR in your school, what your goals are -- if you
have any -- if you know already what you want to do, and just like
ask little questions that help us out. And then after that, we just
contact the schools and have discussions around how we can be of
help. Talking with districts as well, on how to best integrate with a
program, how we can help with hardware, what setup is recommended
depending on what type of class you're doing. So that's one aspect of
it. And then the other thing that should be launched -- probably in a
week or two -- is for just individual students or individual teachers
that are not linked to a full school district. You'll be able to just
sign up directly on the website and then get access to a free version
of the platform, so you can get to try around them, look at it, and
see what it does.
Julie: That's really great.
Well, thank you so much for joining me today. Emilie. Is there
anything else that you would like to close off with, about Zoe or
apelab? We know that we can find you and Zoe.com, but maybe if you
could leave the last tidbit of learning for our listeners, that would
be great.
Emilie: Yes, for sure. I mean, I
think now's a great time to engage with these new technologies and be
more creative. And I know everyone's stuck at home, I know it's
difficult. Everyone has so many things to do and get their their
heads around. And so hopefully we can provide some interesting or fun
and new learning materials for you to work with. And maybe one piece
of info is that we're until like June-July, everything that we offer
is going to be discounted for the schools or teachers that have their
schools closed. So that could be also a good opportunity to try them
and come in now and explore a little bit.
Julie: Thank you so much. Thank
you, Emilie, for joining me today on the XR for Learning podcast.
There's so many different ways that we need to change the way that we
learn and we teach. Thanks again for joining us today to tell us
about your programs. Then please come back again and give us some
updates, and let us know how your platform takes off in the education
systems. We'd love to hear more.
Emilie: Thank you, Julie.
Julie: Thanks, Emilie.
18 min
April 16, 2020 Coordinating Virtual Squirrels, with Education Consultant Craig Frehlich
Today’s guest, Craig Frehlich, is an educational consultant, and first saw the learning potential of VR on a trip to the mall with his son. But he drops in to stress the experience itself isn’t going to teach much, without a discussion with students about what they experienced after the fact.
Julie: Hello, my name is Julie
Smithson and I am your XR for Learning podcast host. I look forward
to bring you insight into changing the way we learn and teach using
XR technologies, to explore and enhance an individualized learning
for everyone. Today, my guest is Craig Frehlich. And he has been
working in education for over 25 years and has his master's degree in
education with a focus on curriculum design. He is also an
educational consultant and speaker on the topics of inquiry, design
thinking, and the use of technology in education. Craig is currently
a design teacher and academic advisor for various organizations, and
he pioneered the first VR lab for school in Canada. His main focus is
to use contextual and conceptual thinking to translate VR experiences
into lesson guides that help map successfully introspective journeys
in virtual reality. His upcoming book, "Immersive Learning:
Harnessing Virtual Reality Superpowers in Education", offers a
practical approach to using VR in a variety of subjects and
disciplines. Thanks for joining me today, Craig.
Craig: Hi, Julie. Thanks for
having me. I'm excited to be on the show.
Julie: And what perfect timing
this is to talk about some of the schools that you work on, to help
support our educators in the global community today.
Craig: I agree.
Julie: Yeah. So maybe if you
want to share a little bit about what you're working on, and how you
can help our listeners -- especially if they're teachers -- in some
of the work that you've done, and provide some advice on learning for
those listeners today.
Craig: I'd love to. I think I'll
start with my origin story, which is how I first got interested in
VR. So my son and I were in a mall in Canada and it was 2016. He was
16 at the time, 16 years old. So he dragged me into a Microsoft store
where they had an HTC Vive setup. We had to sign a whole bunch of
forms. Luckily, there was no line up and he donned the headset and
was playing around in VR. It was The Lab by Valve. And I watched him,
and he was enthralled and it looked so interesting. So he convinced
me to put the headset on. When I put the headset on, I just couldn't
believe how realistic it was. There's words like presence and when
you're don your avatar, how it feels so much like real life. And it
was that moment that got me thinking about how a great tool this
would be for VR.
Julie: So how did you then take
that next step in to, I guess, becoming an educator within VR? Where
did that take off for you?
Craig: On our drive home back to
our town, we started ruminating on the experience. Like, The Lab has
Longbow, which is an archery game. And my son and I started talking
about how you could feel the controllers vibrate, and we started to
unpack the experience. Which made me think about, it's one thing for
people to put the headset on, but I think most importantly --
especially for educators -- is how can we make meaning from such a
magical/powerful experience? So I started investigating this. Lucky
enough, we ended up getting someone donate some money, and we bought
three headsets for our school in Canada. And as we put headsets on
kids, they walk away with awe, wonder, sometimes bewilderment. But it
was until we had conversations after, that it really solidified the
learning. So I started writing lesson guides, things like "What
should you be seeing? What should you be focusing on before you get
into the headset?" And then probably more importantly, when the
experience was over, having rich deep conversations on, "Okay,
what just happened?"
Julie: I think that's really
important, that you don't just stick somebody into an experience,
have them go through that, and then take the headset off and just
walk away. The most important part -- I think -- is the decompressing
of what that experience was about.
Craig: In my other observations
with students -- which led me down this path that I'm on now -- was
not all experiences were created equal. And what I mean by that is,
it seemed to be the ones that were more contextual and conceptual
that kids wanted to talk more about, and they had more to think
about, and they had more to discuss. So, for example, one experience
that I love is called Fantastic Contraption. It's a VR application
originally as a game, but students have to basically take all these
little wheels and sticks. It's like a puzzle, they have to build this
contraption that moves this little jelly ball down a pathway to a
jelly wall. And when kids are problem solving like this, they're
gonna make errors, they're gonna make mistakes, and some give up. And
they need to talk about that. They need to pause. They need to think.
And this way of thinking, this deeper sort of schemata that they're
forming in their minds was what I found VR to be most beneficial. And
the reason my anecdotal observations about this were, they wanted to
talk more about stuff like this, then maybe VR applications, which
albeit are powerful at heightening visualization, they had less to
think about. So there's a chemistry one called Nanon, and in Nanon
you can build organic molecules. So we used that in my old school
quite a bit, and it scratched the surface on understanding something
that you probably couldn't understand from a textbook. But kids
didn't have as much to ruminate and chew on and think about, as
opposed to experiences that were way more conceptual, or forced or
made them struggle to think about connecting smaller ideas or facts
to bigger ideas, like systems thinking which I talked about.
Fantastic Contraption forces kids to be really good systems thinkers.
Julie: That I think is really
important right now is you're identifying critical thinking and
problem solving, which are some of the biggest soft skills tools that
we need today. And moving into these virtual worlds, these are the
skill sets that are so important for not just for the next generation
students and kids, but for all of us to start to engage. And
obviously, you've discovered some of these applications that offer
this type of thinking. And I think this is where we'll start to see
that differentiation in the educational applications that separate
out those ones that actually stimulate and engage the students, and
make them think and problem solve.
Craig: If we have the time --
which I have -- I did a bunch of consulting work for Springboard VR
and they hired me to look at existing off-the-shelf edugames that are
on the market, to think about the best case scenario for education.
And so I spent a good two years writing lesson guides and thinking
about what's already existing from gaming companies, that might be
highly educational and very conceptual. And so I've curated a number
of these lesson guides in my upcoming book, and -- like I said -- it
allows students to more than just scratch the surface. I think the
Internet and textbooks can help kids give foundational knowledge. But
this experiential knowledge, this is what I believe -- in my humble
opinion -- VR was made for. Headsets are still relatively expensive,
so we want to be able to put them on students and have them be wowed
and awed by deeper thinking. Here's a good example, there's a VR game
out there called... Cave Digger, thank you. And in Cave Digger, the
game basically is, you're a miner. And so you hop on to the headset.
It takes you down below in a mine. You have different tools like
pickaxes and you have to go down. It's a visceral experience, you go
down this elevator and it stops at certain floor. And you can look
around and you can feel what it's like to be a miner. And then you
have to start hammering away at the different types of rocks, and not
all the rocks in the mine are the same. Some are softer and harder.
So you have to swing and you collect different minerals. You come
back into this mining town, you can wander around the mining town,
you get a sense for what the people are like. And so this particular
game is something that social studies teachers or geography teachers
would love to have, because you can't teach that in the textbook. One
of my favorite experiences as a kid was going to the amusement park
in my physics class, because we got experiential learning to see how
roller coasters work. We had to take measurements and calculations,
but we were right there living the life of what someone who does
higher level physics might do.
Julie: I want to take a quick
step back, and something mentioned was about the gamification portion
-- and I don't know if you actually use that term -- but when
everybody was in school, teachers were competing with video games.
Students would prefer to be on their video games rather than being in
classes. And one of the things that I've been working on for a while
now is trying to explain to people how gamification needs to be a
part of that education curriculum to test and fail the students who
have the knowledge -- passive knowledge -- to challenge the students,
and gamify things. And I always said the gamers are going to save
education, because that's how students are engaged, is by challenging
themselves and by discovery. And if we can start to implement -- as
teachers -- more gamification into the lessons, it builds that
challenge and it also provides rewards, even as simple as a gold
star. I always talked about this as well was why are we only
rewarding kids once a year for them to pass their grade in school,
when we could reward them more frequently based on the increase of
their knowledge base? So it then ties back into gamification and how
there's so many different ways that we can challenge students these
days, especially in virtual gaming and really education platforms,
that we need to embed this in order to attract the actual experience
to the student and also to test their knowledge.
Craig: I couldn't agree more. I
just-- yesterday I was talking to the CEO of Resolution Games.
