XR for Learning

XR for Learning

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XR for Learning episodes

  • Putting the Power of VR in the Teacher's Hand, with Grove Learning's Sean Strong

    As today's guest, Grove Learning CEO Sean Strong, says: just because something's cutting-edge, doesn't mean it has to be a pain to use. That's the philosophy behind his company, which aims to make introducing VR into a classroom easy and efficient. 

    Julie: Hello, my name is Julie

    Smithson, and I am your XR for Learning podcast host. Today on our
    podcast is Sean Strong. Sean is the CEO and co-founder of Grove
    Learning. Grove Learning is working to make VR more accessible and
    effective for educators worldwide. Sean studied artificial
    intelligence at Stanford University, worked at Apple and EdTech, and
    has taught over 100 students how to code. Welcome, Sean. How are you?

    Sean: Hi, Julie. Thank you so

    much for having me. I'm doing well.

    Julie: Great. Why don't you

    highlight a little bit about yourself and Grove Learning, and the
    mission that Grove Learning is bringing to education and learning?

    Sean: Yep. As you mentioned, we

    are Grove Learning. We're a management platform for Oculus Quest and
    Go, specifically engineered for the classroom. We originally built VR
    experiences. We created a math game called Space Gerbil and we kind
    of realized in that process that actually bringing that to schools
    was very challenging, and that for your average teacher -- who might
    not be savvy with technology -- VR can actually be very hard to use.
    And so for us, we kind of started Grove Learning with this mission to
    really make VR simple for educators.

    Julie: That's awesome. I know

    that you started off -- as you mentioned -- creating the content for
    a library to be used, I guess. And then you kind of had to take that
    step back -- as you said -- to ensure that the teachers had a system
    that they could use, that was easy to deploy in the classroom
    setting. And maybe you can talk a little bit about the features of
    your platform, and why it's so easy for teachers to pick up and use
    for themselves.

    Sean: Yeah. The core features

    that we provided Grove Learning are just the things that teachers
    kind of wish they had without Grove Learning. And so what does that
    look like? That looks like you can start any experience remotely kind
    of from a dashboard, right? So if I have 20 students in my class, I
    can send them all to Julie's app, and they'll all start at the same
    time, synchronized. That being said, sometimes students really enjoy
    VR and they get a bit carried away, and it can be hard to get your
    students attention back. So sometimes you just want to pause, right?
    And with Grove Learning, you can just pause all the experiences and
    kind of regain control of your classroom. We allow you to group
    different students and so you can have five different students doing
    experience A and five other students doing Experience B. We kind of
    give you that granular control. So on one hand, we kind of allow the
    teacher to be in charge of the experiences on the headset. On the
    other hand, we tell them what exactly is going on, right? And so we
    can tell them what application a student is currently in. We can
    actually provide full video streams of all the headsets in a
    classroom. And so you-- can we call it card view. You can think of it
    as a kind of CCTV view, where you can see all the different devices
    and what students are actually looking at in real time, which can
    help teachers kind of know what's going on. Because otherwise the
    status quo is, teachers generally just kind of lean down and listen
    to headsets. And for us, we just found that listening wasn't an
    effective enough management tool to really make VR practical in
    classrooms.

    Julie: So when-- if I'm a

    teacher and obviously I need to have a little bit of curation and
    knowledge based on what experiences to use in my classroom, there
    obviously needs to be a little bit of analysis on, you know, which
    student would do better in experiencing something than another
    student. And there's a lot of conversation now about teachers and
    their ability to evaluate the students and provide an individualized
    learning experience. Maybe you can talk a little bit about how do the
    teachers decide, or how does Grove Learning help teachers decide
    which content to distribute to which students?

    Sean: Yeah. And so I think from

    our perspective, we really want to empower teachers. And so the way
    that we view our platform is kind of an extension of the teacher. And
    so we actually don't take any real stance on how a teacher should run
    their class and how they should curate. Generally speaking, the
    teachers who we've worked with in the past have a pretty good idea in
    terms of what content they want to feature. The problem is that when
    they try to actually run that content, they just end up wasting a lot
    of time. And they don't-- they're not actually successful with it.
    And so I think individualized learning and-- I mean, I studied
    artificial intelligence, so there are a lot of interesting things
    there. But I think for us fundamentally, teachers have done the same
    thing for laptops, they did the same thing for iPads. And for us,
    it's-- we believe that at this point, teachers are by far the best
    arbiters of what actually is effective teaching. And we just really
    want to give them that granular control over the devices, so they can
    do what they think is best.

    Julie: Maybe you can speak to a

    little bit more about the setup. From what I experienced on your
    website -- which is grovelearning.com -- it seems simple. It's very--
    it's laid out very easy to read. But how simple is it?

    Sean: For us, one of the key

    value adds for us is that setup time. And so if you look at, again,
    the classroom with 20 to 30 VR headsets: to get everyone up and
    running for the first time can often take anywhere from 10 to 20
    minutes. It can take a long time, actually, when students aren't
    familiar with VR, they're not sure what's going on. And we can bring
    that generally down to about five minutes. And for experienced
    classrooms, it's even less. And so for the repeat user the setup is
    very simple, you can just turn on the headset and it'll instantly
    launch the experience that you want. And it'll also lock you into
    that experience. And so if the student tried to exit and let's say
    they wanted to watch last week's soccer game, they wouldn't be able
    to, because with our software, we can kind of walk a student into a
    particular experience. And we can make sure that that's done on boot,
    so right when you turn on the device or wake it from sleep. And all
    of these kind of small things add up to just saving teachers time in
    the long run. The initial actual setup on the device -- so loading
    the software -- can take take a bit of time, but we generally do that
    over a phone call and we're there to help through that. For us, we
    really find our value add in that repeat usage, when you're using it
    every week or every day and you get to save those 10 minutes every
    single time you're on a class.

