by Andrew Bell | Feb 8, 2017 | Immersive Technologies, Teaching and Learning
Come join us!
The CTLT will be hosting a Virtual Reality Open House in the Jepson C&P room on February 9th and 23rd from 1-4 pm. All on campus (faculty, staff, & students!) interested in virtual or augmented reality are invited!
During this open house you’ll have the chance to interact with new VR technology that uses positional tracking (which basically means it knows where you are in space) to mimic your movements in the virtual world. Our positional tracking device is called the HTC Vive and using it really gives you a sense of how powerful VR can be.
We in the CTLT believe in exploring emerging technologies that can create new educational opportunities. Positional tracking VR has the potential to pave many new avenues in learning and research here on campus. To help guide your journey, we’ve outlined a few different experiences to choose from.
Amulette (cinematic / storytelling)
- Described as the first VR masterpiece, this animated tale gives you a taste of how virtual reality creates new storytelling challenges and opportunities.
- http://www.penrosestudios.com
Destinations (presence / social)
- A promise of VR has always been to take you places you’ve never been. Destinations and Realities.io are apps that push the envelop of imaging technology to take you to far off places and allow you to experience medieval churches or mountaintops from the comfort of Jepson Hall.
- Destinations
Tilt Brush (Content Creation)
- Technological advancements are so important to the educational landscape because they create new opportunities that were never before possible, opening new avenues for educations to guide their students down. Tilt Brush is an app that creates a completely new opportunity: to create in virtual space. You can create paintings, sketches, buildings, even volcanos and then walk around and interact with them.
- Tilt Brush
- What’s the difference between a virtual experience and a real experience? As virtual experiences become more prevalent we must ask ourselves whats the difference between virtual and actual reality? Experience what virtual reality ping pong has to offer?
- Paddle Up
The Lab (gaming: bow and arrow)
- Let’s be honest, most content available on VR are games. This is probably one of the most fun. Protect your castle from stickman in this fantastic game from Valve.
- The Lab
Engage (virtual classroom)
- Have you ever been frustrated with the laws of nature when teaching in the classroom? Have you wanted to show a microscopic structure with your hands or demonstrate a dangerous interaction for your students? With virtual reality, there is potential to engage with your students in new ways. Just as a fair warning – this app is early in development but will give you a glimpse into the direction the field is going.
- http://immersivevreducation.com/engage/
Hope to see you at the open house!
by Andrew Bell | Jan 30, 2017 | Immersive Technologies
Doing Augmented Reality well is going to require significant improvements in optical technology.
I still think we are further away from a successful consumer product than most think.
Digital Storytelling with VR technology becoming mainstream. Google’s Virtual Reality Spotlight Story ‘Pearl’ Gets Oscar Nomination.
I highly recommend experiencing both “Pearl” and a short animated VR experience (it’s more than a movie) Allumette with the Vive. Both experiences give you a glimpse of how this new technology can be a beautiful storytelling tool.
Designing for Virtual Reality
Designing for virtual reality presents new challenges to a UX designer because good VR prioritizes presence over simplicity and function. How can we design for presence?
The devices that formerly relied on more external cues now rely heavily on how our minds are built and wired. Although user-experience designers have traditionally accounted for cognitive science in how they design mobile and desktop interfaces, the user-experience of virtual reality is different because it does not prioritize function but instead prioritizes displacement.
As a neuroscientist, I don’t know if I 100% agree with the author’s conclusions about the brain on virtual reality but I think they are onto something with how impactful sublime experiences are in VR (i.e. Google Earth).
Samsung on the Possibilities of VR in Education
An immersive experience in a virtual reality classroom, however, would be a fundamentally different proposition. The study of anatomy could go beyond frogs to embrace large mammals and even humans, whose computer-imaged insides could be examined in detail. (emphasis is mine)
I’m really looking forward to the day when we can start writing and reading articles that address actual VR education software/hardware instead of hypotheticals.
by Andrew Bell | Dec 1, 2016 | Uncategorized
My Thoughts
It’s hard to believe that the fall semester has come to a close. This semester has brought exciting VR developments to the University of Richmond. We’ve created a new VR@UR interest group, hosted VR technology open houses at our new VR space in Jepson, and supported a number of classes using Google Cardboard. I’m excited to get started on new projects and efforts for next semester. If you are interested in joining the VR@UR group and/or using VR technologies in the classroom next semester please get in touch: abell4@richmond.edu.