Resolution Games is an amazing gaming company, in my opinion, because
they have all these non-violent games which -- more importantly --
are multiplayer. So one favorite one that many schools are starting
to use is called Acron. So in Acron there's one person who's got the
headset on, but everyone else -- nine other people -- can play along
on their phones. Now you've got nine students involved. So in the
game, the ultimate goal is the giant tree has the headset on, and the
tree has to protect its acorns. Everybody else on their phone are
little squirrels that have to try and take the acorns from the giant
tree. It's so powerful when you watch students for team building and
collaboration, because all the squirrels who are on the phone, when
they first play it, they take this individual role and they go it on
their own. But pretty soon they start to realize that if they team up
with other squirrels to come up with a strategy, then they're much
more successful in the game and they start talking to each other,
strategizing and collaborating and communicating. And I believe --
again -- that this is the power of VR.
Julie: Absolutely. I couldn't
agree more. And I think VR and AR have opened up all of these
different possibilities of collaboration, which if you take a look at
the older school systems -- I shouldn't say older, I should say old
school systems -- that opportunity to collaborate in a gamified way
might have been done with a couple of pieces of paper, and maybe some
dice, and maybe a problem that the teacher provided. But now the
immersiveness and the interactivity and the sharing of concepts, and
that sort of thing, it creates a brand new collaboration and learning
environment that's never been provided before.
Craig: Even VR narratives are
becoming great conceptual based teaching and learning tools. For
example, when you watch a regular biography or story on a computer,
you have very little agency. You have the perspective or point of
view from whoever the director is. However, in many VR applications
-- that are done really well -- when you're don a headset, your point
of view and perspective can be varied depending on where you look, or
possibly how the VR story is played out by the producer or the
director. And the discussions unfold or unpack like Pandora's Box,
because now it depends on where you're looking and what situation or
perspectives. Big ideas like identity, which is a powerful conceptual
idea in many curricula for language arts. The discussion isn't "OK,
what was the point of view of the author on this one?" It was,
"What was your point of view?" Or if you looked at the
story with the VR headset under this sort of path or agency, how is
that different than if you looked at it this way?
Julie: This leads to everybody's
individual learning lesson plan and building out those individual
experiences based on where you're looking, and following the
branching narratives based on what you select and how you play or
interact. And it's only just the beginning, which we can talk for
days and days about the different potential and opportunities, but
I'd like to narrow down with you. If you were to give advice to
teachers today and let's say teachers and parents, because we're
recognizing a lot of families who are now staying home due to the
coronavirus, and a lot of families have had to start looking for
different ways to engage their children during the days. And their
school systems aren't providing enough content to keep them busy.
What would you advise to them to get started and understanding more
about this new virtual world of learning?
Craig: First and foremost,
because everyone I think that I've talked to in this genre of
communication is that it wasn't until they actually put on a headset
that they understood the magic. And so that's number one. Teachers
out there, you have to try it. You could find either through maybe a
rental or some avenue. Try it, put on a headset, try out some of
these interactive, highly engaging applications like Fantastic
Contraption. Once teachers have the headset on and realize the sense
of presence that you have, the realism that goes on inside the
headset, that they'll be convinced that it isn't just a fad or some
shiny new technology toy that will gather dust in the long run. So
that's number one: try to put on a headset. Number two, just like
anything, reflection is key and paramount. Putting kids inside the
experience, the student might be internally motivated to sort out in
their mind what went on. But I think it's our responsibility to talk
to the student after or the class. And well-crafted lesson plans can
really map out that experience. And by map, I don't mean like a
Google map. If we type in Google Maps, it's going to give us kind of
a straight linear or shortest route to our finish line. The map for a
VR experience is going to be more like a treasure map, where
depending -- as you talked about -- the student, the individual might
have a different pathway toward what was meant to happen within VR.
Having these conversations, these reflection sessions is super key.
Thirdly, the third thing that I would suggest to teachers is to start
to get familiar with kid culture. Games, as you said, games are part
of kid culture. And the more we're familiar with that genre and why
it's such a powerful medium where kids are allowed to fail and try
again, push the reset button. The more we're familiar with it, the
more we can lean them towards non-violent educational games which
become important and conceptual for learning.
Julie: I think you couldn't have
said it better. Thanks, Craig. One thing I wanted to close off with.
Why don't you tell everybody about your book and how we're gonna be
able to find it? Because I think it's something I want to read, and I
think everybody in the education sector should start to read
something like this.
Craig: Oh, thank you. Yeah, my
book is set to come out August 1st. As you alluded to at the start of
the podcast, it's very much a practical guide. It walks teachers
through some vignettes and some stories around why VR is an important
tool to make its way into schools and homes, from a learning
perspective. I curated over 60 lesson guides and highlighted and
recommended over 60 VR applications that I think would offer powerful
conceptual understanding for students, parents and, of course,
teachers.
Julie: I look forward to seeing
when it comes out and share with us. Before just trying to wrap up
this podcast, can you tell everybody where they can reach you, if
they have any other questions?
Craig: Twitter would be the best
medium or venue. So I'm on Twitter @Cfrehlichteach. Other avenues,
I'm on LinkedIn as well. I offer a podcast about VR in education. So
that's through the various iTunes, etc.. So again, my VR podcast is
called "VR in Education", if they're interested in learning
more about how it intersects with education.
Julie: That's great. Absolutely.
And I think these conversations are also really important to address
from so many different perspectives and avenues. We're all trying to
learn this new medium together. And I'd like to put this moment to
say thank you, Craig, for joining me on the XR for Learning podcast.
And please come back again. And let's talk about your book once it's
launched. And we can share the news with the listeners again.
Craig: I would love that, Julie.
And I want to add that thank you for being such a good conduit for us
in this industry, which is growing like crazy. Without people like
you, I think us smaller educators, who dabble in this as just a
hobby, wouldn't have a good direction.
Julie: Thanks so much, it
definitely takes the collaboration of many to put out any kind of
education these days. Things are changing so quickly within our
world. And again, thank you, Craig, for being with us. My name is
Julie Smithson and this is the XR for Learning podcast. Thanks,
everyone.
22 min
April 09, 2020 ANNOUNCING: The XR Collaboration Project
We interrupt your regularly-scheduled podcast for this special announcement, where Julie introduces the XR Collaboration project. MetaVRse, along with other major players in the XR space, have come together to develop an easy-to-use guide for the newly-home-office-bound to navigate the many telecommunication tools available from the industry.
7 min
April 05, 2020 XR for Learning Course: Beginning a New Education from Home
Many of us are experimenting with homeschooling at the moment, whether we want to or not. Julie hopes to help listeners by offering a glimpse into the Smithson home, and how she's educating her two daughters while schools are closed.
10 min
April 02, 2020 The Netiquette of XR, with Silicon Harlem's Ben Erwin PART 2
In virtual space, the sky's the limit -- literally. Your Avatars can fly and teleport and change form in an instant, even in a relatively mundane collaboration meeting or classroom setting. Ben Erwin of Silicon Harlem returns to discuss the development of XR's version of "Netiquette."
Julie: Hello, my name is Julie
Smithson and I am your XR for Learning podcast host. Every session is
meant to provide you with the value in microlearning, about the way
technologies will change the approach of education, the creation
needed and the tech savvy brilliance to support the advances of our
digital transformation. Join us today with my next guest, Ben Erwin,
who is an expert on the XR ecosystem, from hardware and software
platforms to the who's who in the industry. Recognizing the
revolution of how we consume information being brought about by
spatial computing and volumetric video, Ben has focused on creating
new experiences and WebXR and social VR. As director of Silicon
Harlem's annual tech-enabled community conference since 2018, Ben
programmed the agenda, developed the marketing and produced the
events for the next one, which will be held at the Forum of Columbia
University in October. Thanks so much for joining me, Ben, today.
Ben: Hey, Julie, it's great to
be back.
Julie: And so much to talk about
with everything that's going on. I know we've had several different
conversations about our intake and insight into the way things have
changed before the coronavirus has hit our communities. But we talked
a lot about the communication of technology, the humanics behind it,
and how to adapt with the interaction. So maybe if you want to open
up with a bit of your expertise and what you're seeing today in our
communities and in business and how we're dealing with each other on
communication.
Ben: Well, I think that the
phenomenon that we're seeing right now, especially since it kicked in
-- it was a very sort of interesting timing, how the Educators In VR
conference happened. The outbreak had already happened in the east,
and this conference happened the week of February 17th. And it was so
phenomenally successful that it was a proof-positive use case that
social VR is not only a thing, but something that many different
types of use cases can take advantage of. Number one is conferences.
And so HTC Vive, last week, had another phenomenal conference. They
had scheduled an in-person conference and they had to cancel it
because of the pandemic. And they held it very successfully on the
ENGAGE platform last week. We've also seen a big surge in Zoom, which
is a traditional platform, uses browsers as an install base. People
are getting used to the idea of not only working remotely, but
collaborating remotely. Teachers are giving lesson plans over the
Internet. Students are learning as classes, in groups over the
Internet. This is a very rapid paradigm shift that we're seeing. And
what gives me a lot of heart is how well it's going.
Julie: Yeah, I think everybody's
kind of-- well, we've had to, we've been forced to take that step
back and figure out both in the classrooms as well as in business on
how are we collaborating, how are we working together, how do we now
collaborate when I'm at my house and you're at your house and we're
so many miles away? And we do have this technology now that can be
put in front of us, we can connect to, we can actually see and
visualize things like 3D models to work on and to collaborate, to
develop and design together. All of that technology is possible now.
So opening up that new means of communication, where before it was
always face-to-face or it was over the phone or just even in a
conference call, we can now introduce more online platforms and
virtual platforms to collaborate. And I think that's really opened
the eyes of many to see, first of all, how well your team
communicates. How well does that teacher communicate with the kids?