    Julie: I think that one part--

    the part where you say 20 minutes down to five minutes launch time, I
    think that's a real clear ROI for teachers to understand how
    impactful this technology can be, and breaking down that barrier that
    many teachers probably have a fear of. "How am I going to launch
    20 headsets all at the same time and and be able to do that?"
    Maybe you can speak to any technical assist that you provide, or your
    suggestions to the teachers or schools to make sure that they have
    the tech help that they need to launch this. And then I'd like to go
    into the conversation of hardware and not management.

    Sean: And so the way that we

    kind of view our software is really we can just empower teachers
    directly. And so, we have technology integrators that we're working
    with. We have teachers who just reach out, explaining their tough
    management problem. In terms of technical support, we're pretty
    responsive there and we try to help people out. But I think our
    philosophy with it is that interface should be so intuitive, that a
    teacher doesn't really need training. You can kind of just figure it
    out, where if you click on a device, you click "launch" and
    it kind of just happens. And so for us, our design threshold is we
    want a user who's actually never used to VR before to be able to run
    a classroom with VR. And just because the technology is cutting edge
    -- the Oculus Quest is amazing -- that doesn't mean that managing it
    has to be so technically complex, as well. That actually can be quite
    simple if given the right interface, then kind of layers of
    abstraction.

    Julie: That's awesome. I think

    that [chuckles] even just having this conversation relieves that
    stress of being overwhelmed as a teacher, and having to deploy
    something that may not even take as long as it takes to set up. And
    it needs to have that usability and functionality in the application
    to be able to deploy so easy.

    Sean: Exactly. Just because

    something's cutting edge, doesn't mean it needs to be painful.

    Julie: Right. Maybe you can talk

    a little bit more about the hardware. I know that your application
    works right now with the Oculus Go and with the Oculus Quest, which
    both fantastic pieces of hardware that bring anything to life. But
    maybe you can talk a little bit about the approach to how you advise
    hardware purchase and management within the classroom as well.

    Sean: Yeah. So, I mean,

    generally speaking, schools can go about different ways of obtaining
    the hardware. Some schools have grants, other schools have kind of
    tech budgets that they can spend. We also work with universities and
    other kinds of players. And so actually obtaining the headsets, we
    don't really take a strong stance there. Generally speaking, I think
    people end up getting the headsets off of Amazon. But it's up to the
    individual. For us, we kind of step into the equation once they've
    made that decision they want VR, and actually they've already
    purchased some headsets, and now they've run their first class and
    they've realized that they're spending a lot of time on this kind of
    management question. I think that that's kind of where we step into
    the equation. Before that, Julie, I don't know if we have a strong
    opinion either way. Just honestly, whatever makes the most sense for
    the school is generally what we recommend.

    Julie: The fact that it seems so

    easy -- again -- it's just-- it's something that I'm not even used to
    in our conversations, because we have so many situations around the
    world that are not adopting this technology as quick as we wish they
    were. And things are changing, obviously. I would love to jump back
    into Math Gerbil -- one of your content games -- and maybe you can
    tell us a little bit about that game and the gamification behind it.
    My personal view is that gamification is obviously part of the
    analytics that go into educating a student, and then recording back
    what they've done or achieved is analyzed into that personalized
    learning situation. So maybe you can talk a little bit about your
    team and how you approach some of this content and the gamification
    behind it.

    Sean: I guess. To explain the

    full premise of Space Gerbil is a pretty complex endeavor, so I'll
    try to simplify it, but-- which is part of the reason why we realized
    it wouldn't work in schools. But what we found was, it was kind of a
    multiplayer VR game, where some students were outside of VR and some
    students were in VR, and the entire premise was around getting this
    space gerbil home to the rocket ship, and you'd use math functions to
    get them there. I think what we realized in that development process
    was we actually weren't sort of factoring in analytics, we were very
    basic about it when we were building it. So we just didn't really
    factor in teacher perspectives enough. We didn't really think about
    what does this look like on the ground of an actual classroom with an
    actual teacher leading this with actual students. I think for us, we
    were kind of in our-- because again, our background is all very
    technical. And so we were thinking about "Wow, we can do all
    this on the headset, and the connection between the phones and the
    headset." And we just didn't really take a ton of time to look
    at, "Okay, what does this actually look like in the classroom?"
    And when you actually look at how it gets implemented in the
    classroom, you realize that there are these just other problems --
    like management -- that need to be solved first if you're going to
    have widespread adoption.

    Julie: Yeah, absolutely.

    Absolutely. So let's go back and talk about multiplayer games then. I
    think that's where really the future of entertainment, obviously a
    lot of people agree the same thing. Future of entertainment, but also
    being in the classroom and having that multiplayer experience. Does
    your Grove Learning application host multiplayer experiences? Is that
    an example -- the Math Gerbil -- that you can do that?

    Sean: Yeah. So, in terms of

    multiplayer experiences; bluntly, right now, Julie, we-- there are
    actually a lot of really compelling single player games on the Oculus
    -- or in other areas -- that individuals use pretty successfully in
    classroom contexts. I think I would agree with you that in the long
    run, these multiplayer games make the most sense. I can tell you from
    a development perspective, it's quite challenging to build a
    multiplayer game. And then especially for education, because now
    you're dealing with student accounts. And again, just think about the
    management question. If you have 20 students in a class, does
    everyone then spend a couple of minutes logging in in VR? And then
    once they've logged in in VR, you hope that they entered in the right
    username and password and then they join. And then a lot of schools
    have bandwidth problems, so what happens if one of the students
    disconnects? And so for us -- again -- it's an incredibly exciting
    space. And we just found -- in terms of our existing usage - that
    most of it is actually surrounding with single player applications,
    which is different than what we thought initially. Our initial
    thought building Space Gerbil was "Oh no, multiplayer is a
    feature." I think it is, but it just needs to be done in an
    intelligent way, that -- again -- is sort of class-centric.

    Julie: It's so interesting to

    hear your perspective of somebody who is developing something for the
    classroom, but with all of these different approach tactics, which
    makes things-- broken things down a little bit further, obviously,
    and from your perspective, to tackle these barriers and challenges of
    dealing with classrooms and teachers, and that sort of thing. So
    that's-- it's great that your team has pulled this together. And I'm
    really excited for Grove Learning. Is there anything else that you'd
    like to share about Grove Learning, or how to first approach Grove
    Learning, or introduce Grove Learning into their own education
    systems as a possibility of using as their management tool?