News
Using augmented reality technology to help train crime scene professionals
I suspect we will see more and more of these training/simulations initiatives as hardware devices (i.e. Hololens, Magic Leap) become more mature and ubiquitous.
Advocates cite research that shows virtual reality can push the boundaries of empathy and influence decision-making
While this article summarizes the research rather than actually reporting the data, it is a great summary of ways both content creators and distributors are experimenting with VR technology/content.
“Over the past two years, technology giants and Hollywood have poured millions of dollars into virtual reality in the hope that the medium will transform gaming and entertainment. But a growing crop of filmmakers, policymakers, researchers, human rights workers and even some law enforcement officials see a broader societal purpose in the emerging medium’s stunning ability to make people feel as if they have experienced an event firsthand.”
Want to Know What Virtual Reality Might Become? Look to the Past
Great look back at the technological and cultural driving forces that push innovators to develop new devices and experiences.
“Everyone knows the old saying “Necessity is the mother of invention,” but if you do a paternity test on many of the modern world’s most important ideas or institutions, you will find, invariably, that leisure and play were involved in the conception as well.”
by Andrew Bell | May 4, 2016 | URTechSavvy Podcast
At the most recent F8 Facebook conference, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced new initiatives for expanding internet access across the world saying “We stand for connecting every person, for a global community, for bringing people together, for giving everyone a voice.” In this episode of URTechSavvy Scott and I discuss the technologies behind what it means to be ‘connected’ but we also dive into the social and economical issues associated with having reliable, affordable internet. Enjoy!
LINKS MENTIONED DURING PODCAST:
Google Project Loon
Facebook F8 Projects
OneWeb
by Andrew Bell | Feb 24, 2016 | Teaching and Learning
A true paper/pencil replacement.
In a way, the original iPad started me on the road to a career in educational technology. I was in graduate school studying neuroscience when the original iPad came out. I could feel the potential the iPad had as a tool to optimize a workflow. Like many graduate students, I was struggling to manage all the research papers and study materal I was reading and was really excited about the iPad’s potential as a paper replacement.
My (very generous) PI bought me one and I’ll never forget my first impression. “Wow what a amazing device!!!” You could hold and touch the web, even a dozen binders papers in one hand! I knew I was holding a device that could change the educational/research landscape. In many ways the iPad has made a profound impact on many educational practices but in more ways the iPad has been severly limited by hardware constraints. It was too heavy, too thick, too slow, and had no way of replicating tried and true workflows like marking up papers or books.
Over the years, the iPad got better with the first three constraints: the iPad got lighter, thinner, and VERY fast. The iPad excelled at being a touch device. Steve Jobs famously said that if you need a stylus you were doing it wrong. And indeed, the styluses that worked with the iPad both passively or via bluetooth always produced a compromised product. The pen strokes were always too thick and palm rejection was never great. I must have tried a dozen styluses: from simple capacitive foam pens to the well reviewed Jot, Bamboo, and Paper bluetooth styluses. Never did I think it replicated the ease of using a pen and paper. I’ve had an iPad since the original one I could 5 years ago and I have used to for various purposes: reading, watching videos, playing games, surfing the web, taking Evernotes. It is particularly useful when travelling but in general the iPad stays in my bag for days without me reaching for it.
Enter the iPad Pro
As a technology consultant with the University of Richmond, we get to try out new technology and assess where the technology could fit within the university community. I’ve been using the iPad Pro for almost a month and feel confident in saying this device is a true paper replacement and fulfills what I had hoped the original iPad would be. This is due almost entirely to the $100 “pencil” that Apple has created specifically to work with the iPad Pro.
The Apple Pencil succeeds at what none of the third party styluses accomplished: near zero latency with a pen stroke and perfect palm rejection.