How do the kids adapt to that? How do co-workers adapt to
communicating online? And I think that in the last couple of weeks,
we've all grown into that challenge of figuring out what works best
for some. And obviously, we're still working through different use
cases. But the amount of XR collaboration platforms that are out
there -- we as a team at MetaVRse and with some other partners have
identified over 75 different platforms that all include different
features -- and I think this is where it comes back to how do we
digitally interact with these online collaboration platforms to
discover what the best use case is and how to use them in the best
way.
Ben: Exactly. The question is
how. And my outlook on things is, just in general with the whole
spatial computing space, is that we shouldn't try to reinvent 2D into
3D space. And moreover, technology has forced us to go into 2D where
3D -- we talked about this in the last session -- is sort of our
natural way of things. But when we're doing this new type of
collaboration and this new way that it affects us in different ways
of evaluating us, I think that we need to think about clever ways --
and certainly a lot of people are -- about how we can most
productively interact, how we can do things by ourselves and then
bring and present them on teams and groups and classes. So I think
that one of the main things that we need to be looking at are some of
the friction points in terms of this. And because a lot of these are
so new, they're a little bit rough on the start up, and I think that
one of the main friction points is the ability for people to have it.
We don't have a huge install base of VR, let alone standalone VR like
Oculus Quest, yet. A lot of these platforms -- thank goodness -- are
available for Windows. And I'm talking about the 3D social VR
conferencing, not just Zoom, which is obviously something that's good
for desktop, tablet, and mobile. But one of the things that I'm
concerned about is that not a lot of them have Mac clients yet. And
so a lot of families have two computers in the house. Some people
have PC and Mac. Some people are just only Mac users. And so there
were one of the concerns that I have trying to start up a few
different types of conferences -- not just conferences, but just
interactions, and getting together with groups of people -- is, what
do we do about the Mac users who can't log on? And that is where I
think that the WebXR, things like Mozilla Hubs, are very important,
because they are browser-based. And so the sooner that we are able to
have browser-based social VR experiences, while that install base is
rolling out, the more quickly people can get on board with this
experiment with new ways of doing things, and that will help move the
whole thing forward. And because everybody's working from home and
being isolated right now, that there's not only time to do this, but
there's a necessity.
Julie: Yeah. And just going back
to the different purposes of meeting -- and I think this is really
being analyzed now that we're all working remotely -- is, what is
that use case? And is it going to be valuable to meet for this
purpose? And which platform will best provide the means of
communication in each platform as well? I know when... I'm going
through right now the profiles of all these collaboration platforms,
it's really opened my eyes to the different ways you are able to
communicate, and little things like having a whiteboard or sticky
notes or interaction, actually, between people in the space and the
capacity is one of the key metrics and measurements of these XR
collaboration platforms. And there's a difference between interacting
and then just observing or attending. There's so many different ways
that you can interact in these platforms and highlight those human
behaviors that were never recognized before, when we were actually
face-to-face.
Ben: Well, and also, the
difference between VR and AR, and how that's going to affect things.
Because VR, being totally immersive and you're inside of a fabricated
world and you're moving around and the avatars are there. When you're
doing this in AR through -- right now -- a Hololens, Hololens 2,
Magic Leap, or as the lightweight consumer model like the Nreal
glasses roll out and people start adopting those, platforms like
Spatial will be very interesting because they do things like sticky
notes, and they have avatars of people projecting in front of you.
And I think that that's really important. And on avatars, I think
avatars is a very important thing. Because that's one of the things
that the ENGAGE platform does so well. And there's a lot to consider
with avatars. One is the uncanny valley, because if things don't look
perfect enough, then they look off. Or you could have something like
Altspace VR, which is before you get to the uncanny valley where
things are sort of cartoonish. And I think looking down the road, one
of the things that is going to be very important for social VR -- and
I hope that somebody... I'm sure a lot of people are working on this
-- but I think that having the ability to make your own avatar and
then taken on the different platforms is going to be very important,
and you can change avatars like you can change clothes for the day.
But nonetheless, they're your avatars and they're not necessarily a
platform-specific avatar.
Julie: I completely agree. We
had a conversation about this yesterday because my daughters, they
were in the Altspace platform with Michael McDonald, who was teaching
them, doing an interactive English lesson with them in Altspace. And
one of my daughters commented that she could look down and she could
see her body and she liked that. She could see her legs and her
shoes, even though they were cartoonish. And she was in ENGAGE a
couple of days before where she couldn't see her legs. That was
important to my daughter, that she could see her body and she liked
that. So I really think, going back to your statement of Avatar's and
how important they are, it's not so much how you're receiving
information from somebody else that looks like a cartoon character.
You need to be able to feel like you're somebody inside this space.
And that's where the customization of Avatars is, in being able to
see your hands and even your feet. What are your feet doing? Or what
did they look like? And your outfit? Because you want to make sure
people are taking you seriously when you start having conversations
about business or education or therapy or whatever the conversation
is, there needs to be a seriousness about it. And if there is that
uncanny valley where you don't believe who that person is, then
already you've eliminated a layer of communication. Avatars and
customization and being able to port your avatar from
platform-to-platform. I can see being a top feature list for many of
the platforms in the future.
Ben: And with that, that's a
very important point about how the avatars look and behave. And this
is only going to get better from here. One of the things that we are
seeing right now is... so, if you're in VR and you're using
controllers, you typically have hands in these platforms, but the
hands are doing what the controller is doing. So if you set your
controllers down on the table, your hands are doing something kind of
funny. Or if you need to look around your room so you put your VR
headset up on your forehand, then it looks like your neck is craned
back. Also, the hands are disconnected from the arms. These are
things that are obviously going to be improved with the technology.
But I thought it was a very important thing that we touched on when
we spoke yesterday about the bandwidth consumption that it takes to
broadcast a pose over the Internet as opposed to a pixel. And all
these Zoom calls are clogging up the pipes because you have--
yesterday my wife was taking a yoga class on Zoom and it had 25 tiles
on it and many of them were lit up with video. That was a lot of
bandwidth that was being consumed there. But when you're dealing with
avatars, there is an efficiency to the fact that these are just these
little gestures and these little poses, even though it's happening at
a high frame rate and it's happening in real time, it's very, very
small data as opposed to having to repaint an entire frame as a
photograph.
Julie: It gives the term "body
language" a whole new dimension. [laughs] Right?.
Ben: Well-- and sometimes it can
be funny. You put like you said, these are going to be used in
serious contexts. So the kind of weird things that might happen just
because somebody put their controllers down or put their headset up,
I'm sure that the people who are designing these interactions will be
putting in catches for this so that you can lock a pose without it
looking really peculiar. And there's also the etiquette of it. Back
in when Web 1.0 was becoming a thing, people coined the phrase
"netiquette". We need some sort of social "VRiquette"
or something like that where it's-- especially if you're at a
conference. I found myself walking around, trying to check out the
thing from different perspectives, and then one of the session
leaders was basically like, "hey, you down in front! Stop
blocking the camera!" And I was like, oh, I was like, I think
I'll just stay still for the rest of this.
Julie: Yeah. I was watching
Caitlin Krause's presentation from Educators In VR and there was
somebody that was flying through the room, obviously checking out
that transporter feature. And there's certain things that you need to
learn from that. She was on the stage. She was standing right in
front of the presenter. She was walking all around. And it became
distracting because you could see her and features like that, where
the developers of that platform need to say, "OK, we can't allow
users to walk on stage, or this space or this space." And and
we're learning every day as we go through these platforms and
discover these... etiquette disturbances, shall we call it? I think
it's something that we all need to to learn about. And it becomes
part of that humanics topic, is that interaction of being social and
using the digitization to communicate and to behave, and the behavior
when you're using this digital interaction needs to be proper, it
needs to be polite. It needs to be considerate. In Altspace and
through Educators In VR, we call them "trolls" -- people
who come on and make disturbances in these public forums. I think we
have a long way to go to build the proper etiquette online, but I
believe that we'll have a collaborative, unison voice in making sure
that people don't disrupt these online conversations. But we
certainly do need to address social VR etiquette, not just from an
education perspective, but definitely from a business perspective as
well.
Ben: And this is all part of
what makes it such an exciting frontier. I mean, everybody's learning
and that's all good from the perspective of this is so new. And I
think that is very important, especially because we don't have the
large install base, and the coronavirus has pushed back the supply
chain of the demand. So Oculus Quests sold out for Black Friday. It
was completely gone by Cyber Monday. It briefly came back at the end
of January. And then I'm sure that there are massive amounts of
industrial procurement going on. So it's really hard to get a fix on,
like, how long this is going to take to roll out to have all of these
headsets in a larger and larger scale. And there's also a lot of
competition to Oculus Quest that's going to be coming out. So they're
not going to be the only standalone headset on the block. They may
have been the first and currently the best. But the fact that these
platforms are available on so much different hardware right now --
the tethered hardware, the HP, the Rift, the Vive, Valve Index --
give a lot of people a chance to get on. But right now, people who
can get on via desktop, tablet and mobile, and just experiment and
just get the idea of what this is like, and that really, this is the
new way of things. It's a great opportunity to learn because that
learning curve is going to go on for a little while. But then once
that netiquette that we're talking about sort of sets into place,
it's going to be sort of like once everybody got used to using the
web and then people came on and we're making newbie mistakes. Right
now, it's completely OK to make those mistakes.
