Better Ways of Looking at Virtual Reality in Education

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Hype about virtual reality is still building. It seems to be the “Little Future Idea That Could” – people want it to happen really, really, badly. But much of what we see is kind of gimmick-y at best. From my perspective, it seems that VR is suffering from the same problem that Second Life did: people are just trying to recreate the 2D web in 3D virtual spaces. Virtual Reality will require a new way of thinking about interaction and creation (among other concepts) to really become useful in any manner beyond a new way to play video games. The video above of ELEVR talks about their research in VR that really takes VR research into a more interesting realm. They are not looking at how to simulate the real world in VR, but how to create entire new experiences that give us new abilities of reason, communication, self expression, reflection, etc (to slightly paraphrase their words). Also note this statement: “these experiences are not reality, but they are real.” Too many projects focus on making VR more “reality,” while missing what makes them “real.” The whole video is very fascinating, especially when they get into using virtual reality to design spaces that make people think more complexly about how they categorize objects in real life. Along the same lines of re-thinking how we do VR – but serving as less complex way of realizing the ELEVR research – is the Google Blocks project which aims to re-imagine how we build 3D objects in a more intuitive way inside VR rather than on a 2D screen.

Will Augmented Reality Games Become a Trend?

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUQscPr8nM8

Those of you that are old enough to remember Laser Tag probably had an awesome childhood. Well, at least, if you got to play things like Laser Tag. Laser Tag is still around, of course, and there are other types of team competition sports like Nerf Gun Wars and Escape Rooms. The video above has been going around about an Augmented Reality group competition game in Japan. The video is intriguing, but the game itself is a bit hit and miss (of course, so were the commercials for Laser Tag). I would assume that, like Laser Tag, these Augmented Reality games need to be experienced to fully understand. But I like the idea – hope I get to try one some day myself. So here is hoping this becomes the next trend in group gaming. On the education side, it very possible to imagine someone creating educational games like this. Or creating online versions of these games for people to play with each other at a distance. I have been reading Daemon and Freedom™ by Daniel Squarez the past few months based on a recommendation from Amy Collier. Freedom™ especially adds a a layer of augmented reality into Suarez’s dystopian future that points to the ways that this kind of tech could be useful in real life (well, when not being used by an evil program to destroy humanity, that is). I highly recommend reading those books. Augmented Reality is expensive right now, of course, but will we see something like this take augmented reality mainstream? We shall see.

Facebook and Google Give Us a Glimpse Into the “Future” of Virtual Reality

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After much speculation as to what their Virtual Reality plans would be, Facebook finally announced what most assumed would be the answer: Facebook Spaces. The basic idea is that you recreate yourself as a cartoon and then connect with people in VR to interact, share VR experiences, and take VR selfies of, well, your cartoon you. Spaces seems to only work with Occulus Rift + Touch, and there is even a kind of cool but creepy VR camera you can look forward to bringing your messy bedroom or kitchen table into VR. Wonder how long until we see this camera on tele-presence robots? Or floating in the air training Jedis how to fight with light… or not. On the other side of the VR world is the release of Tabel by Google, an immersive VR movie. It sounds cool, but since it is only for Cardboard right now, I only get errors on my iPhone. Will VR make movies immersive? Hard to say. I could see people really wanting to watch something like Star Wars in VR, but it would be expensive to make a movie like that immersive while also basically keeping the focus on main narrative. Maybe it will lead to a different types of less linear movies like Tabel? Who knows. Maybe people won’t really care that much for it. But both projects reveal a future vision of VR that takes some part of everyday life (movies, video chats, event planning, etc) and makes them more immersive, 3-dimensional, and realistic. Well, depending on your feelings about cartoons without legs.

E-Tattoos Point to Another New Future of Computing

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Predicting the future is tricky business, but it is always interesting to see the ideas various people have. When looking at the “next thing” after smartphones, various predictions range from computers injected into our brains to flexible paper-thin devices. The one idea that seems to be the closest to practical application is the E-Tattoo. As you can see by the video, there are working models (unlike the computer in sheet of paper idea), and many people tend to be okay with the tattoo part (unlike inject-able computers – yikes!). Of course, currently there is nothing that is that spectacular about what these do, but the future could be different according to Chris Harrison at Carnegie Mellon University: “You’ll have these digital tattoo parlours which you can go to in 2050 and 5 minutes later you can walk out with the iPhone 22 on your forearm.” Well, let’s just hope that the iPhone 22 won’t just rub off in a few days, because I am pretty sure they will be just as expensive in 2050 as they are today.

Creating a Self-Mapped Learning Pathway

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One of the main questions I get asked about Learning Pathways design is “how do learners map their own pathways?” There really is no one tool that does everything that is needed (yet), so I have been considering how to use various tools combined to allow learners to self-map their own pathway, collect artifacts that demonstrate how they moved through their pathway, and then reflected on the choices that they made. This blog post explores at least one idea I have for that using Storify and Hypothes.is. This is just one idea I have – there are many other ways to do this. Maybe someday there will be a tool to make all of this easier. Until then, DIY options like this will work just fine.