    Sean: Yeah, I mean, if you're at

    all excited about Grove Learning, I'd recommend you go to
    grovelearning.com. Just read through our site. If it seems exciting,
    it's pretty easy to create an account, it's pretty easy to put a call
    with us. And then over the call, if you have a device, we can just
    set it up and get you managed in 15 to 30 minutes. And once you see
    what it does, then you can see if it makes sense for your specific
    use case. And again, we don't want to force anyone to use our tool.
    It's really just trying to find those use cases where we can save
    teachers that precious time. Because for us, if you save 10 minutes
    of class time, it's not only 10 minutes of teacher time, but if you
    have 30 students in that class, you just saved 300 minutes of student
    time. That's five hours. And so for us, that's kind of where we drive
    our purpose, is how do we make this amazing technology with VR
    accessible for schools? But how do you also make it efficient and how
    do you also allow teachers to -- again -- do what they do best? And I
    mean, a lot of teachers here in the United States -- at least the
    master's degrees -- there's a lot of training that goes into that
    role, in order to do it well. And for us, it's just allowing teachers
    to really rock back, and do what they do best, and not have to worry
    about these kind of simple problems that can be solved with software.

    Julie: Well, with that, I think

    that's a great way to end our podcast. Thank you so much, Sean, for
    joining me on the XR for Learning podcast today.

    Sean: Thank you so much, Julie.

    I hope we have another one.

    17 min
  • XR for Learning Course: Adopting AR for K-12

    In this episode of XR for Learning, Julie discusses how technologies like augmented reality will be crucial for educating kids from Kindergarten to High School, to prepare them for their future roles in a post-XR workforce.

    12 min
  • Using GEMBA to Help Adopt VR in Enterprise, with The Learning Network's Dominic Deane

    For a lot of us, we think learning ends when our working life begins. But not only is that untrue; being able to learn new skills for our careers is only going to become more important. Dominic Deane drops in to talk about how GEMBA is helping with that.

    Julie: Hello, my name is Julie

    Smithson and I am your host for the XR for Learning podcast. Today on
    my show is Dominic Deane from the Leadership Network. Dominic has
    been building immersive technology companies since his second year of
    university, founding Chronicles VR, a premium virtual reality studio,
    and taking on consultancy work with some of UK's largest cultural
    institutions, including the British Museum, English Heritage and the
    BBC. Joining the Leadership Network in 2017, Dominic has led the
    creation and positioning of GEMBA, the Leadership Network new virtual
    reality offering since joining the Leadership Network. Dominic
    created a new division responsible for the Virtual Reality Learning
    Platform for Business Transformation, creating and delivering GEMBA
    to Fortune 2000 customers around the world. Welcome, Dominic.

    Dominic: Oh, thank you very much

    Julie. Pleasure to meet you. Thank you so much for putting me on.

    Julie: Thanks so much. Why don't

    you give me a little bit of an overview of the Leadership Network,
    the parent company who has produced GEMBA, and how you're making
    GEMBA part of the learning strategy for many of these companies that
    you deal with?

    Dominic: Sure. So the Leadership

    Network's been around for the better part of a decade now. And
    primarily we've been delivering in-person training to top executives
    at Fortune 2000 companies. Ultimately, what that looks like is 3-day
    immersive learning on a kind of best practice site. So be it BMW, or
    Google, or at Toyota, for example; these executives get immersed into
    the culture of these organizations, where they get taught about
    certain topics like Lean Industry 4.0, Supply Chain Excellence
    Innovation, from subject matter experts who are leading in their
    field. So they might be from M.I.T. or Harvard. And ultimately, it's
    an opportunity for these top executives to get world-class training.

    Julie: Is the challenge... maybe

    you want to talk about the challenges that you immediately walk into
    when you work with these clients? Because you have to start somewhere
    when it comes to transforming the energy and the delivery of what
    your product holds for them.

    Dominic: Yes. In terms of these

    large organizations, there's a whole range of challenges that they
    face that we're able to kind of talk through with them on a level
    that many organizations potentially don't get the opportunity to. So
    when you're talking to these top executives in these quite private
    locations, you hear about the true challenges they face as an
    organization. So be it embracing industry 4.0, embracing digital
    transformations that, fundamentally, these transformations challenge
    the very existence of that business. And we're in a privileged
    position, whereby we're able to talk to these organizations about
    these challenges, and we're able to respond to them with feedback and
    guidance. And what that's looked like for us has been about going,
    "okay, well, look; you guys are getting some great information
    from us, from our leaders, through our subject matter experts. What
    more can we do?" And these very large organizations have said to
    us, "look, we get great immersive training, but how do we roll
    this learning out to our whole organization?" And that's kind of
    where the GEMBA offering has come from: a solution that uses XR
    technologies, primarily virtual reality, to deliver immersive
    learning at massive, massive scale for these large organizations.

    Julie: One of the things that we

    talk about, the biggest part of digital transformation isn't
    necessarily the technology, but it's the change in vision and the
    operating model, the organizational structure, and the talent that
    they currently have in their employment. And to get to that next
    level of improved customer experience and operating model that the
    current business operates under, it requires immense transformation.
    Maybe you can highlight on some ways that you even begin to work with
    these companies to change all of these things.

    Dominic: Completely. I mean,

    ultimately, for these companies to continue to thrive, it's about
    harnessing exactly that internal talent that you talked about. So
    these organizations, they've got really great talent that needs to
    keep learning and keep evolving their skill sets over time. And this
    is why we've kind of adopted the sense of lifelong learning as a sort
    of motto for our organization; a key value for us. And what that
    looks like is giving a set of tools to organizations that allows them
    to keep pushing learning out, no matter where people are in the
    world. And that means empowering educators within big businesses,
    because ultimately, if you've only got a team of 12 who are trying to
    train tens, hundreds of thousands of people inside a company, it
    becomes an impossible challenge. And that's why we've developed the
    immersive learning technologies that we have with the GEMBA to meet
    those challenges.