Julie: In wrapping up this
episode, there's so many hardware options that are out there, but
moving to the collaboration platforms: take this time to learn that
it's not just about Zoom or Google Hangouts, which have to date been
very dependable collaboration platforms, but only in 2D and through
spatial computing -- through virtual reality, augmented reality,
mixed reality -- we're now able to move these meetings one-on-one,
teleconferencing, even trade shows, we can now move them into a three
dimensional space. So taking the time to learn about these different
platforms and what the best solution is for the purpose that you need
to meet for is something that I believe the ecosystem will start to
prepare reports and curation documents to be able to help the massive
public understand how to move into this new online and virtual world.
Stay tuned: I'm actually a part of building a resource out for the
mass public, because there are so many different features. There are
so many things to consider with this new way of human interaction.
And maybe just to close this off, Ben, is there any other high-level
advice to anybody learning and listening about these different
collaboration platforms?
Ben: Don't be afraid to just
jump right in and definitely don't underestimate the importance of
this paradigm shift. I mean, this is-- 2020 will be remembered as the
year that this happened. And when people look back at the coronavirus
pandemic, we're going to see this as sort of a jumping-off point. So
now is an opportunity for people to get ahead of this curve, because
the curve is coming. The curve is here! So there's a lot of things
that are out now that you can experiment with. There are a lot of
things coming out that people are working on in the background that
none of us know about yet. So expect that. And lastly, I would just
like to give a shout out to all the people who are making this
happen. They're working hard. There are all these software engineers
who are just doing absolutely brilliant work and experimenting and
thinking outside the box. And that's really helping us all. And then
there are the early adopters and the innovators who are providing the
feedback loop necessary to improve on these products. And it's
happening more quickly than we've ever seen before. I mean, when
people adopted the Internet in the first place, it was very slow to
ramp up. Now, everybody has the Internet. So there is a different
volume of people who have the access to get this. And hopefully it
will translate into access to more people, for more people.
Julie: That's a great way to end
our podcast today for listeners. Thank you so much, Ben, for being on
my podcast.
Ben: My pleasure, thank you so
much.
Julie: Thanks, everyone. My name
is Julie Smithson and this is your XR for Learning podcast. Take
care, everyone.
21 min
March 29, 2020 Learning in Stereo, with Silicon Harlem's Ben Erwin PART 1
Volumetric video and other spatial 3D technologies allows us to add a Z axis to the way we learn. Director of Silicon Harlem Ben Erwin is on the show to discuss teaching in the same three dimensions we all live in.
Julie: Hello, my name is Julie
Smithson and I am your XR for Learning podcast host. Ben Erwin is an
expert of the XR ecosystem, including hardware and software platforms
and events in the rapidly evolving industry. Recognizing the
revolution of how we consume information being brought about by
spatial computing and volumetric video, Ben is focused on creating
new experiences in WebXR and social VR. As director of Silicon
Harlem's annual tech enabled community conference since 2018, Ben
programs the agenda, develops the marketing, and produces the events.
The next one which will be held at the forum at Columbia University
on October 16th, 2020. Welcome, Ben. Thanks very much for joining me
today.
Ben: Thank you for having me,
Julie. It's an honor to be here. I appreciate being on your show.
Julie: Great. Well, I think you
and I have had a couple of different conversations that we want to
touch base with, and starting with spatial memory. And we're in a
time where many of us are developing and working and moving to online
and virtual worlds. And I've always said -- and I think people are
starting to realize -- that we live in a three dimensional world. Why
don't we learn inside of it? And this is where spatial computing
comes into play. But even deeper from that is how we respond as a
human and how we intake this information and what we do with it. So
maybe you can do a little bit of intro to yourself and how you got
into knowing more about spatial memory and the applications around
it.
Ben: Thank you. I started my
business in the late 90s, as the Internet -- as Web 1.0 -- became a
thing. And I've been developing all the way through the rise of
social and the rise of mobile. And so this new evolution that we're
seeing right now -- some call it Web 3, some call it the Fourth
Industrial Revolution -- where we're adding 3D to-- as a medium. And
it's more than just adding a Z-axis to content. The fact that we're
inside of an experience, when you put on a VR headset and you are
inside of a room and you have other people there that are also
avatars like you, the impression that that makes on your mind is a
remarkable difference to any other type of experience. And though 2D
communications platforms -- the video conferencing, and all of the
ways that we're used to doing it -- as high quality as it is, even
the lower fidelity early stage media that we're at inside of social
VR -- and just in general -- the medium of 3D has added so much to
the way that we perceive it, that I'm very excited about how that is
going to be part of our learning process, because when we see things
and we are in an area, it imprints our minds differently than it
would when we're just in 2D space.
Julie: Just to give our
listeners a little bit more premise, "spatial" obviously
means the things that are around you. And that's not just objects,
that's your environment and also sound as well. So maybe you can talk
a little bit more about your memory and how you take these things in,
and you remember them more. That's the big change now from learning
things in two dimensions and now learning about them and being a part
of them in that three dimensional world.
Ben: Part of it -- as you
introduced there -- is that it's the room around you, it's the
objects in the room. And very importantly, it's sound. And part of
spatial audio is the perception of being close to something or what
side it's on. And it's more than just a left-right traditional stereo
audio effect that we have. It's a positional audio. But when we are
sitting down or standing inside of a VR experience, there are several
different components to that. There is a horizon. There's a-- it's
called a "skybox" or the wall that surrounds the wrapper --
if you will -- of that environment. And then all of the 3D objects in
the environment, the way that you relate to things when you see
things in stereoscopic 3D, it has a much higher impact. And a great
example is the Traveling While Black stereoscopic 360 video
experience that is available on Oculus Quest. It was a documentary
that came out for the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, right after the
Green Book movie had been nominated for an Oscar. And this was the
story of the real Green Book. And what really I found incredibly
powerful was how the presence of the people that were surrounding
you. You're sitting in a booth in a diner and you're listening to
Tamir Rice's mother explain what happened the night he was killed.
And there are people sitting on the side and the interviewer sitting
right next to you. And you're there. And if you were just looking at
that through traditional monocular video, then it would be a pretty
traditional experience. But when you are in stereo and-- I think that
the most important thing about what makes a difference is how
relative to your own size it is. So you're looking at a person and
they look proportional to your size, they don't look huge, they don't
look small. They look like they're right there in front of you. It
affects you emotionally and it embeds the experience in you, so that
you have a better retention of what is going on. But it's more than
just a stereoscopic 3D experience, because that's what they call
three-degrees-of-freedom, where you can pitch, yaw and, roll your
head. You can turn your head and everything sort of stays in balance,
but you can't move within it. Now, in a spatial experience where you
have six degrees of freedom, you also add up, down, left, right, and
back and forth. And that is really powerful, because you can change
your perspective of the room. You are the camera. And so that freedom
of choice, to be able to observe something -- and you and I had been
part of the Educators In VR a couple of weeks ago -- and this was in
an avatar, but you can move around the room, and you're listening and
you're watching a presentation on the board, and it's just like you
are there. Even if you're a cartoon avatar, it still feels just like
you're there.
Julie: So with all of these
experiences in this, the immersion of basically touching on all of
the senses, you're hearing things, you're seeing things, you're
feeling things. This probably is a great segue way into a term that
you and I started talking about more at the Educators In VR -- and I
presented it as well in my talk -- was more about the humanics, about
humans in the way that they interact with the technology, and how
they continue to feel and be socially responsible to balance all of
these things, as well as the analytics and the data analytics that
come with engaging with all of these technologies. Touch a little bit
more on that subject in. How does the mind interact with being
immersed so much, being in a three dimensional experience?
Ben: One of my favorite personal
analogies to how that works is when you've never been to a place, you
imagine what that place is like and you can see pictures of that
place and more often than not, those pictures are in 2D. And you may
have been on a plane before, so you know what it's like to fly and
you can travel there. So you can sort of imagine that. But when you
actually do it and you get on a plane and you travel and you spend
some hours and you get off and you get on a train or a car and you go
to a place and you go around, it's like-- a perfect example was a
buddy and I, when we were in our early 20s, had a pact to go to
Stonehenge. Always wanted to go to Stonehenge. It was a bucket list
item from early in my life. And so we went to Stonehenge and this was
a long time ago now, but I can still spatially re-imagine that entire
trip, including being there at Stonehenge and seeing the rocks and
moving around them and seeing the landscape, and several years after
that time I went back and visited again, and they had built it out
more of a tourist center. And so the spatial memory of my first trip
to Stonehenge, where it wasn't all fenced off and it wasn't turned
into a tourist trap. Then when I went back and it had a visitor
center and a larger parking lot and everything, that is now-- I can--
if I were to go back to Stonehenge in my mind, that whole additional
aspect of moving through it is now part of that memory. So it's not
just a photograph to me. It's a part of my psyche now, because I
spatially moved around Stonehenge.
Julie: The way that the human mind works now is obviously really interesting. And I guess that's what you call a classical humanics. And you and I talked about the Robot-Proof book by Joseph Aoun. And learning a little bit more about humanics and the model of includes two dimensions, the content portion of it, and then the three literacies. But also about the cognitive capacity, of the way that you interpret your presence. And maybe talking a little bit about the cognitive capacities of what we experience in these three dimensional experiences now in virtual worlds. What kind of impact they have on us and how we interpret them.
