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From Myths to Principles Part 4 Myth: Learners learn faster

From Myths to Principles: Navigating Instructional Design in Immersive Environments
Part 4 Myth: Learners learn faster

Credit: Burst and Canva

Dispelling Myths

With some background established on boom and bust cycles in the hype for immersive experiences (Parts 1, 2, and 3), we need to dismiss the rather rampant myths about learning within immersive experiences. In the hype, learning advantages have been overstated and over simplified. Web pages post outrageous claims (and I’ll show you!). Keynote presentations banty incredible promises (yup, it was recorded). This series addresses the four primary myths about learning within immersive experiences: that is, that it is faster, greater, active, and induces empathy.

In this Part 4, I’ll address the “learners learn faster in immersive experiences” myth. For those of you that follow my writing, you’ll know that this is Round 3 of me taking on this myth. My argument has not changed; remember this article series is an update, but not every point needs updating. However, I continue to communicate about this because the “VR learning is faster” myth continues to circulate– mostly in the reference to “4 times faster” and the PwC report. So, TLDR, the VR experience was designed to be 29 minutes long. That’s it. No longer. The classroom equivalent in content experience was designed to be 2 hours long. That’s it. 29 minutes is ¼ of 120 minutes. Someone inverted ¼ to 4x (which is factually true) and PwC who appears to have had a cozy contract with Oculus/Meta at the time, went out to trumpet the ‘four times’ from the rooftops. But students do NOT learn faster. They experienced a learning event that was designed to be faster. Had the learners spent 120 minutes in the headset, someone would have probably greedily snatched the headset off their heads and told them that they overstayed their welcome (and wondered what they were doing for the extra 91 minutes).

Myth: Learners learn faster in immersive experiences

The first myth asserts that learners learn faster with immersive experiences. Particularly, the phrase “four times faster” has taken root in the publications and in public discourse. A google search on the phrase “VR is 4 times faster” returns a plethora of results repeating the myth.

4x in the wild. And it’s not hard to catch, yo.

The source of this phrase is suggested to be one non-peer reviewed industry report by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Within the report, VR-based learning was “4x faster than classroom training on average” (Eckert & Mower, 2020, p. 8). The results of this report were then repeated in academic literature.

Do not make pie graphs that do not add up to one whole thing.

Referring to the same report, D. Clark (an educational researcher not known for getting data wrong, but he did) wrote enthusiastically that “VR was x4 faster than classroom and x1.5 faster than e-learning” (2021, p. 190). Claims that learning is completed faster attempt to represent immersive experiences as a more efficient learning method, i.e., less time to learn equals learning faster.

Tracking down how many academic papers have cited the PwC report is difficult. I’ve seen numbers as little as 4 citations and much higher numbers if I start flexing my search. Part of the problem is that folks have not cited the report (even though it calls itself a study) correctly. Some credit PwC, a few find the Eckert and Mower authors, but in general the hand wave approach to referring to the 4x data is very prevalent.

The cause of this supposed faster learning was attributed to how a VR headset isolates the learner’s perception, so that the learner is focused on the learning task at hand. In other words, less distraction equals more focus. In the PricewaterhouseCoopers report, Likens seemed to hypothesize that, “A lot of courses that normally take an hour could be completed in 20 minutes through VR because people are so immersed in scenarios, there are fewer distractions and the learning is very concentrated” (Zielinski, 2021, para. 10).

To be clear, in the PwC case, classroom learning which covered the same content was designed to take two hours to complete. The immersive experience was designed to take 29 minutes. Given that 29 minutes is approximately one-quarter of two hours, PwC inverted the time ratio and touted the line that the immersive learning was four times faster. The problem is that it is not true that learning in the immersive experience was faster. The VR-based learning took less time because it was designed to be a 29-minute one-on-one learning experience designed for a shorter total time duration. When compared to classroom learning, it is already known that one-on-one personalized learning is generally faster; it moves at the speed of the learner, not at the speed of the class. Perhaps, this is how myths begin. A kernel of truth gets extended to something with no context. Lack of context is a noted and rising problem in educational research (Williamson, 2024).