    Julie: Now, does GEMBA work with

    all the departments? I know you mentioned earlier, the owners and the
    top C levels. But does GEMBA address all of the different departments
    within an organization?

    Dominic: So ultimately we --

    exactly as you said -- we work with senior decision-makers and then
    we flow back down through the organization to those departments that
    are going to make the change happen. Often, that's collaborating very
    closely with HR, but then also with individual parts of the supply
    chain or within individual parts of the organization. And this is
    often because we're looking for the right groups of people that can
    keep the learning going, because all too often, people see learning
    and continued learning as a barrier to them doing their daily jobs.
    And we find that if we partner closely with companies and really
    understand how they work, how they tick, we can help them introduce
    processes -- not just our products, but the internal processes --
    that help them embrace learning as a way of life within the
    organization.

    Julie: When you're dealing with

    the companies, and you work with all of the different departments,
    you obviously have to have a starting point.That baseline knowledge
    of... not just knowledge of the industry itself, but a knowledge base
    of where their training is today, and how to move forward. So are
    there any pieces of what you do that find that baseline of what
    you're dealing with? For example, reports within HR or strategies of
    previous training from before, that you use to to move forward?

    Dominic: Completely. I think

    that's definitely a serious challenge. But actually, I'd almost take
    it a step further back than that. I think there's also the process of
    educating the learning champions, or internal educators. Because
    often, people don't always know what's VR is capable of achieving.
    And so we're often in a position where we know what the solution can
    look like and how it can integrate within an organization. But then
    it's an interesting challenge of, to some extent, winning hearts and
    minds so that people see the technology as a way of enhancing what
    they do. And I think that ultimately, when we've achieved that, when
    people understand the potential with the technology, that's when we
    can dive even deeper into how it starts to optimize their existing
    learning workflows. Because I don't think it's necessarily about
    coming in and wholesale saying "please use this new technology,
    it's going to revolutionize everything." Instead, it's taking a
    quite strategic approach, working with people to say, "look,
    where is this technology best-placed? What problems do you have, and
    how can we help solve them with all technologies?" And frankly,
    where is it less relevant? It's not always necessary to be pushing in
    new technology for technology's sake.

    Julie: Yeah, there is definitely

    a lot of analysis on where to implement this technology first, to
    show the best return for, obviously, the investment, for the
    shareholders and C-levels. But I want to go back to the discussion of
    the internal champion, and making sure that you've got the leadership
    internally in these organizations to be able to push not just the
    strategy of what you're about to implement, but also helping them
    understand. And I think there's a lot of conversation about,
    obviously, the training side and business, but the education side and
    the teachers and the mentors today rolling into the education system,
    and that flow of learning for life, and how important it is to have
    somebody who understands and is passionate about this technology
    that's feeding that onto others. And maybe you can talk a little bit
    about how you deal with the questions of the unknown, really, from
    these mentors and trainers within the company that have to roll this
    out, especially on scale.

    Dominic: It's definitely a very

    interesting challenge, and one that we've had to sort of evolve our
    response to. I know in my own past experience -- I imagine you've
    experienced the same thing -- often we're surrounded by people who
    are quite happy and excited to embrace new technologies. So I think
    we almost lulled into a false sense of security to begin with, that
    everyone's keen and excited to jump in and put on the latest headset.
    What we've found is exactly what you've said, which is it's a matter
    of getting people to embrace that change and embrace the idea of
    using technology as a means of achieving lifelong learning within an
    organization (or, frankly, in any parts of life). And for us, what
    that's looked like is actually getting internal company champions or
    learning champions, those who are, excited about and see the
    potential of the technology and the potential of the learning that
    we've created. And ensuring that they're in power, they have the
    right resources to help push the learning within the organization so
    that it's not a matter of kind of outside-in; us constantly badgering
    people to engage with learning, as you might get with e-learning,
    kind of constant emails. Instead, it's having internal champions,
    people who are wanting to push the learning because they see the
    potential. And then it's a matter of organizations having their own
    peers be there to help achieve that change.

    Julie: And then how do you start

    to even work with scale? Because I think we're at that point where we
    understand the technology works, and we have these large enterprise
    companies that know they need to make these changes. And one of the
    show notes that I read from you was when the company realized that
    they had to retrain and reskill over 100,000 employees in the next
    three years, and that's a very daunting task to understand even where
    you're the skill sets of your employees are today, and making them
    ready for all of these digital transformations. Maybe you can shed
    light a little bit on that scalability within an organization using
    GEMBA and the strategies that you use.

    Dominic: So you mentioned there

    the 100,000 people over three years? This is exactly the sort of
    challenge that large organizations around the world are facing every
    day now, to stay competitive and to stay up-to-date with what people
    in their space are doing. They're constantly having to
    upskill/retrain workers, so that they're always implementing the
    latest technology and latest solutions. When you have that sort of
    scale of people to train, in-person training might be the most
    effective in terms of results, but it quickly becomes clear the
    impossibility of your challenge; even with sort of hundreds of
    people, you won't be able to train hundreds of thousands in anything
    less than a decade. And that's why I think often people turn to
    e-learning, which is a perfectly adequate learning solution for kind
    of your day-to-day, keeping boxes ticked, so to speak. But if you
    really want to have that same level of engagement that people might
    get from a seminar or from 1:1 training, having a scalable solution
    that actually gets people getting hands-on with the learning,
    something that can only really be done nowadays using XR
    technologies, that's where we come in, in terms of providing
    off-the-shelf solutions and then also providing remote collaboration.
    Because I'm sure you've experienced, whenever you want to teach
    anything, you want to be in the room with someone. You want be able
    to talk to someone. You want to make eye contact and share an
    experience together. If you look at things like Bloom's taxonomy,
    that's right up there in terms of applying and creating in learning.
    And that's why we've created the collaborative part of the GEMBA
    platform, where people can work together from anywhere in the world.