Ben: With cognitive capacities. I felt that Aoun's four cognitive capacities reminded me of the way that STEM is very left brain heavy with science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and that it's-- at some point, somebody added an A to STEM and made it STEAM. And there is art. And so I find that art, as much as science, is a good representation of the balance of the human mind. Between art and your creative side on one hand -- which is emphasized as part of our humanics as a need -- as well as-- there are several different levels to science that are represented in the T-E-M of STEM. And so music and physical performance and all of these are very much a part of art as technology, engineering, and math is part of science. And so I think that keeping that in balance is very important. And when people earn degrees, they earn a Bachelor of Science or they earn a Master of Arts, or a Master of Fine Arts. But it's-- if you say the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, it's-- that is saying, "OK, here is a medium of art that includes arts and sciences" and that's sort of representative of that wholeness of the balance of the mind. And that's one of the things that really attracted me to the Aoun's concept of humanics as well as the humanities, where those are the liberal arts. And I think that the holistic thinking as part of education is very important, to be able to keep those parts of ourself in balance so that we can express ourself creatively. But all art underneath it, if you break it down, you'll find science and math, which allows you to make better art. So it's a full-- it's a continuum. And if we can feed that continuum as part of our education system, then we will do a better job of making whole students.
Julie: Couldn't agree more. with
the situation that is unfolding right now, with the pandemic and
school closures. I have an 11 and 15 year old at home now, and trying
to put program together for them to continue to be educated and
provide different methods of learning. One of the things I realized
yesterday, in my planning for them was to allow my kids to become
creative, which is something that the school systems have lacked in
the past and present. Yesterday, I allowed my kids to just be
creative and explore their creative minds, and it was everything from
baking a carrot loaf, to creating bracelets, to coloring, to
painting. And I think the STEM of creative design is in every single
one of us. But it's almost hidden. And as you say, with all of these
cognitive abilities-- capacities that we do have, being able to
balance the creative side with the technical is so important. Is
there anything else that I've just said that maybe you want to stem
off or engage further with regards to creative design thinking?
Because I think that's something that's missing a lot of our systems
today.
Ben: Well-- and design thinking is really the operative word there, because Aoun's humanics is-- it specifically mentions systems thinking, but it doesn't specifically mention design thinking. But if you combine the two of them together, then you have your arts and sciences right there. Take any creative software, take Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, or take Premier After Effects. Very powerful creative tools. If you are using that tool and you want to be very precise, what do you do? You go to the Inspector palette and you change a number. You could draw something and have that be by hand. And that will have its own sort of aspects to it that you created with your hand, with the imperfection of your hand, or even if you have a very talented and accurate hand, it's still a hand-drawn thing. But if you are taking out a polygon tool and you're saying, OK, well, here's a square, here's a hexagon. And then you want to bend it a precise amount, or warp at a precise amount, or scale it a precise amount, then you can just put in that exact number and you can align it to guides, and all of that precision is embedded in art. And to me, that's just a great metaphor for blending arts and sciences in a creative way. There are plenty of artistic things that you can do with data, and data may seem like a very dry-- it's a concept that-- some people don't even think that much about data. But the creativity in how you can structure data to have more meaning and how to analyze it isn't just STEM.
Julie: So we're almost at the
near end of our podcast. And I think this deserves a part two of
bridging the humanics into the classroom or into learning
opportunities. Before we do sign off from this podcast, I do know
that you and I are truly passionate on humanics and being able to
balance this out. So I hope you'll join me again for another
conversation on how everyone must balance their humanics, their
creative side, their management of their data, their technology, and
remain human through this transition of being in a hyper-connected
world. So I hope you'll agree to be on a second podcast and we can
can hear your conversation there.
Ben: It would be my pleasure.
Julie: Thanks so much, Ben.
Thanks for joining me today.
Ben: Thank you, Julie

PART 2 coming soon!
18 min
March 26, 2020 Giving Students the Steering Wheel in their XR Education, with ARVRinEDU’s Jaime Donally
For any learning to take place in the next few weeks, parents and educators are going to have to get creative in their teaching methods. Jaime Donally founded ARVRinEDU to help them find ways to introduce XR into their curriculum, and she tells Julie how right now is the perfect time to experiment.
Julie: Hello, my name is Julie
Smithson and I am your XR for Learning podcast host. Every podcast
session is meant to provide you with a value in micro-learning, about
the way technologies will change the way that we learn and we teach.
So today on my podcast, I have Jaime Donally, who is a passionate
technology enthusiast, and she began her career as a math teacher,
later moved into instructional technology. And her desire to build
relationships has brought about opportunities to collaborate with
students and educators around the world. She provides staff
development and training on immersive technologies as an ed-tech
consultant. And her latest adventures include the launch of Global
Maker Day and the ARVRinEDU community events and presentations. She
works as an author and speaker to provide practical use of augmented
and virtual reality in the classroom. Thanks for joining me today,
Jaime.
Jaime: Thank you so much. I'm
excited.
I'm excited to have this conversation,
too. And I think the discussion about education and learning,
obviously with the situation that we have going on in the world
today, everybody is pivoting their eyes to how do we learn online,
and the virtual collaboration that we can begin to have. But why
don't we start with what you're working on? Maybe do a little bit of
a presentation on your mission and your goals in the education space.
And let's teach somebody about XR for learning.
Julie: There is so much
happening. I feel like I've been sharing immersive technology for
several years now, really before people quite understood or knew what
it was. As time has transitioned and moved on, course it's become
more popular and people are more aware. And it certainly finally got
a stand in education, which has been an exciting journey. But really,
my goal in all of what I do is sharing from a practical lens, though
I don't get caught up into just the hype, but really looking at what
is this practically look like, what are the tools we should have in
our classrooms? Where is the money that should be spent? Where is the
time and value for our students? Where are those opportunities? A lot
of that discussion is coming from administrators, it could come from
teachers. And oftentimes people are making decisions based upon what
they see at a conference or an event. And then what's being marketed
-- of course -- are the things that are quite expensive. And so
they're taking a leap without actually thinking about what that means
for our classroom. So that is kind of where-- more of what I stand
and what I share on today is what does this mean for our classroom,
and what how should this really be used so that we can maximize the
usage, maximize the opportunity for our students, and maximize our
our money, our budgets to use it effectively.
Julie: So with the changing
times advising teachers on how to implement these strategies -- and
the XR strategy, shall we say -- into the classrooms. Maybe you can--
we'll give a little bit of instruction on how to implement into your
classrooms, but maybe we'll pivot that afterwards into what can
teachers do today in these situations, where kids are at home. So I
know that those are two very different conversations. So why don't
you present a little bit about the practical use? And if I was a
teacher, where would I start to begin to implement these technologies
into the classroom?
Jaime: Yeah, absolutely. So from
the beginning, I always get the question of what one tool do I need
to download? What does that one thing that everybody should be aware
of? And I can never answer that question, because that one tool or
that one thing looks different for everybody. Actually, my second
book -- that I'm getting ready to have go public here soon -- is
specifically about that, that every tool is going to look different.
So when it comes to practical, I always recommend before just jumping
in headfirst and spending $20,000 on a kit, to think about where your
students are struggling. Where do you need support? Why are you using
this technology? And if it's just for the wow factor, then you're
going to just get it for the wow factor. And that is short lived. But
if you're really purchasing something because you have a need and
your students have this area that they really struggle, then you're
really going to have the best approach on how you're going to go look
for those right resources. So on a practical sense, the best way to
get started is really one, knowing your kids, knowing their needs,
knowing their desires and wants and how they learn, then really
targeting and honing in on where their gaps are at, and what
traditional education has offered that is obviously not hit the mark
for those kids to make sense of that content using even technology.
But AR/VR really does offer something much different, a deeper
learning experience, a way for them to personalize that experience
for them. So we really could be starting off looking at where our
students are struggling, where we really need support and help to
present the material effectively. And I think more importantly, our
admin need to be aware that, before they go out and buy things, and
push it into the class, or not have discussions with everybody across
the board. I think another common problem is you have an excited
teacher, an excited administrator, and they want to bring it in. But
not everybody else is on board or there's been no collaboration, no
discussion. So your technology department isn't supporting what
technology you just purchased. And your teacher isn't ready to put
that in, because your curriculum hasn't allowed for that to be
brought into the classroom based upon their strict guidelines of what
needs to be presented every day. So until you really get everybody on
board, then you're going to run into a million blocks along the way,
if you're really just one person who's pushing that out. So I really
do believe the starting point is the collaboration. And then when you
are ready to make those purchases, you're making purchases based upon
the student's needs. And that's really the most practical way to get
started.
Julie: Can you give an example
of maybe school or institution that you've worked with that they have
found that practical use?
Jaime: Yeah. So I have worked
with a school out of New York. [Lake Shore Central School District's]
Michael Drezek is the instructional technologist that really was the
one seeing the vision of bringing in immersive technology. So they
brought me out on two different occasions, working with different
groups of teachers and kind of progressing them along. They see a
lot. And to some extent, I think all of us can relate to this as
teachers. "OK, what's next? I got to learn this next. And is
this really going to be something that we even keep around?" So
I absolutely understand the hesitancy that you often find --
especially in immersive tech -- that people think, "Do I really
need this?" But on their level, they really had a vision of how
to use it. So they spoke to the teachers. They were talking about
what the kids needed to create, what they needed to do. And their
goal was really student creation. And so the student creation
portion, they took a project that they did with codebases that just
blows my mind. They had a teacher and a couple folks from the
instructional technology team in the district come together and put
together the periodic table in a virtual setting. And then every
single element on the periodic table had it hyperlink to a new slide,
new page for that student then to create that element. They had to
visualize it. They had to explain it. They had an experience on every
single element. So their school -- I think -- has done a fantastic
job of essentially taking what they learned, and they took parts of
that of where they really needed to run with this. And then they
just-- they went crazy with it. Something I could have never done in
a single training. You know, something that they really have just in
that passion of student creation, and where our students can be, and
what they should be creating and making. They did a fantastic job and
they certainly hit on the standards where their students needed to
be, not just in consuming information, but obviously creating
content, demonstrating knowledge in a super unique way. And it was
collaborative, and they were able to share it globally, where other
people can come in and see. They've even presented it to their
parents, and parents were able then to go in and see what they've
created. So that's an example -- I think -- of somebody doing it
right. They brought in the training, they understood exactly what
their vision is and what they wanted to do with it. And then they
brought it back into the classroom, and the students were a part of
it. It wasn't put on a teacher's shoulders. It was a collaboration
across the board, across the district. And I think that they're
continuing to do amazing things because of it.