Learning faster can be confused with greater efficiency. Efficiency could have a wide range of meanings beyond just taking less time. It could also mean wiser use of resources or less teaching burden on the instructor. Another example of the loose wordplay is on an industry webpage that displayed that VR training was 50% faster than a traditional in-person medical simulation. Not stated in the distilled summary of that study is that learners scored worse in the VR training than the traditional in-person medical simulation (Katz et al., 2020).

If faster equals worse performance, this might not be the efficiency that educators are looking for.

The myth that learning happens faster continues when educators fail to acknowledge that a different instructional method was being used. When supporting using virtual reality for chemistry studies, Muhsinah Morris, a chemistry professor and metaverse program director at Morehouse said “You can’t see molecules, but in my virtual reality classroom where I taught advanced inorganic chemistry, you can. You can actually build three-dimensional representations of molecules … The learning tends to happen faster. They go on to the real situation faster.” (D’Agostino, 2022, para. 5).

Side point: Learning Chemistry in Three Dimensions

Since this is my publishing space, I am going to spend some time on Mushinah Morris’ instructional and learning point here. Again, I was involved in the online teaching of chemistry for 14 years and my research speciality was science in VR, so I’ve got thoughts. If you would like to see her talk on video on this, she’s here in this video published by VictoryXR.

She is correct that molecules cannot currently be seen in everyday life. It makes chemistry, as a field, a more abstract or conceptual field along with physics when compared to the “you can see it before you” fields of biology or earth science. Teaching that something unseen exists and engages in reactions has always been the uphill battle of chemistry teachers. So she’s describing an accurate problem.

There is a tiny fly in the ointment, however, in that not many students at the college level fall into a chemistry course completely unfamiliar with chemistry at all. So learners in college chemistry probably were exposed to atoms in some other prior learning experience, be it high school, a museum, or a summer-camp like situation. So do her students need to learn atoms from the very beginning? I somewhat doubt that.

HCHE Advanced Inorganic Chemistry

To massively further complicate her argument, she names and shows her chemistry course “Advanced Inorganic Chemistry”. That’s HCHE 421 at Morehouse University, which in 2021 had a prerequisite:

HCHE 322 Elementary Physical Chemistry, which itself has 3 prerequisites:

CHE 321/321L, Elementary Physical Chemistry and Lab (which has 4 prereqs: CHE 232, PHY 154, and MTH 161 and 162)

PHY 253 Electricity & Magnetism, which has 2 prerequisites: PHY 154 (C or better) and MTH 162

MTH 271 Introduction to Linear Algebra, which has 1 prerequisite: MTH 161

You see where I’m going here. It’s highly doubtful that students arriving in an advanced chemistry class after what is years at college, whose content focus is actually math (that’s what inorganic focuses on) and not spatial abilities (which arguably organic chemistry DOES focus on) have a substantial problem with visualizing atoms and molecules to the point where it is disturbing their learning performance. And therefore VR could make a difference. No. Not buying it.

Covered in the mentioned course’s lab. That’s math, yo.

Nonetheless, I’ve known very smart and exposed people have trouble visualizing atoms. So it IS remotely possible and let’s pretend she is articulating only the beginning of the trouble of understanding for a lay crowd…not the only problem. Said another way, she’s speaking about VR’s affordances overall, maybe not specifically for her students in her aforementioned class. For example, some chemical reactions are easy to understand (like cooking) and some are difficult to understand (like how hair coloring works or cell electrical potentials).

It is interesting that she said “The learning tends to happen faster.” It’s a couched statement, for sure, with the word “tends”. In science that cannot be pinned down. So she gave herself an out. But what was she describing? At this point, we have to think about the instruction of chemistry.

How To Show Atoms and Molecules

Within the history of chemistry itself is the continuing saga of how will atoms be depicted? As in, how do you draw them? How are they really? And how does a teacher relay that ‘realness’ to the learners– and why?