    Julie: That's awesome. I truly

    wish the all the best for the Leadership Network and GEMBA. So maybe
    we can close off with three lessons, or some top lessons that you
    could share with our listeners, on how to get started -- and
    obviously, where to find GEMBA and the Leadership Network out there
    in the ecosystem.

    Dominic: If we're talking about when to get started, I think it's always the the first thing to do is jump in: jump in literally to virtual reality. It's so all good and well, describing what it's like to be in a virtual space. But nothing quite replaces being there. Ensuring that there's a clear strategy and that the technology is being used for the right problem is also absolutely key. And then finally, finding us? We're at TheLeadershipNetwork.com. Do have a look at our courses as well, that's kind of where we provide our learning, it's currently exclusively to the people on our network. But it's exciting products, and we're looking forward to sharing it with more people around the world.

    Julie: That's great. Thank you

    so much Dominic, for joining me today. This has been another episode
    of XR for Learning. Please continue that lifelong journey of learning
    every day, about the XR technologies and how they apply to business
    and education. Thanks for joining us.

    17 min
  • Learning Languages Online Using Virtual Watermelons, with Gold Lotus' Michael McDonald

    Teaching a language is a lot easier when you share a room with your pupil, and have the benefit of human interaction and body language to bolster the lesson. With VR, today's guest Michael McDonald is able to do that for students in Norway, all the way from his HQ in Italy.

    Julie: All right. Welcome, everybody, to the XR for Learning podcast. Today, I have Michael McDonald on the show. Originally from London, Michael now lives in Italy and graduated with a degree in German and business management after two years working in the U.K. public sector in HR and recruitment. He left his job in London to get back to what he loved to do most, and that was all about languages and education. So I would love to introduce Michael to the show, and I would love to have you tell us more about Gold Lotus, what you're working on in the classroom using XR technologies, and talk about all the things that are going so well for you, educating these kids through virtual reality. Michael, welcome to the show.

    Michael: Thanks for having me,

    Julie. And hello to any of the listeners out there that will listen
    to this later on. So really nice to be here. Thanks for giving me the
    opportunity to share a little bit about what I've been up to. But
    it's not all about me. It's about certainly the students and the
    teachers that I'm working with, and also the wider community and
    there's a whole lot of stuff we can talk about on today's episode
    regarding those. So yeah. In terms of your first point about Gold
    Lotus. Yes, it's a kind of consultancy I set up here in Italy a few
    years ago after a good few years of exploring everything from Google
    Cardboard to 15-pound Amazon headsets -- sorry, headsets from Amazon
    like virtual reality -- and up to the latest Oculus Go, Oculus Quest
    and everything else in between. So I set up the consultancy, Gold
    Lotus, which basically reflects this kind of idea that, you know,
    anybody -- and I'm going to get deep here, I'm sorry about that --
    but anybody can grow from those muddy waters.You might be a student
    or teacher kind of in the doldrums, maybe thinking, "well, what
    can I do to maybe accelerate my learning, or improve the way that I
    learn languages," because that's kind of my field. And it's just
    kind of a way for people to be pushed by me, hopefully in the right
    direction, and shown alternative ways of using this new technology
    within a learning context. So that's a bit of the background.

    Julie: Yeah. And that's

    fantastic. I've been showing up to some of the YouTube classes that
    you've shown on LinkedIn, and they just fascinate me because I think
    you've taken teaching to a whole different level. I've had several
    conversations with people about your lessons, just in different
    contexts. And it comes back to really testing who the teacher is,
    now, and the personality, the intonation in your voice, because these
    students can't see you. And I think you have risen to the top, in my
    mind, of having that voice that is going to engage the kids and have
    them respond back. And I think that's one of the best things that
    you've seen as obviously teaching these languages, that you're
    encouraging these students to speak more and more and learn the
    English language. So maybe you can talk to the response of the
    students with some of the lessons that you've been doing.

    Michael: Thanks for the

    compliments, but I really can't take credit for those lessons. In a
    sense, yes, I provide the platform for them, just as you are doing
    now with your podcast. The vibe of the experience or the interaction,
    it does depends on the person with whom you're talking, or the
    people. And so I guess that from my perspective, I'm just grateful
    that the tools are out there now for me to meet these people. When I
    talk about people, I'm talking -- at the moment -- so the students in
    Norway with the school we are collaborating with. There's some
    schools in Italy as well, and soon the US going be joining that
    program. But I guess for me, it's just I know what it's like to study
    a foreign language. That is my background. And I think this is an
    important point to make: that my expertise, if you want to call it
    that, is a teaching English as a foreign language to people who can't
    speak this language natively, or [who don't have the] opportunity to.
    So I'm kind of helping them along that journey. And, you know, I
    guess all of us really have had some time in our life when we've not
    really been able to do something very well. And for me, it is
    languages, but I loved it. And I went on to study German at
    university, about 10 years ago now, and I carry around the big
    dictionary in my bag. And 10 years later, we're now kind of immersing
    ourselves in these engaging scenes, as you've seen online. I'm just
    glad it's happy to be exploring this technology and enjoying the fact
    that the tools are out there and the people actually want to join me
    and learn with me, because it's such a learning curve for teach, as
    well.

    Julie: Absolutely. And I think what I'd like to do is share a couple of these lessons that you're doing that just seems so, so far off, but yet so simple. And the students were responding. The first one I saw was, you were teaching them about Brexit and you had the big ten-- the big bank note, a 10-foot bank note in there, in their environment, and first of all, the environment was very bland. There was no furniture or anything like that. It was completely blank. And you had the students there as avatars, and the big bank note, and you were talking about Brexit. And to be honest, it was only a two minute YouTube video (which we're going to drop in the show notes so everybody can take a look), but I wanted to learn more. And I think that the students, as you said in some of the comments on LinkedIn, you mentioned that their retention on this subject was... they did very well, based on what you taught them that day.