Julie: I think this is where
education really changes, and it's about getting the students
involved. And I've had a couple of conversations now that with this
situation, with the pandemic and students at home, parents now have
to be involved in their kid's education, and restructure their days
so that it's full of activities or things to do, and obviously the
leadership in to finding out what they're passionate about, so that
they can learn. And for the longest time, our education institutions
have not allowed that student creativity to take place. One of the
things that I took upon myself yesterday was -- and today, actually
-- I allowed my kids to just create; let them be creative and
discover what they like to do. And that'll obviously stem into XR
applications and technology applications of solving problems in the
world, that we hope that they will all do. But I think in the
classrooms, having the kids become part of the solution, and
discovering how they can also solve a problem and they can build out
resources that leads to their creativity. Maybe you can speak a
little bit more to how teachers approach this. Obviously there's a
different way of becoming more of a mentor to kids, as opposed to
being their-- stand in front of the classroom and be their teacher.
Jaime: Yeah, the perfect example
for me is Rachelle Dene Poth and her classroom, based out of
Pennsylvania. She is such a great example of saying, "I don't
know it all, but my students will. My students can run with this, and
I can give them an assignment and I can show the basics of how to get
started." And she said it really is unlimited when you give it
to them. When we limit them by what we want them to accomplish and
give them every detail of what they need to do, we get the basic, but
when we give it to them to own it and to show us what they're capable
of doing, we get projects and content that we would have never
envisioned is possible. And I think that's the powerful part. We
don't need to know everything. Teachers sometimes are afraid of this
technology, because they feel like they don't know all the answers.
But we don't need to know the answers. We just need to give it to our
kids, give them the opportunity, let them demonstrate what they're
capable of doing. And just from there, it really just empowers them
to take it to that next level. And that's what we need. You're
exactly right. It's a change, it's a shift in the way that we view
education as a whole, and certainly given them the opportunity to
take it, know it, and move it forward.
Julie: There's so many
conversations now about how the next generation has this massive
opportunity to learn whatever they want. And after the last couple of
days, the access to online classes, to learn how to dance, how to be
a cartoon drawer, how to learn about-- yesterday I took a class on
quantum computing. You can learn about self-driving cars. And through
this troubling time for us, the opportunities have just unleashed
themselves online, for both teachers and students. And maybe you can
shed a little bit of light on if you were a teacher, what to do right
now, in this time where maybe the schools are closed and opens up
that time to help teachers understand about all of these
technologies. Where we do direct a teacher to best use their time
over the next weeks, to engage themselves with this technology and
learn the most that they can about them?
Jaime: I've had several
conversations. I guess it's a little bit of frustration, too. My
husband is also a teacher. And just to kind of hear what educators
are going through to scramble, to make this work, I feel like I've
been sharing virtual connections in virtual reality for a long time.
And I feel like it's been dismissed for a long time. It's been,
"That's great and all. But we don't have time for that. We've
got to get ready for this exam." And now it's finally come to a
point, where admin aren't ready for this. They weren't ready for what
this could possibly bring. We'd never seen anything like this, to be
fair. And so with that being said, I think that there are many
opportunities to connect and collaborate online. When we talk about
coming into virtual spaces and having community there, some of my
very best friends were made through social media, and those social
media connections have become stronger and stronger, whereas people I
would work next to every day in office, I didn't maintain that kind
of relationship and friendship. So I think that there are some
powerful opportunities, and the way that we need to think about how
we connect should no longer-- I think every conference needs to take
this into perspective as well, because all of them are getting
canceled. But this should not just be a face-to-face or virtual. It
should be both. We need to offer both. And when one doesn't work and
the other one does, we go to that direction, but we need to be
prepared. And so some of the tools that I've shared, even just this
month I'm doing a 31 day of ARVRinEDU campaign, and every day I have
a blog going out. I shared Mozilla Hubs, where people can come in and
collaborate. It's a perfect opportunity for people to bring in their
students and create 3D content, and redesign spaces together, have
presentation slides up, drawing, taking selfies. It's a lot of fun,
but it also is a virtual classroom that we can have our students in.
Zoom is something I use almost every day. And I have done virtual
events with Global Maker Day for several years. And I did other
virtual events before Global Maker Day, where I'd host them
completely virtual, using multiple different platforms. I think that
there are a million different opportunities. And really, what it
boils down to is, were people really ready to jump into that? No. So
even Zoom, for instance, this is a platform that people have had
access to and maybe have used at some point, but it also looking at
the accessibility of how that works out for all of our students, not
all of them having access to the Internet. How do they join in? But
Zoom does a great [thing], where they allow you to join in by phone.
So even if you don't have the connection through Internet, you can
have a phone call in and still hear content, still hear people, still
connect and collaborate. So there's opportunities that go beyond
that. I do think that there's a lot of concerns for sure, but it
doesn't mean we shut everything down because not every single person.
Let's just open up a floodgate of resources, bring out Flipgrid,
bring out YouTube Live, bring out Facebook Live, bring it all out,
and bring out many opportunities and see where things happen for our
students and start seeing where they're gravitating towards, and meet
them where they're at and where they want to be at. And try to meet
as many different opportunities, if it has to be something where they
come and pick up a packet, well, that's one option. But don't make it
for all kids, because not all kids are online. Let's offer a
multitude of opportunities and just allow them to flourish in the way
that they're capable and able and excited to do.
Julie: I think that's great.
Maybe you can highlight some of the work and offerings of your
community, the ARVRinEDU community, which I know you've been working
on. And there's a website, and maybe we can wrap up with a little bit
of summary on how people can find you and the resources that you
offer, for both teachers and students.
Jaime: Yeah. The community is
incredible. Everything we're covering right now is beta testing, in
my opinion. I don't feel like anybody has any product set in stone
and perfectly defined and worked out. All of them, like any
technology is always going to change and be modified. We're going to
see new things coming out. And that's an exciting journey, as it
constantly changes. That might sound scary to some people, but they
don't need to know it all. They don't need to know everything. None
of us know it all. All of us are constantly learning. But to embrace
even just one or two things that really impact your students, I think
are powerful. And some of our tools really range from kindergartener
can hop on and create, all the way through our college students
coding and creating content. I think that it really offers a broad
range of different tools. ARVRinEDU was really started initially
because of discussions from-- I started a Twitter chat that started
over three years ago now, and I put it off for a good year because I
knew the commitment. But we meet every week on Wednesday night on
Twitter. And right now, because of the 31 days of ARVRinEDU with the
blog post coming out every day, there's constant content coming out
through that. So we're not doing the Twitter chat this month, but
remainder of the month, it's really just getting connected to people,
having people to ask questions, and to share and highlight what
you're doing. And everybody in the community has been so great,
because we're all in this kind of exciting beta testing journey
together. And then we're gonna find tools that don't hit the mark,
and sometimes have some things great. Some tools that are doing
amazing work, things that we've never even thought about before. And
so the spectrum of tools is enormous. But at the end of the day, it's
just really coming together to support one another. And yeah, Global
Maker Day is a whole different content. But yeah, for sure, on
arvrinedu.com, if you subscribe, you get those resources shared with
you pretty regularly and giving you opportunities of ways to connect.
Julie: Well, Jaime, I think
that's a great way to wrap up our session. And I would love to invite
you into another conversation in a few weeks from now, because
obviously our situation is changing. Maybe you and I can have another
conversation to provide further resources for all these educators out
there looking to transform their own knowledge. Looking into your
resources, you seem to have pretty much every grade covered. So thank
you so much for being on my podcast today. I really appreciate it.
Jaime: Absolutely. Thank you for
the honor of being here.
Julie: Thanks again, Jaime. I'm your host, Julie Smithson. This is the XR for Learning podcast.
20 min
March 22, 2020 Forecasting for Innovation Part 2 – The Execution Roadmap, with The Startup Station’s Victoria Yampolsky
Picking up where she left off, Victoria talks about how times like these can be either a bane or an unexpected boon for fledgling startups, and how to tell where you fit on that spectrum.
Listen to Part 1 here.
Julie: Hello, everyone, welcome back to the XR for Learning podcast. My name is Julie Smithson, I am your host, and today we have Part 2 with Victoria Yampolsky. We're talking about forecasting for innovation with the execution roadmap. Victoria is the founder and president of The Startup Station, an education and consulting company committed to helping founders be successful and get funded faster. She focuses on creating credible financials and valuations for early stage ventures. Welcome, Victoria.
Victoria: Thank you so much,
Julie. It's a pleasure for me to be back.
Julie: Yes. Thank you. And let's
continue our conversation. The first episode, we talked about
forecasting for innovation with the opportunity, and assessing what
opportunities are out there. We're right now in the first couple of
weeks of having this pandemic with the coronavirus. So some of our
conversations are obviously highlighted with the sensitivity of some
companies and businesses and startups which are affected in a
positive way, and in a negative way. And of course, assessing the
opportunities right now for each startup will be different. But we're
going to continue on with an execution roadmap. If your business is
one of the fortunate ones that is doing well during these times, what
kind of roadmap and execution path will you take? And maybe you can
continue the conversation from here on innovation, and how-to, and
the impact on revenues, costs, supply chain, and capital expenditures
and being able to budget for the unfortunate.