So we’ve had our:

Atoms are indivisible tiny units, folks. Thank you to the Greeks! There are no pictures from that time.

We’ve had Bohr’s heliocentric-like model folks wherein the atom looks like a solar system or set of concentric rings. To be fair, the heliocentric model really does help explain things like electron energy levels.

We’ve had our Thomson plum pudding folks– which never translated from its culture. Which is probably a shame. I like plums.

We’ve had our ‘cloud model’ folks – which are like the postmodern philosophers of chemistry. Truth for me, truth for you, we all get a truth, which isn’t true. But they told us that electrons cannot be pinned down and measured, they could be anywhere at any time but when we set about measuring them, that’s when they run away from us. Yes, I’m nodding to Heisenberg here. And wave/particle theory.

After the heliocentric model, however, depictions of atoms needed to be displayed as three-dimensional, not just as two-dimensional on flat paper. By far, I’ve only selected some of the atomic model theories here. If you want to know more, study chemistry! It’s not hard.

But, now, going against Mushinah Morris’ arguments now, educators HAVE been working on that educational problem for years (with success, mind you).

First of all, delightful molecular (and atom) kits exist with physical manipulatives. Yeah, they look like tinker toys. I love them. They are good for at least 30 minutes of instruction, maybe more. They are usually plastic (boo, although there is nothing stopping them from being made of wood) and the kits would have to be purchased, stored, and de-germed from time to time. So they have their minor downsides.

Second of all, 2D screens can show 3D objects…that’s entirely possible.

Third, programming VR to follow mathematical principles – like, voila, chemistry DOES!– is actually not that hard. The first uses of VR in education that I know of were in the “physical”—that is mathematical sciences, physics and chemistry. Let’s face it. A computer understands 9.8 meters per second per second MUCH easier than a person does. (<- that’s one gravitational force).

And get this, purchasing a simulation to teach atoms is so drop-dead cheap that it’s actually free by now. I have recommended those simulations for courses before and seen learning scores do quite well, thank you.

Looks pretty 3D to me

I seriously bet that if I had been able to place that counter proposal before her administrators, I’d win the budget proposal. Ha! Bonus points that I could prove that my students would score equally to her VR students on the final exam.

So in all, did she make a good point here? I’d say no but that’s because I recognize the instructional problem and I realize that the problem can be solved in a much cheaper and equally as efficient way. Also, she showed no data that “the learners learned faster”.

Side point to the side point: Mushinah Morris on YouTube is highly associated with VictoryXR, the vendor that she is using when referring to her VR-for-education accomplishments. Close association with XR vendors makes for suspicious conclusions. I’m not picking on Mushinah Morris unfairly. She’s gone on the record multiple times for her claims. I could easily pick (and will in the future) other education influencers that are selling the VR-for-education snake oil.

Back to my article

Further, there is at least one study (so far!) that refutes this focusing-causes-faster-learning claim. Makransky, Terkildsen, et al. (2019) found that immersive metaverse environments could be sensory overload for learners and therefore decrease the learner’s focus. On the whole, claims for increased speed can often be attributed to more efficient instructional methods. Immersive experiences can allow for the utilization of comparatively faster instructional methods.

The author finds this myth, that immersive experiences cause learners to learn faster, false. (more…)

November 12, 2024
From Myths to Principles Part 3 The Case Against Virtual Campuses

From Myths to Principles: Navigating Instructional Design in Immersive Environments
Part 3 The Case Against Virtual Campuses

Virtual Campuses: 2010 and 2023. Not much has changed; they still don’t work.

I write this title with a tinge of irony. I’ve owned virtual campuses. I’ve worked on virtual campuses. If asked to work on a virtual campus again, I’d likely say yes. So what’s my beef with virtual campuses?

I feel that a sober-eyed look at virtual campuses* is necessary.

Following the philosophy of ““those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (Santayana), here is Part 3 of my series: From Myths to Principles; Navigating Instructional Design in Immersive Environments.