    Michael: We can talk all day

    long about the engagement factor in these experiences, these lessons.
    And just for your listeners, if they're not clear about what we're
    talking about, essentially. I was using Rumii in those videos --
    that's a company based in the US, I think it's Seattle, that makes
    simulations -- and I was using their a collaborative real-time
    platform called Rumii, and it basically provides me a space to meet
    people remotely anywhere in the world, and you can import these 3D
    models. And I did one of the big £10, 10-foot bank notes from my
    country, the UK, and it is just a great way to stimulate the
    conversation, because as a language teacher, you kind of feel like
    you want some props. You may be in a foreign country yourself. Maybe
    Italy, Germany, South America, and you want to kind of show people
    what some of your culture's like, and give them something to get
    their teeth into conversationally. So VR allows you to do that. We
    also had a watermelon and you know, I wouldn't cut a piece of
    watermelon and take that into class, because it just wouldn't be very
    hygienic, possibly, or practical. You could do that in VR. So there
    are other platforms out there.

    Julie: Just to give people that

    context, you took a massive... what was it, like a two-meter long
    piece of watermelon as a 3D asset inside the virtual world, and
    everybody took a bite out of this piece of watermelon, passed it
    around, and shared it. And regardless of what it was -- you know, a
    watermelon or whatever -- it was interesting to watch the community
    of your students sharing and doing the actions of actually being
    immersed in taking a bite out of this fake watermelon. But they
    laughed in that, and they thought it was great. And I thought that
    was so engaging of you. I thought that was fascinating.

    Michael: Yeah, thanks. And it

    was useful for them. I just want to just pick up one final thing from
    what you said, which is really key. And it's that despite this kind
    of engagement factor, I'm under no illusions that the end of the day,
    these students -- at some point in their real lives or physical
    lives, if you want to call it that, away from the virtual experiences
    -- they need to pass tests. They've got pressure from above, their
    parents want that they get a particular qualification to demonstrate
    that proficiency in English, or they might have school governors
    visiting the school, and that creates pressure for the teachers. So
    I'm always kind of looking as well at the longer-term thing after the
    engagement has worn off, or maybe after the initial excitement has
    worn off, because I think that's really where the sweet spot is.
    Okay. Let's now see, long-term, how this is really impacting their
    lives. There's some great work done on the kinesthetic aspects of
    learning by -- I think it was the Words In Motion project, it was
    called, at M.I.T., the fluid interfaces group; I can send you the
    link to that -- but it was a fascinating project where they look to
    physical movements to learn language using VR. So people should
    definitely check it out as well.

    Julie: That's amazing. And then

    it also takes me to one of the other lessons that you did the other
    day, where you taught the students the transit system. I believe it
    was in the UK with the Oyster card. So we're different here in
    Canada. In Toronto we have the Presto card. I was trying to relate to
    it, but still; providing the students with the education of, how do
    you travel on the trains? And pay? And where do you go and walk
    through the turnstiles? And while for some people it's very it's a
    natural thing, there's some students who have never been on a train
    before. They've never been to a big city where they have to learn how
    to pay. And what better way for you to provide that experience before
    they go so that they know where they have to put the card and what
    it's like to be on a train? I thought that was just fascinating, and
    I commend you again, to just taking something so simple but so
    immersive for these students.

    Michael: You're right, it is a

    great time to be alive, that's for sure. And it provides context,
    basically, for the language learning. It's not easy to imagine what
    you're going to be like when you need to buy train tickets or order a
    fizzy drink from a shop when you get to London or the US or Canada,
    for example. So, VR absolutely provides those practice test bits,
    let's call them.

    Julie: Exactly. So maybe can you

    highlight just quickly some of the barriers that you've had? And I
    know hardware is one that we're all facing, and that's not going to
    go away, and it's always going to change. Is that, I guess, maybe
    your top area, is just make sure the accessibility is there?

    Michael: Having been through the

    education system as a foreign language learner, and then as a teacher
    for the past decade or so, you do a lot of thinking and reflection
    about what are the problems for me as a language learner and then as
    a language teacher, and then once you understand what the problems
    are, obviously, you look for solutions -- or, you should do. And for
    me, VR was that natural best fit to answer some of those problems. So
    for me obviously, to experience-- or, to provide experiences to
    people, you're going to need the headsets, and that is costly. They
    have fallen a lot in price in recent years, particularly now in the
    kind of age of these new 6DoF experiences. We can look under things
    and over and round corners and stuff, which is wonderful. And room
    tracking! But, you know, if you're a school, maybe you kind of think,
    "well, we don't have the budget to buy it." So that has
    been a barrier for sure. But in the end, where there's a will,
    there's a way. There's nothing stopping you. If you're a teacher out
    there, just do what I did, which was just buying one headset, making
    it work for a small group of students, growing it from there, and
    building your network of people around you. Like I said; where
    there's a will, there's a way.

    Julie: Are your English classes

    going to be opened up for other students around the world to join? Is
    there a waiting list to get into your class?

    Michael: Within reason, anybody

    is welcome at any time. So the ones that you've seen recently for the
    school in Norway are really just the start of what's to come, because
    as I said, we're launching this month -- we're already in February,
    now -- a program with two schools in southern Italy, public-funded
    projects, which will be one academic year long, and they will be
    exposing students to all of the various elements of XR, whether that
    be virtual reality, augmented reality, whatever, and basically
    showing them this technology and getting their feedback on how they
    think it could best fit their curriculum. And also, of course, the
    teachers as well. So there'll be Italian schools involved in the next
    few weeks. Talking to somebody, can't say the name right now, not
    confirmed, but announcements should be out soon for some schools in
    the US as well. I would love to have Canada on board. Julie, if you
    can, if you want to get involved-- and you mentioned your daughter as
    well, if you don't mind me saying about a comment you mentioned on
    LinkedIn recently about striking over there in Canada.

    Julie: Yes.

    Michael: And this is what it's

    all about, like in the sense of using technology to solve problems.
    So you've got a problem there. Your daughter potentially can't go to
    school for a few days. Well, she can't learn, but she sure as hell
    can teach. What's stopping her with a headset jumping into something
    like Rumii, like Engage, like Mozilla Hubs, for example? All these
    platforms and offering a class, making use of her time. And the best
    way to learn is to teach. So the future's bright for people if they
    just have a little bit of fire in their belly and some creative
    ideas.