Victoria: For a startup, creating a financial model needs to be a lot more granular than for a more established entity, because you need to really model your activities to be able to evaluate which activities are working, and which activities are not. And here I'm specifically referring to go-to-market strategy. It's not enough when you're thinking about your revenues to just project the top line and say "I think I'm going to get the 10 percent user growth, or 10 percent client growth, etc." because it's not clear where that growth comes from. And when you begin modeling your go-to-market strategy, you are then going to be forced to determine the drivers that make that strategy happen. And then those drivers are the ones that you can change to test the sensitivity of your business model and sensitivity to your business to various scenarios, such as the coronavirus. So when it comes to AR/VR, there are only two types of customers to which you can sell. You can sell directly to the consumer, in which case you employ a variety of marketing strategies: digital marketing, social media marketing. You may go and make podcasts such as this one, you may employ influencers, radio advertising, etc. Or you may sell to enterprises and that usually employs a sales force. Each of those strategies have assumptions associated with them. One of them is a budget. Budget is a discretionary assumption that every company can decide on. And in these times, that is a decision that your company should make, whether you want to increase or decrease your marketing budgets, depending on how aggressive you want to be or more cautious you want to be, in conjunction with your company's strategy and also how you're going to allocate that budget across the marketing strategies. Now, how do you decide whether your budget should be increased or decreased? I think you need to think about who your customers are, and whether they are affected by that outbreak, whether their economic situation is affected. If they're not as affected, there is no reason for you to change your marketing spend or in fact, maybe that's a reason for you to increase it and try to capture more market share. If your customers are the ones really affected by the outbreak, then it doesn't make sense for you to spend that marketing money that will be wasted. Then you should go more in the brand awareness mode, to make sure that your customers don't forget you. And when the situation improves, come back with the vengeance. Now, when you're thinking about the sales force, the question about the customers remains the same. And here the important criteria are the length of the sales cycle. And so the sales cycles, if your customers are affected, it may increase the conversion rates of leads, to close deals may decrease, and also the value of which contract may decrease as well. So how do you plan for that? I always recommend the low, medium and high scenario. That's something that I already mentioned in the first podcast. So you plan for the conservative scenario, the worst scenario, and the optimistic scenario. And then you'll look at how your business is going to do. I recommend highly to pay special attention to cash. Cash is not the same thing as income. Income has some items on the income statement that are not cash-based. Sometimes you book revenue before you get it, especially if you extend credit to customers. So income doesn't give you a full picture of how much actual runway your business has. And so cash flow statement, I think at this time, is the most important one to pay attention to and really make sure that your cash balance does not fall below the minimum, whatever that minimum is -- whether it's a three month runway or a six month runway -- and if you're starting to approach that, you need to start thinking aggressively about your financing options. So A) how can you cut costs before you get to the point where you have no money in the bank? Far in advance. We're also thinking about some of the debt options or equity options available to you, going to your existing investors and asking them for a little bit more breathing room as you weather this situation.
Julie: Excellent advice. Thank
you, Victoria. One of the things that I did want to touch base on was
dealing with potential investors. And of course, with the situation
that we do have right now, maybe you can highlight the preparedness
that you need to have as a startup to present to investors. And
coming back to our industry, there's-- we're moving to online and
virtual meetings and that sort of thing. So there's a lot of great
opportunities right now. Maybe you can shed some light on, if there
are startups out there that are dealing with or presenting to
potential investors, what kind of approach to take right now with
regards to finances and being -- I guess -- encouraged by the
potential of our particular market.
Victoria: So AR/VR is obviously in a great situation, because I've looked at some data yesterday, and in 2017 the size of the market was predicted to be -- by Goldman-Sachs -- $95-billion. And then 2019, Allied Market Research predicted it to be by 2025 $571.4-billion. That's almost a six times difference. Oh, it's actually more than a six times difference. And so this is just an indicative of the speed of innovation. How fast things can change just in two years. So these are good things. So investors are obviously looking for high growth companies. The two month blip is nothing. I think investors that are investing in emerging technologies in early stage startups, they have an appetite for risk. I think they're incentivized not to let those companies fail just because of something that's a force majeure situation -- such as this one -- if there is a high potential of success in the future. So I think the important part here is to be very clear on what your execution plan is around the virus, kind of thinking through all of the issues that I've been talking before. And if you need to ask investors for money, to be very clear what that money is going to be for and potentially just cast some early liquidation options, where they may be able to get that money back sooner, and that will be more like an emergency loan as opposed to additional equity investment. Or maybe it will for them some additional sweeteners, as a thank you for helping you in the difficult times. Now, from the existing investor's point of view, it is better for them to give you a little bit the money to weather that downturn than to lose their investment in your company entirely. And so as long as they know that you have a strong execution plan and as long as there is a demand for your product, it is clear what the product development timeline is. You have a clear go-to-market strategy. That is traditionally very weak point for all startups. I think that you should be in good shape to survive this. I think from the technology startups are in much better shape than a lot of businesses that depend on people actually interacting with each other.
Julie: What advice would you
give to startups right now, during this time?
Victoria: Like I've mentioned in
my first podcast, I recommend that startups take this time to assess
their near-term and long-term strategy. They have a little bit more
breathing room because some of the activities are curtailed, and this
is a great time to take a deep look at their business, to think about
their vision, to think about the overall roadmap of how they're going
to get there. It's so easy to get lost in the day-to-day activities
and kind of forget the bigger picture and not see some of the trends
that are happening that can help your business or vice versa, present
a threat to your business. And so I'm not talking about the pandemic.
I'm talking about other business trends or emerging technologies, so
competition, et cetera. And so this is the time to really think about
that, and think about things creatively. Think about innovation.
Think about what change you're trying to make in the world. Think
about what strategic partnerships you can establish, who you can talk
to, who you can bring on board as an advisor or in a board of
directors, who can really help you propel your business forward. It's
very rare that business owners have this time of reprieve. And I
recommend not to get stressed out, because that's not going to help
anybody, but instead come together, come together as teams, come
together as co-founders and really think about how to make a
difference, and how to make whatever you're creating really change
the world.
Julie: I think that's a great
way to end off our podcast, Victoria. Thank you so much. I think that
there's a lot of really nerve wracking times right now, but it's a
great opportunity for many business owners to take that step back,
take a look at your business, take a look at your customers, and the
position that you're in, and plan forward for this time of
innovation, and a bit of uncertainty, and putting those emergency
plans into place so that you survive through these times and your
business survives through these times, and everybody comes out on the
other end better for it. So thank you so much, Victoria, for joining
me today. Why don't we close off with how do people get a hold of you
and join The Startup Station with you?
Victoria: Absolutely. So the website of The Startup Station is www.thestartupstation.com. Every Thursday, 12:00 PM to 1:30 PM Eastern Time, I host virtual office hours for any entrepreneur to come ask me any questions about fundraising, financial modelling, forecasting, dealing with investors, etc. You can find a link on my homepage of how to register for those office hours, as well as on my social media. And if you'd like, if you're in the process of fundraising, if you join my mailing list, you will get a startup investor search guide, which has 26 resources for different databases and different links to a database of accelerators, a database of funds that invest in women founders, etc. And so that's a great resource for somebody who is just beginning on their fundraising journey, to get a sense of what's out there, and what avenues are available to you to raise capital.
Julie: That's great. Thank you
so much, Victoria, for being on our XR for Learning podcast today.
Victoria: It's my pleasure.
Thank you for having me, Julie.
14 min
March 19, 2020 Forecasting for Innovation Part 1 - Preparing for the Worst, with The Startup Station’s Victoria Yampolsky
One of the first hurdles any organization must leap in the adoption of new technology is funding it. In this special two-part episode, Julie chats with The Startup Station founder Victoria Yampolsky about how to plan your budget, for the best and worst-case scenarios.
Julie: Hello, my name is Julie
Smithson and I am your XR for Learning podcast host. Join us today
with our next guest, Victoria Yampolsky. Victoria is the founder and
president of The Startup Station, an educational and consulting
company committed to help founders be successful and get funded
faster. She focuses on the creative, credible financials and
valuations for early-stage ventures. Specifically she's helped
entrepreneurs master the necessary finance skills, so that they
correctly translate their business plan into a financial plan,
evaluate the financial feasibility of different initiatives, and
credibly present their companies to investors, and use their
financial model to drive the business forward. Thanks so much for
joining me, Victoria.
Victoria: Thank you very much
for inviting me, Julie. It's a pleasure to be here.
Julie: Our topic today is going
to be a little bit different. We're gonna talk about budgeting, and
finances, and starting up a business, and being able to budget for
innovation, which is something that not many people understand, what
the implications of technologies and the advancements of impacts they
have on businesses. So maybe you can tell me a little bit more about
your company, and the approach that you started to take and the
demand and need for your services.
Victoria: So I started my
company in 2013, after I was an entrepreneur myself. And then I began
advising the company and I saw a huge need for business and financial
expertise in the startup world. My first venture was in media and
entertainment. And it was pretty clear that a lot of filmmakers were
extremely passionate about the projects that they were making, and
they put very little thought into thinking how they going to monetize
it, how they're going to bring their projects to market. And when I
began advising my first non media and entertainment company, I
realized that the same problem persisted in the startup community as
well. There were a lot of brilliant entrepreneurs who wanted to
propel innovation, who wanted to change the world, who wanted to
disrupt industries that were not working efficiently, who wanted to
solve problems that were not being sold or sold not in the best way.
