Today I learned a lesson on total, full immersion. Where all your senses are being fed information that relates to the same topic or idea and when it all comes together, it’s truly greater than the sum of its parts. The teacher of this lesson was…Disney.
But more of that later.
The past two days have been fantastic. Very different to my time at Adobe MAX but just as informative, perhaps even more so, in relation to my exploration of AR and VR in education.
My reason for choosing this part of the West Coast was primarily to meet a teacher named Darin Nakakihara. He’s an elementary teacher in Irvine, Orange County. Irvine is one of the top performing districts in the state and the school he teaches at has a great reputation within the district. Darin is somewhat of a technology guru around these parts. He used to move around from school to school helping with the integration of all things tech but now focuses primarily on his school. He teaches a very lucky group of Yr 4 students as they get to “play” with all sorts of toys…toys sent to him directly from, oh I don’t know…Google!!!! This is the reputation that he has in the Edtech world so I reached out to him and he said, “Sure, come on over”’. And what a great day with his class I had.
I was definitely a novelty among the students. They loved my accent and had lots of questions about Australia. We also played all morning with Darin’s new toys sent to him just days earlier. A class set of phones, viewers and selfie sticks. We mainly experimented with Google Expeditions and had the students try out different apps, both in VR and AR. While the students were experimenting with the tech, Darin was videoing them and getting them to reflect on what they were seeing and any issues that they were having with the equipment. He and his students are helping shape future directions of some of this technology.
After lunch was an emergency drill, although it wasn’t for fire or lock down as we do back in OZ. This was an earthquake emergency drill. The students had to hide under desks before being taken outside to the designated area. This took a while to check off all the necessary requirements but we got back to the classroom with just enough time for me to run a Kahoot quiz on Australia and pass out some Tim Tams to the students.
After school, Darin and I went down to the local “mall” where they had recently opened a new multi-sensory VR experience based on the movie Terminator Salvation. At the venue we were dressed in VR headsets, wrist and ankle sensors and a backpack that housed the computer which ran the game. These centres are becoming very popular and becoming increasingly more common. The story that you are playing in the VR world is, to some extent, mirrored in the physical world too. Do you see a door in your VR world? Then when you reach out there’s an actual physical door you turn and step through. Need to hold on to a pole to steady yourself? Well there’s an actual pole right where you think it is. These multi-sensory experiences are also called “Extreme Immersive Experiences” and the more of your senses that are involved, the more immersive and real it seems.
In 1946 an educator named Edgar Dale devised a concept called the “Cone of Experience” in response to the emerging technology of the day – audiovisual media. He proposed a hierarchy of learning associated with the interrelationship of the various types of audiovisual media. Edgar envisaged that this “cone” would help educators in selecting the best instructional resources and activities from the myriad of new resources that were emerging. The cone was a way of comparing instructional material to “real life”. The closer to real life the better, as it incorporated more of the student’s senses during the activity. AR and VR have the possibility to involve students in ways that videos and books can’t and increase this “cone of experience” like never before.
Today I had the opportunity to engage in two more of these extreme immersive VR experiences. One based on Star Wars and the other on the film Aliens. At both of these venues, from the moment you walk in, you are being guided into your future story. The workers call you “rebel” or “marine” and the walls are all decorated to link to the story they are telling. It’s much more fun when you play these with others. I was with a family from Pasadena for the Star Wars experience. The daughter of the family just made it over the minimum height to be allowed to play. The premise of the story was that you were rebel fighters going in to the enemy base dressed as storm troopers and when you were all kitted up in your VR gear and looked at your body, and the people you were playing with, you looked like storm troopers. I was going to say to the daughter “A little short to be a storm trooper aren’t you?” but I didn’t know how well they knew the original Star Wars movie, and whether they had a sense of humour so I thought better of it.
The Alien experience this afternoon was by far the best and this was due to both the story and the “immersiveness” of the experience. You really felt like you were spinning in a pod and descending in a lift. There was air blowing on you at just the right time to give you the feeling of moving quickly. The VR world was super-detailed and the aliens were fast and, might I say, a little scary. The headphones provide surround sound so when I heard the alien coming from behind me and turned around and it was right in my face I jumped in fright. It was great.
But these three experiences were all games. Engaging? Most definitely. Immersive? Extremely. Educational? Ahh, not so much. And this is the potential issue. With the high cost currently of all this equipment and the potential difficulty in getting it set up and working, is the technology ready for the school environment? Simple things like Google Expeditions and the Merge Cube might be, but not the technology I was playing with today, at least, not from what I’ve seen so far.
As I finish, let me go back to my first point on full immersion and all things Disney. The Star Wars experience was at The Void, which is in Downtown Disney in Anaheim. So I had to venture over to the world of Disneyland today and although I didn’t actually go into any of the parks I still got to experience the genius that is the Disney behemoth. Downtown Disney is a pedestrian street that runs from some of the large Disney hotels to the theme parks and as you walk you are already getting sensory overload…the music, the sweet smells, the Disney Merchandise EVERYWHERE, the expensive food and the characters ready for a high-five or a cuddle. All my five senses being harnessed (or is that harassed?) and I haven’t even paid the $120 USD to walk through the gates (that is the price, I went and checked).
I hope that VR in education can, one day, provide that level of engagement and immersion. But it will never be a stand-alone experience. The classroom teacher will need to set the scene and do all the pre-teaching. They’ll have to get them ready for the magic.
And from what I’ve experienced the past two days…there’s magic everywhere, all that you imagine...hang on…they're the lyrics to that Disney song stuck inside my head. Thanks Walt.
