Virtual and Augmented Reality are poised to profoundly transform the STEM curriculum. In this article, we offer several inspiring examples and key insights on the future of immersive learning and the sciences. Immersive technologies will revolutionize learning through experiential simulations, modelling and spatial representation of data, and a sense of presence in contextual gamification.
Understanding our place in the universe, building the next Martian Rover, designing new transportation systems, fostering sustainable communities, modeling economic stability — finding the solution for these pressing and interconnected challenges brings us to STEM and STEAM in teaching and learning. The movement behind STEAM advocates incorporating the arts and humanities to the science, technology, engineering and math curriculum.
More Than Just Cool?— from insidehighered.com by Nick Roll Virtual and augmented realities make headway in courses on health care, art history and social work.
Excerpt:
When Glenn Gunhouse visits the Pantheon, you would think that the professor, who teaches art and architecture history, wouldn’t be able to keep his eyes off the Roman temple’s columns, statues or dome. But there’s something else that always catches his eye: the jaws of the tourists visiting the building, and the way they all inevitably drop.
“Wow.”
There’s only one other way that Gunhouse has been able to replicate that feeling of awe for his students short of booking expensive plane tickets to Italy. Photos, videos and even three-dimensional walk-throughs on a computer screen don’t do it: It’s when his students put on virtual reality headsets loaded with images of the Pantheon.
…nursing schools are using virtual reality or augmented reality to bring three-dimensional anatomy illustrations off of two-dimensional textbook pages.
Facebook is set to reveal a standalone Oculus virtual reality headset sometime later this year, Bloomberg reports, with a ship date of sometime in 2018. The headset will work without requiring a tethered PC or smartphone, according to the report, and will be branded with the Oculus name around the world, except in China, where it’ll carry Xiaomi trade dress and run some Xiaomi software as part of a partnership that extends to manufacturing plans for the device.
Facebook Inc. is taking another stab at turning its Oculus Rift virtual reality headset into a mass-market phenomenon. Later this year, the company plans to unveil a cheaper, wireless device that the company is betting will popularize VR the way Apple did the smartphone.
From DSC and Adobe — for faculty members and teachers out there:
Do your students an enormous favor by assigning them a digital communications project. Such a project could include images, infographics, illustrations, animations, videos, websites, blogs (with RSS feeds), podcasts, videocasts, mobile apps and more. Such outlets offer powerful means of communicating and demonstrating knowledge of a particular topic.
As Adobe mentions, when you teach your students how to create these types of media projects, you prepare them to be flexible and effective digital communicators. I would also add that these new forms and tools can be highly engaging, while at the same time, they can foster students’ creativity. Building new media literacy skills will pay off big time for your students. It will land them jobs. It will help them communicate to a global audience. Students can build upon these skills to powerfully communicate numerous kinds of messages in the future. They can be their own radio station. They can be their own TV station.
From DSC: After reviewing the article and video (below), it will be interesting to see how machine-to-machine (M2M) communications will be used in combination with augmented reality — and perhaps with virtual reality and mixed reality as well. That is, get to within a certain range of an object, and something automatically happens on your mobile device or your head mounted device. Perhaps that’s the sort of thing Apple is building into their next smart phone. It would sure open up some interesting learning and entertainment-related experiences — as such new affordances could help foster anticipation and curiosity, while grabbing someone’s attention.
This type of thing could easily become a piece of the future of art and creativity.
Even in its early beta stages, the new live exhibition from digital artists Adrien M and Claire B will have you rubbing your eyes in disbelief. Throughout their Mirages & Miracles display, the artist duo uses wondrous applications of augmented reality to create an orchestra of new installations, both small and large. Much like their live dance performance work at BAM, the new bundle merges the digital with the material, blurring the lines between what is real and what is fake. The multi-pronged ensemble uses augmented drawings, holographic illusions, virtual-reality headsets, and large-scale projections to create a number of unbelievable scenarios “that take root in both the mirage and the miracle,” according to the duo.
By hovering their smartphones over the catalog’s pages, prospective students are able to view videos of student creative sessions, play video games designed by students, take tours of residence halls, and more using the SCAD mobile app, which is available from the iOS App Store and Google Play Store.