And they were coming up with solutions, but they didn't yet think
through how to make those solutions into businesses, how to bring
those solutions to market, how to reach mass adoption. And so that
brought me to a starting the Startup Station, where I help
entrepreneurs think through those roadmaps, make sure that the plans
that they put together are financially feasible, how to put together
those baselines which help them to evaluate if their strategy is
working, if their plans for bringing the product to market are
efficient and react faster to market feedback, to conserve capital
and to also be successful.
Julie: Are you working with any
startup companies that are dealing with XR technologies like virtual
reality, or augmented reality, or artificial intelligence right now?
Victoria: So none of those
technologies are one of my clients right now, but I have talked over
a thousand founders, because in addition to consulting one-to-one, I
also teach entrepreneurs, and I teach them how to evaluate those
business plans and put together those financials in their own. And
out of those students I did teach a few XR companies.
Julie: So I think that the
introduction of all of these technologies into a business where one
day, we have brand new hardware release or a software update and
massive changes in the company need to take place. What is your first
piece of advice that you give to these companies, to prepare for
these massive changes and unexpected changes which equals innovation?
Victoria: Right. So I think on
the technology integration side, I think you need to have-- if you're
going to adopt a new technology such as XR/VR -- which comes with a
lot of uncertainty, which comes with a lot of changes -- you need to
have great technical people on the team, who not only understand the
implications of any changes that may happen in those technologies,
but also understand the implications of what those changes mean for
your organization. And so I would suggest, just like in financial
modeling -- where we do a low, medium and high case scenarios -- that
those technical people, when they begin adopting technologies, they
think through scenarios of what may happen if some changes are
effected, whether it's going to be change to their platform, whether
it's going to be change to hardware, whether it's going to be the
change to software, what kind of change it's going to be, and how
their organization should react, and what is going to be the
financial cost, and what's going to be the labor cost, and what's
going to be the time cost. And so if you go through this preparatory
work as you are adopting those technologies -- or even before -- then
you're a lot more prepared for whatever changes may come your way.
Julie: Yeah, I think it's
obviously very important to have the right team when you've got your
startup, and a team that understands the implications of the future.
And obviously having a futurist who can forecast the technologies
that are coming in and are being adopted. And I've read a few things
with regards to what technologies are coming in. There's a futurist
by the name of Matthew Griffin, and he created a technology reel that
shows over 440 different technologies before 2070, which is obviously
very far out. But the number of technologies in that great of mass,
it's overwhelming to to be prepared for all of these things and how
they're going to be implemented into the business, and be prepared
for how it will impact the business. Maybe you can talk a little bit
about the strategy itself, and how to prepare even right down to the
statement of work and in the financial forecasting. I know in some of
our projects we have a contingency plan buffer built into our
finances. Now, maybe that's something else that you can kind of speak
to, on what kind of advice do you provide with that strategy to
protect yourself, to adopt and take on these different technologies?
Victoria: Sure. So let's begin
with assessing new technologies. So as I was thinking about this
podcast, I thought that that's a really good idea. And I think a lot
of companies are doing it already, to create kind of a think tank
inside your company that is going to monitor all the emerging
technologies and performing that futuristic work. Now, they don't
need to necessarily come up with all the 440 technologies. And there
are people -- like you mentioned, Matthew Griffin -- who is doing
that. But it is extremely important to stay on top of what's going
on. And then do the following work, in terms of assessing what that
means for your organization. And that work is to A) figure out what
is the minimum commercial viability of any new technology, and that
technology needs to achieve in order to be appropriate for your
organization. And then try to put some sort of a timeline of when
that may happen. Now, that part is incredibly difficult because of
the speed with which technology innovation happens. And so whatever
timeline they may come up with needs to be revised aggressively as
new information becomes available, or even halved as soon as they
come up with a new timeline. And then they need to consider -- once
they determine the minimum commercial viability of new technology --
then they need to think, "Well, is this even a good technology
for us? What problem will it solve?" And this is very similar to
anything that a new startup when they coming up with a new idea. The
question that they need to answer. "What problem am I solving?
Why am I creating this new technology?" For any organization
that is going to adopt the new technology. What problem will this
technology solve? What is the gap in the market that is not currently
addressed? What can I do better? Because a lot of these technologies
actually have an impact on the bottom line, rather than the top line.
And so once they figure out that question and you sort of begin to
understand the impact, they then move on to understanding how much
it's going to cost them to implement those technologies. And there,
they have three options. They have the option to develop that
technology themselves, using whatever information is available at the
moment. They have the option to start an accelerator. Which is a lot
of organizations are doing and propel innovation by inviting
companies who are already working in those technologies into that
accelerator, and then investing into most promising candidates. They
have the option to license the technology from somebody who has
developed it up to the minimum viability level they determine, or
acquire a company. So these are the four options that any
organization has. And how will they choose which option is the most
viable for them, that's a question of the size of the opportunity.
How big a problem will they be able to solve if this technology is
adopted? How big a competitive advantage will they be able to get if
they're going to be the first mover into the market with that
technology, or the second mover or whatever? And then the cost. Some
technologies are extremely expensive to create. And that was the
issue with AR/VR for a few years. And now, of course, with the 5G,
it's becoming-- some of the problems are going to be resolved sooner.
And because the cost of the hardware is coming down as well. So when
you have those issues, the cost component is extremely important. And
so some companies cannot even consider the option of developing
something in-house, because of the price tag. And they're kind of
stuck with the option of either licensing technology, or waiting
until later, and acquiring a candidate outright. And so the cost can
come in three ways. First, the cost of the technology,y whether it's
the development costs or licensing costs. Then it's integration costs
into the current systems. So how will this technology going to work
with whatever systems already in place? And finally, the maintenance
cost. Now that we understand all of these components, I want to talk
a little bit about contingency. Contingency is extremely important in
all of their financial planning, because it accounts for the unknown.
As much as we like to think that we can project the future, even if
we have a lot of information with a high degree of accuracy, things
come up even for companies that are publicly traded. They only give
guidance in their financial performance for three months. Why?
Because even for them -- and they have so much more information than
any startup, so much more information than any company beginning to
adopt new technology -- even they face uncertainty. Like the
coronavirus. A lot of businesses couldn't possibly predict. Starting
in January 2020, when they were given guidance for this year, that
that's going to happen, it's going to be such a huge disruption to
their businesses. Now, for some businesses, this is actually a
positive for those businesses that exist remotely, for those
businesses that promote human interaction, et cetera. And for some
businesses such as small restaurants and travel industry etc., this
is really big a hit, as this pandemic continues. It's not always
possible even for large businesses to make predictions. For smaller
businesses, it's even harder. And so contingency gives you this
breathing room to plan for that. Now, how big a contingency should
be? I recommend that it's 10 to 20 percent of your budget. If you
think that this is too low, and you need to have a 50 percent
contingency, this means you haven't really thought through your
costs. You don't really understand your business. What do you do
then? What do you do if you are completely unsure? You first look at
comparable projects, or budgets, or companies. You go to technical
people and you ask them to give you their low, medium and high
estimates of what certain things can take. And then if you're feeling
very insecure, you only take the high estimates and then you add on
the 20 percent contingency on top of that. But I recommend against a
contingency higher than, let's say, 30 percent, because that would
mean that you don't really understand what your cost structure is.
And this is a better position to be in, as a startup or as a bigger
organization.
Julie: I think that's a great
topic right now, is the contingency plan. And to understand your
input on the percentage, too. Because people don't necessarily know
how much breathing room do we need and it's such an unpredictable
market, is innovation. And even before the pandemic kind of started
right now, it's-- we were playing a guessing game every day with our
industry, just to see what was going to come out new, and what was
going to change that would affect current developments or future
ones. I'd like to go back to the conversation of this pandemic that
we're going through the coronavirus. And obviously, there are a lot
of unpredictable measures being taken now, and forecasting with
businesses that have never-- well, none of us have ever faced
anything like this. And as you said, there are certainly some
businesses that will thrive over others during this time, and
enterprise is not exempt from being hit with the changes and the
unpredictable markets right now. Even the stock market plunging, and
that sort of thing. So coming back to our startups, and I know we're
going to have a part 2 series of this, but maybe you can tie this
this episode off with if you're a startup today, what would your
advice be on taking a look -- based on our current situation -- on
how to think about the next couple of months? Do you have any advice
for startups out there?
Victoria: Well, depending-- I
think technology startups -- this is an AR/VR podcast -- I think
they're in a much better situation, because everybody is able to work
remotely. And I think this is really the time for people to also set
aside a little bit of time to think about the company's long-term
strategy, to think about innovation, to think where they can go. Now
that they're at home, and they're at least saving time in the
commute. And then they're in a -- I guess -- safer environment,
rather than being around other people and may be distracted by things
that are going on in an office. And so I think that this is a time
for reflection. That's number one. This is also time for some
companies to reassess their planning for situations like that,
because some companies that have been more prudent in their financial
discipline and their financial planning will fare better than those
that have not. And specifically, technology companies, those
companies that have high fixed costs, they are-- if their ratings go
down, are susceptible to an economic downturn, rather than those that
have a high variable costs, variable costs are those that change with
the level of sales. So I think from a working perspective, I don't
think that technology companies are very much affected by the current
innovators. However, if the economy becomes affected, then everybody
is going to feel an impact. The net impact is going to last for much
more than those two months. And then it would be very wise to spend
these two months to plan for what's there, to calm and to really
prepare for a variety of scenarios, and be a lot more aggressive
potentially with how do you convert customers in the sales tactics
and the products. Potentially consider slowing down the product
development timeline, so that you conserve costs and be able to
prolong your runway, if you're not generating revenue yet.
Julie: That's great. And I'd like to thank my guest, Victoria Yampolsky. Please join us for part 2 on forecasting for innovation and the execution roadmap.
Check out Part 2 this Saturday.
18 min

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