The rise and fall of the metaversity

In Part 2 of this series,I examined two examples from the history of immersive learning. First, I showed the parallels when companies like Meta and Linden Lab dominate a single platform for immersive learning designs. The lesson is that what is allowed one day can quickly become disallowed the next day. Second, I pointed out the inappropriate boasting and poor course design used in the “first course in virtual reality” by Stanford University. In these recent cases (Meta and Stanford University) there was a remarkable lack of awareness of the history of immersive learning. Said another way, mistakes of the past were repeated.

In another example of history repeating itself, ten colleges and universities adopted digital twin campuses in June 2022 using the ENGAGE platform with monetary support and donated VR headsets from Meta (Koenig, 2022). These metaversity locations recreated (or created!) campus buildings to allow learners to gather on the virtual campus.

Eight years prior, Second Life (SL) campus buildings were “designed to mimic real-world architectural equivalents” but had become “abandoned ghost towns” (Wecker, 2014).

The early Second Life virtual campus creations were often the result of student projects. Confusingly, the professors who designed and assigned these projects touted the work of creating faithful campus recreations as creative and thus, at the highest level of Bloom’s cognitive learning objectives. I’m inserting a heavy eye roll here because that’s really stretching the justification of working in virtual reality to an extreme point. Plus, I have to point out: what does next year’s class build if this year’s class made the campus? My point is that simply building campus buildings (so that you can have a virtual campus!) is a project idea that runs out of steam. Things got really interesting right after the SL virtual campuses were launched. Everyone involved noticed that the spaces were not being utilized.

Students were asked why they weren’t visiting the virtual campus.

The answer was simple.

No one was there.

You see, you could have the most amazing design with all of the bells and whistles (really!), but if people were not there, then people found that there was no compelling reason to return. Admissions folks had no compelling reason to be in the virtual admissions building, same for financial aid teams. Even library teams today in virtual reality struggle to staff spaces with the same spread as IRL (in real life) libraries.

During a recent tour of the University of Maryland Global Campus metaversity campus, the audio connection failed. The host did not offer any tech support. The experience showcased empty buildings during what was a busy time of the academic semester. To be fair, I understand the implications of FERPA which might have predicted that students were in classroom spaces separate from public spaces. However, it is logical that on any campus, students could still be found in public space buildings like the networking lounge. These accurate campus recreations rarely spur more than a passing interest to learners.

The ten colleges and universities in this project are now facing the end of the project and the initial funding is ending. Steven Van Hook commented that, “Administrators may speak of their twin campuses in glittering terms on the record –then off the record talk about their regrets and what else they could have bought for the hundreds of thousands of dollars” (VWBPE, 2024). According to Temple University’s Kathy Hirsh Pasek, “A year ago, a lot of companies were going full steam ahead. Today’s that’s not true; they’ve rerouted a lot of their funds for AI and Twitter alternatives” (Coffey, 2023, para. 37) Institutions made the decision to adopt immersive experiences but do not appear to know how to make wise decisions when generous funding stops and societal attention moves on.

The key problems

Therefore, throughout these first three parts of this series, there are several challenges apparent. Instructional designers and administrators must wade through the myriad of claims derived from dubious research studies. It feels like chicanery to figure out which statements about immersive experiences for learning are authentic and do point the way to future positive outcomes and which statements are in doubt. The first issue is with interpreting research wisely. Every research study has inherent flaws; no one study can definitively provide answers to all of education’s questions. This situation is made worse when the research is translated into social media and seems to tout incredible claims (Lanier et al., 2019).

Therefore, the conundrum has been illuminated. The myths that appear to come from a research basis must be dispelled. Next, the very basis of the published research record is at risk of bias and problems. This series will inform on what characteristics to look for in published research. Finally, if one were to step around the research interpretation problems, what is the system for building and using immersive experiences for its best advantage? This series will attempt to answer these questions. This series then forms the navigator role for instructional designers and administrators figuring out how to chart a route to a successful implementation.

Post Script

*virtual campuses

I’m using the term virtual campuses to specifically refer to real work recreations of campus spaces like quads and lecture halls. I am not referring to simulations (for example in science courses) or spaces specifically designed for social use (for example, dance halls).