When you write with the Pencil the time the stroke takes to appear on the screen (the latency) is very fast. Though while very fast, there is a bit of lag but it doesn’t interfer with the process of writing. Never did I have to wait, even for a second, for the line to catch up with my Pencil tip. I can’t stress how much better the latency is compared to previous bluetooth styluses.
Palm rejection is important for a tablet to achieve because having inadvertent marks significantly increases frustration and reduces productivity. As I noted above, the Pencil paired with the iPad Pro has perfect palm rejection. Over the last month, I have never experienced a time where my palm caused the screen to add a mark I didn’t wish to be there.
The combination of near zero latency and perfect palm rejection results in a device that can actually function like a notebook and pencil. Pick it up, start writing, no annoying compromises…
Compromises
So maybe there are a few compromises. There is a certain satisfying tactile interaction between the tip of a pencil or pen with a paper surface. I didn’t realize how satisfying this was until I started using the Apple Pencil. While the Pencil feels like the “real deal” in many ways (weighted and sized well), the interaction of the plastic tip and the glass screen feels foreign. The tap tap tap of the plastic on glass when writing quickly sounds weird too. I wonder what the first humans to use a pencil and paper thought about their first experiences. I’m not convinced these odd sensations are “bad” but the unfamiliarity does subtract from the overall paper and pen replacement experience for me.
As I noted above, I love the design of the Pencil: it is weighted and sized well (it is slightly larger than most writing devices but I like it). However, there are a couple of issues I have with the hardware itself. First, unlike many styluses, there is no built-in way to erase. The back of the Pencil does not function as an eraser and there are no function buttons that can trigger the tip to become an eraser. In a way, the Pencil acts more like a pen in this regard.
Charging the device is a hiliarious endevour. In the most un-applely way, the Pencil charges by uncapping a male lighting port on the back of the Pencil and plugging into the female lighting port on the iPad Pro. It looks as ridiculous as it sounds. There are no battery indication on the Pencil itself (you get a battery % in your widget bar on your iPad though). That said, you can get a 30 minute life from just 15 seconds of charging and I haven’t had any issues of wanting to use the Pencil only to find it dead.
The size of the iPad Pro, while impressively thin and light, is still too heavy to use with one hand for prolonged times. In order to use this in the classroom, I’ve ordered a hand strap that will allow me to hold the iPad without have to rely on my fingers too much. This isn’t an issue when using the iPad on a desk but there were times when I was in the classroom, sitting in the chair or laying in bed where I just had to put down the device because my hand was getting tired. The strap really helped and I highly recommend it but fully anticipate Apple reduce weight with upcoming revisions.
The Display
So far I’ve focused on the Pencil in this iPad Pro review. And for good reason, I definitely think that the Pencil fulfills the iPad’s potential as a paper/pen replacement but the iPad Pro display is also an important part of the equation. Ask any print shop professional, size matters. The size of the iPad Pro is closer to the size of a regular 8 x 11.5 notebook page. This means when viewing a research article, the entire page can be viewed without having to zoom in/out constantly. This sounds like trivial but when you are grading/marking up dozens of assignments or journal articles, reducing the time required to read and mark up helps the experience greatly.
So while the size of the display greatly adds to the paper/pencil replacement theory I’ve been developing, it also adds an additional challenge to developers. Now in order to develop a universal app (one that works on both iPhone and iPad), they have to optimize their app to take advantage of the size of the iPad Pro. In some cases, this is trivial (see Microsoft Word) but in others the resulting apps look terrible (see Twitter). I’m sure this will be less of an issue as time goes on and many of my favorite apps have already optimized their apps (Explain Everything, Papers 3, Microsoft Word, Box, Lightroom , Pixelmator have all optimized their apps).
Conclusion
The combination of the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil creates, for the first time, a true paper and pencil replacement. While there are small compromises in the functionality of the pencil and weight of the iPad Pro, the accumlated effect of the fast latency of the Pencil, palm rejection, and size of the device makes the iPad Pro function as a paper and pencil extremely well. The resulting device can easily fit into and enhance many workflows found within the academic world. If interested in testing the device and seeing how it would fit into your workflow, contact your liaison or email me abell4@richmond.edu.