Powered byLayaraugmented reality technology, the catalog contains more than 150 digital assets, 200 micro-interactions, and 85 trackable pages, including the cover.
Summer 2017 Human++ — fromcambridge.nuvustudio.com Human-Machine Intelligence, Hacking Drones, Bio Fashion, Augmented Video Games, Aerial Filmmaking, Smart Tools, Soft Robotics and more!
Excerpt:
NuVu is a place where young students grow their spirit of innovation. They use their curiosity and creativity to explore new ideas, and make their concepts come to life through our design process. Our model is based on the architecture studio model, and every Summer we use imaginative themes to frame two-week long Studios in which students dive into hands-on design, engineering, science, technology, art and more!
Superb creative photo manipulations by Chunlong Sun — from designyoutrust.com Chunlong Sun is a talented graphic designer, art director and retoucher who lives and works in Beijing, China. Chunlong focuses on advertising, he creates stunning surreal, sci-fi and humour manipulations.
ISNS students embrace learning in a world of virtual reality — from by
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
To give students the skills needed to thrive in an ever more tech-centred world, the International School of Nanshan Shenzhen (ISNS) is one of the world’s first educational facilities now making instruction in virtual reality (VR) and related tools a key part of the curriculum.
Building on a successful pilot programme last summer in Virtual Reality, 3D art and animation, the intention is to let students in various age groups experiment with the latest emerging technologies, while at the same time unleashing their creativity, curiosity and passion for learning.
To this end, the school has set up a special VR innovation lab, conceived as a space for exploration, design and interdisciplinary collaboration involving a number of different subject teachers.
Using relevant software and materials, students learn to create high-quality digital content and to design “experiences” for VR platforms. In this “VR Lab makerspace” – a place offering the necessary tools, resources and support – they get to apply concepts and theories learned in the classroom, develop practical skills, document their progress, and share what they have learned with classmates and other members of the tech education community.
As a next logical step, she is also looking to develop contacts with a number of the commercial makerspaces which have sprung up in Shenzhen. The hope is that students will then be able to meet engineers working on cutting-edge innovations and understand the latest developments in software, manufacturing, and areas such as laser cutting, and 3D printing, and rapid prototyping.
The Lounge, enabled by Samsung on November 8, 2016 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Anna Kucera)
The Lounge, enabled by Samsung on November 8, 2016 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Anna Kucera)
Also see:
The Lounge enabled by Samsung Open day and night, The Lounge enabled by Samsung is a new place in the heart of the Opera House where people can sit and enjoy art and culture through the latest technology. The most recent in a series of future-facing projects enabled by Sydney Opera House’s Principal Partner, Samsung, the new visitor lounge features stylish, comfortable seating, as well as interactive displays and exclusive digital content, including:
The Sails – a virtual-reality experience of what it’s like to stand atop the sails of Australia’s most famous building, brought to you via Samsung Gear VR;
Digital artwork – a specially commissioned video exploration of the Opera House and its stories, produced by creative director Sam Doust. The artwork has been themed to match the time of day and is the first deployment of Samsung’s latest Smart LED Display panel technology in Australia; and
Google Cultural Institute – available to view on Samsung Galaxy View and Galaxy Tab S2 tablets, the digital collection features 50 online exhibits that tell the story of the Opera House’s past, present and future through rare archival photography, celebrated performances, early architectural drawings and other historical documents, little-known interviews and Street View imagery.
A hybrid of both AR & VR, Mixed Reality (MR) is far more advanced than Virtual Reality because it combines the use of several types of technologies including sensors, advanced optics and next gen computing power. All of this technology bundled into a single device will provide the user with the capability to overlay augmented holographic digital content into your real-time space, creating scenarios that are unbelievably realistic and mind-blowing.
How does it work?
Mixed Reality works by scanning your physical environment and creating a 3D map of your surroundings so the device will know exactly where and how to place digital content into that space – realistically – while allowing you to interact with it using gestures. Much different than Virtual Reality where the user is immersed in a totally different world, Mixed Reality experiences invite digital content into your real-time surroundings, allowing you to interact with them.