Virtual campuses were designed as early as 1999 as text-based educational MUVEs (multi user virtual environments). This example classroom shows “the room’s description, list of contents, who is in the room, the exits, and links to applications” (Maher, et al., 1999).

Technically, ‘Nobody else is here’ might have been foresight.

The metaversity concept is not to be confused with metauniversities, which are global collaborating universities (Costanza, et al., 2021). It appears as though the metaversity term became popular in 2021 and the company ENGAGE is not the only entity to claim it.

Coffey, L. (2023, July 11). “Metaversities” face virtual learning’s financial reality. Inside Higher Ed | Higher Education News, Events and Jobs. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-innovation/teaching-learning/2023/07/11/metaversities-face-virtual-learnings-financial

Costanza, R., Kubiszewski, I., Kompas, T., & Sutton, P. C. (2021). A global metauniversity to lead by design to a sustainable well-being future. Frontiers in Sustainability, 2, 653721.

Koenig, R. (2022, June 6). With Money From Facebook, 10 Colleges Turn Their Campuses into ‘Metaversities.’ EdSurge. https://www.edsurge.com/news/2022-06-01-with-money-from-facebook-10-colleges-turn-their-campuses-into-metaversities

Lanier, M., Waddell, T. F., Elson, M., Tamul, D. J., Ivory, J. D., & Przybylski, A. (2019). Virtual reality check: Statistical power, reported results, and the validity of research on the psychology of virtual reality and immersive environments. Computers in Human Behavior, 100, 70–78. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2019.06.015

Maher, M. L., Skow, B., & Cicognani, A. (1999). Designing the virtual campus. Design Studies, 20(4), 319-342.

Wecker, M. (2014, April 22). What ever happened to Second Life? Chronicle Vitae. https://chroniclevitae.com/news/456-what-ever-happened-to-second-life

#VirtualCampus #edtech #VirtualUniversity

This article is simultaneously posted to LinkedIn and to my blog. My copyrights are retained. This article cannot be used to train AI.

(more…)

November 4, 2024
From Myths to Principles Part 2 The Immersive Environment Delusion
From Myths to Principles: Navigating Instructional Design in Immersive Environments

Part 2: The Immersive Environment Delusion

Image: Me and Copilot working on this using the article title, The Computer Delusion but making it personal, jazzy, and teal.

In Part 1, we introduced this new series, From Myths to Principles: Navigating Instructional Design in Immersive Environments. This is an update from my 2022 series.

In this Part 2, we’re going to go through some backstory showing the educators in Second Life was the first wave of hype for using immersive environments and we’ll look at one recent example from Stanford University with their “Virtual People” course.

Here we go!

History repeats itself

The history of educational technology is a rhyme that repeats. Initial pitches have created optimism that the next big thing in technology will revolutionize education. Oppenheimer (1997) in a really well written article illustrated part of the history of educational technology by citing four examples:
1. Edison’s 1922 prediction that the motion picture will revolutionize education.
2. Levenson’s claim that radios will become common in every classroom.
3. Skinner asserted that learners with teaching machines could learn twice as much.
4. Clinton campaigned that computers are a bridge to the twenty-first century. (para. 1)
The motion picture, the radio receiver, programmed instruction, and computers in the classroom have all failed to significantly impact learner performance. The past 102 years have not been kind to hyped educational technology predictions.
I can hear you through the nether.
There are some saying “But the metaverse is different!”
Sit down. 👈😠
I’ll deal with you soon enough.

Cuban (1986) further suggested that this educational technology adoption cycle follows a predictable pattern. First, the earliest research will be produced by the technology producers themselves. Second, problems arise with adoption. Learner performance does not improve over the long term. The final stage in the cycle is blame-finding with reasons ranging from not enough money, educator resistance, and educational systems resistant to change. The methods and reasoning for incorporating the technology are rarely addressed in the historical or market record. The reader of this series might recognize these statements already being made about immersive experiences. As such, hype cycles for immersive experiences are already underway.

