Analysis of education content: Engage inImmersivevreducation
Intro.
I choose the company named Immersivevreducation. They created the many VR education contents such as Engage, Apollo 11, Titanic, Mars Curiosity, Medical Training simulator. Among those software, I pick the Engage software to write the whitepaper because it is the most well-made the software in their company contents. Also, it received the Award of Unity Finalist 2016. In the software, you can have virtual lecture and join the meeting with your friends. You can have a variety of interaction with your partner by using VIVE. As the technology is developing, the life pattern is also changed. In the future, our next generation would get a different education system. It is time to prepare for the future education because the VR education market would be expanded….
Background
The virtual reality is not only for the game steam. According to the lead developer in Immersivevredcuation, Mike Armstrong, motioned that VR is seeing as an extension of the games industry but actually there is so much more potential for how it can be used. It has lots of potential possibility in a different field. I agreed his statement. Particularly,among the many fields, the most valuable and possible cash cow in the future would be education. Since the education is related to the young generation, it is more careful to approach to expand the virtual reality education business. However, if we use the VR/AR properly, it would be a good tool to have the more efficient way to learn something, rather than the traditional and online learning system. Moreover, according to the statistics of Digi-Capital, the AR/VR could hit $150 billion in revenue by 2020, with AR taking around $120 billion and VR $30 billion.As comparing to current AR/VR statistics, which is 5 billion, it would be expanded 30 times. Many experts predict the education is one of the reasons why the market expand so much. Thus, we need to know how the VR education company approaches for the market and how they manage the killer VR education content.
Introduction
The company I pick up for VR education is Immersivevreducation. This is the new company for virtual reality educational content, which launched on 2014. However, their technology skills and potentials are infinity. First, if you go the website, we can see the Albert Einstein’s slogan, “I never teach my pupils, I only provide the conditions in which they can learn”. As the slogan appears, the company deny the conventional education system. And they have movement to aim the innovative education. They have five represented educational soft wares; Engage,Apollo 11, Titanic, Mars Curiosity, Medical Training simulator. These are different types of VR education content. In fact, many VR contents are used for the medical training, army training, school education purpose. The company explains the software that it is going to be extremely immersive and transformative the education. It is not what we have been traditionally doing. It is a new medium.Like Apllo 11, it redesigned the experience of the way educational content which delivered globally using virtual reality technology. Among these content, today I will focus on the software called Engage. It is communicative, teaching, learning. The reason why I research on this software is that Engage is new virtual reality learning platform by using Vive. It makes people more fun and interactive to learn something in the virtual environment. Let’s scrutinize the Engage software.
Concept
The company introduces the Engage as a communicative virtual reality platform. Engage is a free-to-use education and presentation platform, that seeks to transform how people share ideas and teach lessons. It has a tele-communicative function so that you can talk and write something in the virtual classroom. They believe that that makes the social and education aspect. The developer, Bobby Greaney, says, “If we could turn learning into a hobby,I think people are going to really enjoy engage. And then we also have our own education platform called Engage. Essentially Engage is a distance learning tool and that we can use to basically put educators and students together in the same room with digital representations of themselves so they can focus on sort of any topic that they want. We can have your teacher and students with you.” It seems the physical location is no longer need to have education experience. You
can make anywhere you go is immersive learning environment with VR.
Function/ Process
The engage provides a few functions of learning course as you can see the picture below (Figure 1). It has join a live lesson, start demo lessons, start class/ meeting and create a course.
Once you hit the button, it transforms you to there. For example, if you click the join a lesson and meeting, you can have your own presentation or live classroom as well (Figure 2).The lead animator, David Mcdermott explains that the lectures have a suite of tools where they can record, edit and publish their lecture. The platform allows educators to essentially put together a lesson with as much easier. They might put together a PowerPoint and the ideas they can take their own library of immersive effects. The Engage also allows educators to essentially bridge the gap for distance learning you get that sense of being in the same room. It is the key tools to make it interactive as possible and allowing the students to be able to communicate with each other.
Also, if you enter the virtual lecture, it shows the stimulation as same as a real lecture(Figure 3). The big surprise for me was that it shows the animation to use entire classroom because it is the virtual world. Dependent on following the professor’s lecture, the scene is changed. It is totally immersive and innovative to understand the contextual of the lecture.
Technology
The Engage needs to download their software and set up the library in the app. and your PC folder. It works Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. GearVR, PlayStation VR and Google Daydream. For the controller, they support HTC Vive controllers, Oculus Touch controllers, Xbox controller and standard Keyboard and Mouse. Unfortunately, it didn’t support on MAC because when they build up the software, they used Unity to create the scene, and lots of VR equipment are used by the PC. Thus,one pitfall is the compatibility with MAC.Also, they required to an internet connection to use Engage because you will meet and host the class meeting online. You can hold a private session and set the password to share with your friends. There are more technical questions and answers we provided.
I can’t seem to join any current classes or none appear in my join window?
Be sure to unblock Engage from any Firewalls you may have on your computer. If you’re running the software for the first time your Windows firewall may give a warning on your desktop display that is not visible in VR. You will need to allow Engage to connect to the internet to join other users.
Why do avatars and Audio seem choppy and repeat over and over?
This can be due to low bandwidth. If you are downloading/uploading large files or using torrents, please pause them and see if this resolves the issue.
What files can I stream over the network using Engage?
Engage supports public links from Microsoft One Drive, Dropbox,and YouTube. This allows you the freedom to stream most standard formatted files.
Conclusion
Overall, the Immersivevredcuation company is a great company in the field of education content. They nominated the Unity Finalist 2016. Their ideas and technologies are tremendous because they have big ambition. The motto they have aims to change the traditional education system to more innovative and immersive way. However, the most challenges they confront is that there are lots of hurdles to break the traditional education system. They say,“The changes of traditional institutions are difficult for us to convince educators saying yes. However, this is right step forward and that yes now is the right time to do it.”Moreover, the first reaction we want people to have is that I wish I had learned that way in school. They believe that this is going to make a positive impact for them and future students. Additionally, they comment that the best way to understand the content is to have experience of the Engage. I was fascinated to play with Engage software and seeing the future of education. I strongly believe that Engage in the Immersivevreducation would be developing faster and powerful education content in the future.
Reference
Bobby Greaney, David Mcdermott, Mike Armstrong,Immersivevreducationcompany,http://immersivevreducation.com/Digi-capital, Online IT magazinesite,http://www.digi-capital.com/news/2015/04/augmentedvirtual-reality-to-hit-150-billion-disrupting-mobile-by-2020/#.WFBcE-bhCM8