Building Content in Virtual Reality with WebVR

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One of the biggest challenges with Second Life was the steep learning curve for learning how to build things. Sure, once you got the hang of it, it wasn’t that bad. But it took a while to get the hang of it. So this led many users to kind of feel stuck after they ran out of things to do if they weren’t willing to learn how to build things. Virtual Reality will probably have the same challenge, as just sitting and staring at stuff will get old fast. The Mozilla VR Team is already on a system that allows users to build VR content in a borwser, using existing browser tools (APIs, HTML, etc). One example of this is how the team built a Minecraft environment with the WebVR A-Frame kit. The magic of this A-Frame system is that it uses html code to build objects in virtual reality. You could write out your VR build in code if you wanted. But there are many other possibilities, including the ability to create applications that work on different devices.

The Next Frontier in Wearables is… Your Mouth?

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One of the biggest problems with voice-activated services – anything from Siri to Text dictation – is privacy. You don’t exactly want everyone in the room to hear your conversation with your significant other or your personal shopping list or whatever it might be. If you think the solution to that is mind-controlled technology, you are probably thinking too far in the future. Until then, humanity is probably left with more awkward solutions like HushMe – the “world’s first voice mask for mobile phones.” Yep, it is a muzzle-like device that fits around your mouth and claims to obscure your voice so that others can’t hear it. While you may balk at the look of it, I would be willing to bet that companies with remote work options will start requiring tools like this to protect privacy and trade secrets. It is usually these more awkward ideas that catch on than the more practical ones. Regardless of whether anyone wants one of these or not, I could also see the idea being integrated into full immersion VR headsets like the Feel Real Nirvana. Then implement Intel’s Merged Reality so that you can walk around in one of these masks – maybe make some models that look more like a Boba Fett helmet (or even maybe ones with interchangeable face-plates where you can 3D print a scan of your face for the front to really creep people out) – and VR will go mobile, immersive, and augmented. If you have ever dug into much Science Fiction, this is pretty much what most fancy futuristic helmets do anyways. We are just seeing the creation of that one part at a time.

Ready for Your Phone to Become a 3D Scanner?

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94ik3LeqLv8

Interesting speculation from AppleInsider that seems to point to a 3D scanner being part of a future iPhone. Even if it is not in the iPhone 8, we will probably ee this sooner rather than later. If virtual/augmented reality and 3D printing are already here, your phones will need to keep up. Facial recognition is probably the first thing that comes to most people’s minds, but other uses could be for augmented reality and object scanning. While it may be cool to scan things around you, copyright laws will have to adjust quickly or else we can all just start scanning and printing things in stores instead of buying. I would also assume privacy would be an issue, both from what your phone collects about you through scanning your face as well as from those that would adjust their phones to scan people in public. It sounds very convenient to be able to open your phone with just your face, but the flip side to that is hackers would just need to walk up to you while they are hacking your accounts and scan your face while you walk down the street. Takes the idea of personal firewalls to a whole new level, huh? Innovations like this are ones we need to get ahead of instead of playing catch up after people misuse them. The video above is of a different project, but looks at a more hopeful view of what smartphone 3D scanning would be like (as well as displays a possible copyright violation by scanning R2-D2).

Virtual Reality Companies Continue the March Towards “Full Immersion”

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIin6K_iNSA

Those of us that are old enough remember how movies went through an initial round of “full immersion” experiences – paper 3-D glasses, moving seats, and smell-o-vision. Now that Virtual Reality is catching on (or maybe it isn’t?), we now have companies working on full immersion VR. Smells, hot/cool winds, and vibrations are all part of that. Feel Real is offering an interesting all in one device, with a mask that attaches to existing VR devices and a full immersion helmet (all previewed in the video above). The scents cost $5 each (ocean? sure; burning rubber? no thanks), the attachable mask will cost $250-300, and the helmet will cost $500-800. Read Ready Player One to see where this is all probably heading. The Feel Real Nirvana helmet has some SciFi coolness to it, but still looks pretty impractical. My guess is that someday you will see this with a merged reality application to help you walk around more safely, and maybe even an internal camera that will project your face on the outside so that it will have business meeting applications or whatever it may be. The “2001 me” really loves this, but the “2017 me” worries about what could happen to people that could cut themselves off from the real world even more. But like any tech we need to look at ways to keep the human side of ourselves front and center. One plus for Feel Real is that they do have the production tools (mostly free with purchase for now) to add their technology easily to existing VR experiences, putting users more in control.

Second Life is Creating a “WordPress for Social Virtual Reality”

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75zNNO6SO7s

You probably did a double take at seeing “Second Life” in the headline. Believe it or not, Second Life is still going strong with 900,000 active monthy users and over $60 million in real cash income in world. But Second Life is still falling behind times, so its creators are moving into Virtual Reality. Sansar is a new project they are working on to allow every day users to create their own virtual reality world, connected by “teleportation” hubs (sound familiar?). Of course, it is still an expensive venture: users really need high end VR headsets, and this article mentions using things like LIDAR (laser radar basically) to scan and re-create rooms. Sansar is still pretty closed and basic, but they have plans to bring it to “everyone.” Well, “everyone” that can afford and understand it. Companies always seem to leave that out. However, the ideas are going in the right direction: recreate places in VR that would be hard to access, embed learning tools, let people use other 3D modeling programs to build objects, etc. The first minute 20 seconds of the video above is of Sansar in action, followed by a quick 30 second promo of “possibilities”, and then the rest is talk.