Canada will see the fastest growth, with a CAGR of 145.2 percent over the forecast period. Other leaders in terms of growth include Central and Eastern Europe at 133.5 percent, Western Europe at 121.2 percent and the U.S. at 120.5 percent.
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Leslie Fisher Thinks Augmented Reality First, Then VR in the Classroom
An interview with the former Apple K–12 systems engineer, who will participate in multiple sessions during ISTE.
THE Journal: What do you think about virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) in the classroom? Is the cost point for VR prohibitive?
In virtual reality, one of my favorite apps is CoSpaces. It allows anyone to design a 3D space, and then interact with it in virtual reality.
Virtual reality can be quite affordable with Google Cardboard. We can get into basic interaction in VR with Cardboard. There are 40 or 50 VR apps where you can simply use Cardboard and explore. Google Street View allows you to do virtual viewing of many different locations. That technology augments what the teacher is doing.
Most kids can’t afford to buy their own Oculus headset. That price point is quite a bit higher. But we don’t need to have 30 kids using Oculus all of the time. Two or three might work
Hibiki Works is working on a VR dating sim called Niizuma: Lovely x Cation in which users create relationships with anime girls. As a promotion, the company had guys submit their names and a select few were chosen to participate in non-legal wedding ceremonies. The weddings were conducted with a cast of live people, including an actual priest and someone holding a wand with puckered lips on one end.
The New York Times VR app (available for iOS and Android) we can now experience parts of Antarctica in virtual reality. As a part of their Antarctica series The New York Times has published four short films (9-15 minutes) that can be viewed in virtual reality.
The design of blended learning curriculum will be more diversified and personalized with the integration of creative in-class active learning strategies and innovative educational technologies, such as adaptive learning, virtual reality, mobile technologies
Quality assurance is the biggest challenge with implementing blended learning in the higher education environment today. I would propose institutions to adopt evidence-based standards for course evaluations. For instance, the OLC Quality Scorecard for Blended Learning Programs
MEL Science aims to release more than 150 lessons covering all the main topics included in K–12 schools’ chemistry curriculum. Later this year, MEL Science also aims to add support for other VR platforms, including Google Cardboard and Samsung Gear VR.
If you search Twitter effectively, there are not only great resources but great people to help you teach differently and keep the classroom more entertaining. You can grow your own personal learning network.
annual Speak Up survey of more than 510,000 K–12 students, parents and educators
Middle school students seem to be the most excited about AR and VR in the school setting. Among students in grades 6 through 8, 33 percent said they would like to see augmented reality apps in their ultimate school, and 47 percent of those kids said they would like to see virtual reality experiences and hardware in their ultimate school.
teachers, principals and parents were more skeptical. Only 12 percent of parents and principals said they want to see AR apps in their ultimate school, while 13 percent of teachers said the same.
Ben Ward, Kansas State University
Joelle Pitts, Instructional Design Librarian and Associate Professor, Kansas State University Libraries
Stefan Yates, Instructional Design Librarian and Associate Professor, Kansas State University
Transmedia, unicorns, and marketing, oh my!: The not-quite epic failure of transmedia design efforts in Oz.
Transmedia storytelling, also called Alternate Reality Games, have been designed to intrigue, engage, and even engineer groups of people since the release of The Beast in 2001. A few colleges and Universities have employed them to engage their student populations and even teach them a thing or two using narrative game mechanics. Presenters will chronicle a highly successful transmedia design effort at Kansas State University, and the subsequent annual efforts to replicate the engagement and enthusiasm. Best practices and not-quite epic failures will be discussed, as will tips (and laments) for marketing to our current student populations.
Glenn Larsen, National Science Foundation
SBIR and Other Funding Sources for Your Game
The National Science Foundation (NSF) awards nearly $190 million annually to startups and small businesses through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)/Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program, transforming scientific discovery into products and services with commercial and societal impact. The equity-free funds support research and development (R&D) across almost all areas of science and technology helping companies de-risk technology for commercial success. The NSF is an independent federal agency with a budget of about $7 billion that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering. For more information, visit http://www.nsf.gov/SBIR.
Karen Schrier, Assistant Professor/Director of Games and Emerging Media, Marist College Design Principles for Knowledge Games
Lisa Castaneda, CEO, foundry10|
Mark Suter, Teacher, Bernards Township Schools
How Teachers Can Use VR in the Classroom: Beyond the Novelty
Over the past three years, foundry10, an education research organization, has been studying the potential of Virtual Reality in Education. The research has focused on the implementation, immersion dynamics, and integration of content across the curriculum.
Working with a variety of classroom curricular areas, with students and teachers from 30 schools, we have gathered data as well as anecdotal stories to help illustrate how VR functions in a learning environment. Students from all over the US, Canada and parts of Europe, completed pre/post surveys and educators participated in extensive qualitative interviews in order to better understand what it means to learn with virtual reality.
Please join foundry10 CEO Lisa Castaneda and teachers Steve Isaacs and Mark Suter as we share what we have learned about how to effectively utilize VR for classroom learning through content creation (both inside and outside of the virtual world), content consumption and content integration and overcoming the obstacles inherent in implementation.
Voke VR, a virtual reality (VR) company founded by two former Washington State University (WSU) professors, is working to build Intel-backed immersive tech for live events.
At the core of the platform is Voke’s TrueVR product, which delivers full stereoscopic 3D video that is integrated with augmented content in a 360-degree VR environment. It uses multiple camera angles with zoom capabilities and synchronized DVR, so that viewers can control what they want to watch. Additionally, with TrueVR, content is captured, encoded, synced with scores, metadata and audio and delivered in real time to multiple platforms.
a 360-degree projection space, getting ready to open a virtual reality studio with “room-scale” VR sporting Oculus Rift and Vive gear, the idea of the “graduate students’ commons,” with access limited to those students as well as faculty
2) Sometimes Innovation Just Comes Knocking
3) Hire People With New Ideas
Rather than innovation being directed from the top down, it bubbles from the bottom up.
4) Plan on “Making” Your Own Resources
5) Make Tech as Accessible as Possible
Another intention is to bring different disciplines together in the hopes of sparking new ideas.
