Author: Elliot

  • News from the VR Summit at the Games For Change Festival

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    Elliot

    Last week was the 2017 Games for Change Festival in New York City and for the first time, they had an entire day dedicated to virtual reality. The VR for Change Summit was a part of the conference showcasing VR experiences, research, and practices that center around socially relevant issues.…

  • Virtual Reality and its Educational Possibilities: Constructivist learning

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    Elliot

    Previously, I discussed how the use of virtual reality in education can increase students’ interest and engagement. Now that this fairly obvious statement has been made, we can move on to a second, more interesting point. Virtual reality allows for constructivist learning VR also provides an opportunity for constructivist learning,…

  • Google Expeditions, Project Tango, and WebVR, Oh My!

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    Elliot

    Recently I had the opportunity to share Google Expeditions with 12 high-schoolers in a summer tech camp. This is not the first time I’ve led a group through using Google Expeditions so I knew that there would probably be some technical glitches.  True to form, there were troubles for students…

  • Virtual reality and its educational possibilities

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    Elliot

    Virtual reality’s renaissance is now a little over a year and some months old. The 2016 releases of the Oculus Rift CV1, HTC Vive, and some say the years earlier release of the Google Cardboard, spawned a frenzy of speculation about the future. Education is a realm that is no…

  • zSpace: Another option for virtual learning

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    Elliot

    zSpace is a company that has quietly been spreading its influence in virtual learning and education. Recently I got to try it out again and I remember trying out their product about a year ago at a conference, being somewhat impressed but mostly distracted by the shiny new head-mounted-displays (HMDs)…

  • Unimersiv: VR Education App Hits and Misses

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    Elliot

    Unimersiv is one of the first VR-dedicated learning platforms that was released on Samsung’s Gear VR and the Oculus Rift. For some reason, I kept putting off my review of it for some time but now that its on Cardboard and Daydream I figured I’d better get on it. Overall,…

  • Tools for VR Creation in the Classroom

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    Elliot

    (An updated list of Web-based VR creation tools can be found here. ) As virtual reality continues its journey into the K-12 education sector, the idea of having students create their own experiences is becoming more realistic. Whether its annotating their own 360 pictures or developing custom interactive VR environments…

  • Google Earth VR on HTC Vive

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    Elliot

    Google Earth VR was recently released for the HTC Vive and it is one of the most appealing applications of VR I’ve seen. VR is often touted as the medium to allow you to go anywhere anytime and Google Earth VR has taken a giant step in that direction. Ben…

  • Microsoft Hololens’ Holotours: Making history come alive

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    Elliot

    If you haven’t seen Microsoft Hololens‘ Holotours (or a demo of it) you are missing out. Here’s a Youtube video from The Game Veda to give you an idea of  what lies ahead for virtual, augmented, and mixed reality. [embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ql5aWF0vURc[/embedyt] Let’s begin with the obvious. The immersive nature of…

  • Good News for Educators: Apple’s App Store has Google Expeditions and Cardboard Camera

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    Elliot

    In some long awaited news, Google has finally released Google Expeditions and the Cardboard Camera app on iTunes. Finally, what seems like a vast majority of public schools and their teachers can now access the wonders of virtual field trips. Yes, there are already apps like Nearpod that are out on…