Oculus Launchpad Experience 0.2

Introduction

This past week has been full of research and planning. Research into finding an area of VR in education that I feel I can contribute something meaningful into, and planning on what team and pieces that are required to deliver a worthy prototype in 2.5 months.

Failure

I have been thinking on education in VR for quite some time. I have not built much beyond small WebVR and Unity experiments yet; but before I was accepted into this program I had tried applying for research grants to help move forward as building something like this on your own with minimal equipment and development support is difficult. I found out today that my efforts in convincing an large open-source granting committee to modestly fund some equipment purchases for multi-user VR were unsuccessful. Failure is something I am quite familiar with as I have taken to keeping a large gmail folder full of them to help offset their disappoint with a bizarre collection effort (gotta catch them  all!). It does become difficult to not see it as a signal that I am on the wrong path. Unfortunately there no feedback besides a “Dear John” letter; but even without their support I do feel with the right focus there is great potential here. One thought that helps is that through my many failures and knowledge within the art worlds is that good ideas are very much subjective. Success is often defined by the environment that cultures it, though we often forget this. Will have to do more research into finding the right balance.

Research

I have written a large literature review on the topic of VR/AR in education (hopefully published somewhere sometime soon); but everything in technology, and especially VR, moves so fast. I have been diving into numerous more recent papers on socialVR and trying as many experiences as I can to help refine my own ideas. I feel very close to the project clarity required; but there is also an element of unknown here that can only be answered by educated guesses that hopefully reveal a truth through iterative development processes. Laura Fryer, GM of Facebook Reality Labs, said during her talk to us a couple of weeks ago that [good] development is about creating as many evaluative “loops” as possible. This is easy to forget but will be especially important moving forward into the void.

Planning

I am happy that I have found a few people willing to help develop and advise the project. Many meetings this coming week to help shape what everyone is willing to contribute. I am just happy that I will likely not be alone in this as though I often work alone it will be important for the “loops” mentioned above that there are other voices and talents involved.

Content

This is very much a huge question mark; but I have started reaching out to scientists about telling a story about exceptional women in STEM – something I am passionate about and feel is very important. I am really hoping the astrophysicist I am talking to will accept! (fingers crossed).

Many more walks in the forest for this week …

Per aspera ad astra!

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