    Julie: That's incredible. Yes,

    absolutely. And I'm taking that back, because I've got three days of
    strike days this week, so I do have to use them to the best of her
    time. One of the main goals of my XR for Learning podcast is to help
    people change the way that they learn, that they teach; in your
    words, if you were to give advice to the world, to the teachers out
    there, well, what would that advice be?

    Michael: First of all,

    understand what the problems are. That is key. There's a program at
    university/college, an EU-funded project called Educ8, and people
    should definitely check it out as well. And it's a program which
    connects ed-tech startups and to teachers, school, senior leadership
    teams, etc. -- and students -- to try to understand, along with the
    academic community, about how best to answer some of those academic
    problems through technology. So the advice from me to people
    listening out there is, if you feel that some of the problems can be
    addressed with your virtual reality, augmented reality, for example,
    solutions, then try and get hold of a headset. If you can't get hold
    of something, I think about Oculus Go these days is like $150 US.
    Maybe if you don't have the budget for that, I totally understand;
    why not just grab a laptop or a tablet, go on some Azalea hubs, for
    example, they've got some great tools that you could look at. If you
    can even use your smart phones, you can put that into a cardboard
    device, which cost you a few dollars. So it starts off small,
    laser-focused. Understand what the problems are for yourself as a
    teacher, and for the students, and then just go from there; tweak
    things, get feedback, get feedback on the course from the students,
    and just grow it from there. But please understand where the problems
    are in your field. That's the key thing.

    Julie: Well, that's a perfect way to end this podcast. Thank you, Michael, for joining me. This is the XR for Learning podcast with your host, Julie Smith. And thanks, everyone, for joining us.

    15 min
  • XR for Learning Course: Combining the Digital and the Human in Humanics, with Julie Smithson

    Recently, Julie gave a virtual presentation at the Educators in VR 2020 Summit. There, she discussed Cloud Learning and the concept of Humanics; basically, developing the things humans can do that machines cannot. 

    This podcast has been slightly edited from the Educators in VR livestream, for brevity and technical reasons (there were a few connectivity issues during the stream. 5G can't get here soon enough!)