Mixed reality use cases mentioned in the article included:
From DSC: In the future, I’d like to see holograms provide stunning visual centerpieces for the entrance ways into libraries, or in our classrooms, or in our art galleries, recital halls, and more. The object(s), person(s), scene(s) could change into something else, providing a visually engaging experience that sets a tone for that space, time, and/or event.
Eventually, perhaps these types of technologies/setups will even be a way to display artwork within our homes and apartments.
From DSC:
(With thanks to Woontack Woo for his posting this via his paper.li entitled “#AR #CAMAR for Ubiquitous VR”)
Check this out!
On December 3rd, the Legend of Sword opera comes to Australia — but this is no ordinary opera! It is a “holographic sensational experience!” Set designers and those involved with drama will need to check this out. This could easily be the future of set design!
But not only that, let’s move this same concept over to the world of learning. What might augmented reality do for how our learning spaces look and act like in the future? What new affordances and experiences could they provide for us? This needs to be on our radars.
Legend of Sword 1 is a holographic sensational experience that has finished its 2nd tour in China. A Chinese legend of the ages to amaze and ignite your imagination. First time ever such a visual spectacular stage in Australia on Sat 3rd Dec only. Performed in Chinese with English subtitles.
Legend of Sword and Fairy 1 is based on a hit video game in China. Through the hardworking of the renowned production team, the performance illustrates the beautiful fantasy of game on stage, and allow the audience feel like placing themselves in the eastern fairy world. With the special effects with the olfactory experience, and that actors performing and interact with audience at close distance, the eastern fairy world is realised on stage. It is not only a play with beautiful scenes, but also full of elements from oriental style adventure. The theatre experience will offer much more than a show, but the excitement of love and adventure.
Legend of Sword and Fairy 1 was premiered in April 2015 at Shanghai Cultural Plaza, which set off a frenzy of magic in Shanghai, relying on the perfect visual and 5D all-round sensual experience. Because of the fantasy theme that matches with top visual presentation, Legend of Sword and Fairy 1 became the hot topic in Shanghai immediately. With only just 10 performances at the time, its Weibo topic hits have already exceeded 100 million mark halfway.
So far, Legend of Sword and Fairy 1 has finished its second tour in a number of cities in China, including Beijing, Chongqing, Chengdu, Nanjing, Xiamen, Qingdao, Shenyang, Dalian, Wuxi, Ningbo, Wenzhou, Xi’an, Shenzhen, Dongguan, Huizhou, Zhengzhou, Lishui, Ma’anshan, Kunshan, Changzhou etc.
Students in a Georgia institution that were among the first to experiment with virtual reality have just had a premier of their first VR musical. The project undertaken at the Savannah College of Art and Design brought together 116 people from 14 different programs over the course of 20 weeks to create a 360-degree narrative, “Say It With Music.”
The movie was shown during the recent Savannah Film Festival, as part of a VR showcase, which allowed participants to experience VR gear from four vendors.
At this year’s WIRED conference, technology entrepreneurs were dialed in to how they might tackle world issues.
Over two days of sessions in London, speakers celebrated technology’s latest developments in fields ranging from healthcare to finance, from energy to art. Throughout the event, the notion of ‘humane tech’ emerged to describe the ways in which technology is being used to improve the state of the world. Increasingly, technology startups are harnessing the latest advances, including virtual reality and mobile technologies, to solve societal problems and tackle real issues.
Alexandra Ivanovitch, founder of Simorga, presented the company’s mission to develop VR apps that combat prejudice. The work follows research from BeAnotherLab which demonstrated that racial and gender biases can be reduced using virtual reality. When a user experiences the world as someone else, essentially swapping their body for a different one, empathy increases and bias decreases. Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab has created a similar experience in which participants encounter racism while embodying someone else. The project’s mission is reminiscent of Sandy Speaks, the chatbot that uses artificial intelligence to educate people about the Black Lives Matter movement.
In a world where 26% of countries are described as ‘not free,’ technology is increasingly coming into play to empower citizens.
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Another human rights issue that technology can seek to tackle is access to education. With approximately 250 million children globally failing to learn even the basics, there is scope for teaching through a range of technologies.
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In addition to social issues and human rights, technology is being used on a broader scale to fight climate change… …
Renewable energies that transform the everyday were another key focus.