    24 min
  • Giving Old Headsets New Life in the Classroom, with VR First's Rahel Demant
    The jobs of the future are going to increasingly require people familiar with XR technologies, but developing those skills now can be a challenge, when the tech is so new and expensive. Rahel Demant from VR First explains how last year's headsets can help develop tomorrow's innovators.
    Julie: Welcome to the XR for
    Learning podcast. I am your host, Julie Smithson. And today we have
    on the call Rahel Demant from VR First. Rahel worked in Deloitte's
    Transaction Advisory Division. After a consulting job in Canada, the
    US and Costa Rica, she founded an event marketing agency organizing
    events across Germany in the arts. Fascinated by the power and
    possibilities of emerging tech, she joined VR First as CEO in 2016.
    She and her co-founder Ferhan Özkan have led the program to a
    network of thousands of developers in order to support the diversity
    of the tech scene. She has initiated the Women XR Laureate
    Breakthrough Oggi Award; her mission to democratize VR and AR
    development worldwide through VR First, various support programs, and
    online competitions. The newest program is the XR Boot Camp. Welcome,
    Rahel.
    Rahel: Thank you for the
    invitation, Julie. And thanks for also being on our advisory board.
    Julie: Yeah. It's an exciting
    time. Thank you so much for asking me to be a part of the XR boot
    camp. I think there's some great people that are coming together to
    discuss upskilling and how this industry is changing so much. So tell
    me a little bit more about VR First, and what you're doing, and how
    you got to where you are today.
    Rahel: So basically what we've
    seen three and four years ago was that the equipment for virtual
    reality and augmented reality was super expensive and there was a
    high demand from the industry to actually move forward and to
    actually develop more applications, more games, more serious games.
    And the problem was that the developers were not there, because
    universities were just not able to equip them with the knowledge, and
    also the headsets and gaming PCs, which you needed at that time. So
    the computer, which costs $3000, and a headset would maybe cost even
    $1000 to $2000. So equipping a university lab for all the students
    that wanted to learn was way too much and not affordable for anyone.
    So we decided to establish a non-for-profit approach, and to donate
    hundreds of headsets and computers to labs all around the world. Up
    to date, we have supported 52 universities and science parks with the
    establishment of VR/AR labs, so that they can better equip students
    with the resources and knowledge to actually learn VR and AR
    development, and to get the whole industry further as a movement.
    So we've established partnerships based
    on Oculus/Facebook, Intel, AMD, with HTC, with all hardware
    manufacturers -- and also software companies -- to basically get some
    knowledge out there and to make it affordable. And what we were
    seeing is that there's still, even though there's a lot more of
    higher education now on the market, there is still a lot of demand
    from the industry to hire more talent, to hire more VR and AR experts
    into their companies. So I decided to instead of having these 3-6
    years programs at universities, to really establish a very short,
    focused, and industry-based program which is XR bootcamps. When you
    join XR Bootcamp, you're joining a three months full-time or six
    months part-time program where you can really learn VR/AR
    development, everything that's basically demanded by the industry. So
    we have a really great advisory board -- including you, ha ha --
    coming from all kinds of companies.
    So, for example, we have HTC. We have
    Magic Leap. We have Audio Bear. We have all advisers from different
    industry companies which really need to hire VR/AR developers. And
    they actually advised us on what to put into the curriculum, which i
    15 min
  • Teaching Soft Skills with Science in VR Labs, with Labster CEO Michael Jensen
    Science is one of the toughest subjects to get kids interested in, made more challenging by the relatively high cost of supplies. That’s where Labster comes in; gamifying the experience in digital labs, and imparting life skills along the way.
    Julie: Welcome to the XR for
    Learning Podcast. My name is Julie Smithson, and today I have Michael
    Bodekaer Jensen from Labster. Michael is a tireless visionary and the
    founder of multiple technology companies. Michael is also part of
    Labster, a fast-moving, award-winning company that focuses on
    revolutionizing the way science and lab safety is taught at
    companies, universities, colleges and high schools all over the
    world. The platform offers advanced virtual laboratory simulator,
    where students and employees can work with real-life challenges in an
    online environment that stimulates reality. Welcome, Michael.
    Michael: Perfect. Thanks so
    much, Julie, it's an honor to be here. And thanks much for the great
    intro. I think you're covered perfectly many of the things that I was
    hoping to say.
    Julie: That's awesome. Well,
    please tell us a little bit more about Labster. I know that in
    today's world we're looking for those accesses to education and
    learning. And I'd love for you to share with us more about Labster
    and what you offer.
    Michael: The overall vision of
    Labster is to empower the next generation of scientists to change the
    world. We're really of the strong belief that if we are going to
    solve big global challenges -- such as global warming -- we need
    thousands of young, bright minds working together and trying to solve
    these important challenges. I think innovation always is, what we've
    seen over and over again, the key driver for solving important,
    critical global challenges.
    So my co-founder myself started out
    with this idea that, OK, as individuals, there's no way we are going
    to be able to solve these gigantic global challenges. But what if we
    could inspire thousands of students to try? And not only try; also,
    to believe in their own ability to solve these challenges and then
    give them the skills, the concepts, the knowledge that they would
    need to go out and solve these challenges. So that was sort of the
    main motivation and driver, when we started business nine years ago,
    and it still is today, really trying to understand this concept.
    Also, it was driven a lot by us realizing the way science is taught
    today. And my co-founder, he's a science teacher as well. We found
    that it was really hard to engage the students. It was often, as
    science is seen as one of the most boring topics, and at the same
    time, one of the most expensive topics to teach today. So it was mind
    boggling for us to see that. And knowing how important science
    education is for solving global challenges and for innovation, why
    are we not really solving that? So we thought, OK, why don't we try
    and solve that? And I had some background as well in the gaming
    industry. So we thought of, well, what if we just build, basically, a
    flight simulator, but for science? Where we could create or use the
    innovative gaming technologies and game designs, as well as learning
    pedagogies, and try and create the most immersive, interactive
    experience that you can imagine, to teach science in a much more fun
    way? And then, how that would empower and inspire these students to
    solve these challenges and believe in their own ability to solve
    these global challenges, which they can. We often find the students
    struggle with their own self-belief or confidence. And those were
    some of the main things that we really wanted to tackle. So, yeah,
    the very short pitch of what Labster is is essentially a flight
    simulator, but for science.
    And then there's a lot more to it. We
    have interactive animations that shows concepts. You can zoom in and
    fly into cells and
    19 min
  • Gearing Up for the 2020 Educators in VR Summit, with Daniel Dyboski-Bryant and Lorelle VanFossen
    Welcome to the premier episode of the XR for Learning Podcast, with your host, Julie Smithson! On this show, we'll be exploring in-depth the power XR has to improve the learning experience for mankind across all sectors. We start that mission speaking with the co-founders of Educators in VR, who host the world's largest immersive conference for educators, to share and explore VR together.
    Julie: Welcome to the XR for Learning podcast and this is your host, Julie Smithson. Thank you so much, everybody, for joining us. I'd like to introduce two of my first guests, Lorelle VanFossen and Daniel Dyboski-Bryant from Educators In VR. Lorelle is a co-founder of Educators In VR, an open membership and social profit organization dedicated to providing training and educational programs that will integrate virtual technologies into education for educators, learners, researchers, and passionate enthusiasts. And she's a keynote speaker, a trainer, an educator, writer/author, and consultant specializing in digital storytelling and web publishing. Daniel is a lifelong educator specializing in virtual and augmented reality, immersive technologies, 360 media, teacher training, communication, and languages. And he speaks five languages. He's the [co-]founder of Educators In VR, and I've been looking forward to having a conversation today about the international summit. Welcome, both of you.
    Daniel: Thank you very much.
    Lorelle: Thank you.
    Daniel: Excited to be here.
    Julie: I want to go deep into
    the international summit. But maybe if you guys can kind of talk
    about how was Educators In VR born? Like, where did it come from? And
    maybe you guys can talk about how you guys collaborated.
    Lorelle: A moment of insanity. Well, how it actually got started is that I was talking to Dr. Erica Southgate in VR, we were in AltspaceVR. And I said, we keep bitching about all the different pros and cons of educators really struggling to embrace this technology and the challenges that face them, and the eagerness and passion that so many of them had. And I said, we need to have an educators in VR meetup. This is silly. We need to to make this a bigger conversation, because it's a huge conversation. And the moment we started talking about it, we just exploded with ideas and we realized it was much bigger than the two of us. And so she brought in Daniel and another person, and we had our first Educators In VR meet-up. We thought there would be, I don't know, what do you think, 20, 30 people? There were something like 180.
    Daniel: Yeah.
    Lorelle: [laughs] It just-- no
    one knew how to use any of the tools, or anything to accommodate that
    many people. So it became a-- It was great. It was fantastic, very
    few people in front of the scenes knew that everybody was panicking
    on the back end, because it was just overload. And we went, "Oh,
    there's something there." And it ended up that Daniel and I
    founded it, made it official. We host, once a week, workshops in
    AltspaceVR, but we also travel to other platforms and do all kinds of
    special events. And we've had over-- I think it's almost 5,000 people
    come through in a little over a year. And now we have this 2020
    Educators In VR International Summit, which again started with "Oh,
    why don't we do this? We'll get like 40 people together, and see what
    happens. It'll be a few days and we'll do this conference." And
    we put out the speaker form during the holidays. I mean, who pays
    attention to anything during the holidays? And we had over 150
    applications.
    Julie: Incredible. Incredible.
    It's stunning.
    Lorelle: And there's this thing
    that happens when you're doing any kind of an event. You go, all
    right
    28 min

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