This last point deserves emphasis. Here are the steps again:

1. Tech producers make the first “research”.
2. Tech adopted, but learner performance does not improve long term.
3. Blame-finding ensues.

I wanted to emphasize these points because they are going to appear in the research record that I will present.

Boom and bust cycles

Immersive experiences have already weathered several boom and bust cycles. One cycle began between 2003 and 2009. The desktop-based virtual reality program called Second Life, created by Linden Lab, attracted over 100 universities (Brown & Sugar, 2009) and thousands of dollars of investment (Wecker, 2014).

In a sudden decision, Linden Lab eliminated its 50% discount for educational institutions (Harrison, 2010). What resulted was an educator exodus and fracture in the faith of immersive experiences for education. When referring to the shutdown of Woodbury University’s virtual campus for breach of conduct, Jordan Bellino, a senior learner at the institution, described the hazard when one major company dominates use:

The incident suggests the dangers of online meeting spaces’ being run by companies, which get to decide who participates and who doesn’t. “It took years and thousands of dollars to make that virtual campus happen,” he said, “and it all vanished in a matter of an hour because Linden Lab pushed a button.” (Young, 2010, para. 12)

Major technology companies can single-handedly dictate use of immersive environments. This would be a valuable lesson lost before the next boom cycle began in 2018.

First course in virtual reality

After the launch of the consumer-oriented Quest headsets and the mandate for remote learning due to the COVID pandemic in 2020, interest in immersive environments surged. In June of 2021, Stanford opened their Virtual People course to 263 learners (Bailenson, 2021).

Source: https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2021/11/new-class-among-first-taught-entirely-virtual-reality

Source: https://www.scrippsnews.com/us-news/education/stanford-virtual-reality-class-puts-students-in-metaverse

The course was touted to be the first class in the world to be held inside of virtual reality (Hadhazy, 2021) which seemed to cast aside the nearly two-decade deep body of research on courses held as immersive experiences. The prestige of the course was further hyped when one of the course professors boasted:

I can now stand up in front of all my students and there’s, you know, two hundred in the class, and I can say you will actually have a better chance of getting a job in the Valley because of taking this class because as of about a year ago, the most sought-after job in the Valley went from a data scientist to a VR engineer. (Bellini, 2024, para 12)

The VR-based learning resulted in greater presence, enjoyment, motivation, and transfer (Han & Bailenson, 2024). However, within the course, all was not well. Video clips from the class showed learners struggling to control their avatars (Bailenson, 2021) and attending class just to stand around in circles (Bellini, 2021).

(In case video does not display, it’s here: https://youtu.be/gOLI_OIV3nc?si=jv2LF-d4Dz8sIZsf)

In spite of the boasting, published reports illuminated problems with onboarding learners to the VR headset experience, unexpected software updates, and sudden platform shutdowns (Han & Bailenson, 2024).

The instructional design was described as learning by doing, but the syllabus showed a majority of outside-of-virtual-world writing and quiz items. Within the immersive environment, there were required weekly discussion sessions (Han et al., 2022) and one project where learners could import 3D (three-dimensional) objects to make a unique VR environment. My translation? That’s not much doing, actually, as it relates to being a “virtual person”.

Much to the professors’ astonishment, one group of learners made a mock fake moon landing production set (Brown et al., 2023). For the course instructors, this suddenly raised the specter that immersive experiences can create false depictions or fake memories, a topic that will be revisited in the ethical labyrinths section of this series.

In Part 3, I’ll share another example of boom and bust from the immersive environments-for-education market.

Post-publication edit:

They say there is no editor like the “Publish” button and that makes me laugh because you DO spot errors after something has been published. But in this case, it’s not an error that I want to address, I want to add more depth and context to this post. Since it’s my blog, I can. This work was previously planned to be a book chapter and as such, I held my tongue on some of my more pointed criticism and images. But here, I can lay out things more directly.

Directly I am pointing to the Communication 166/266:Virtual People course as a poor design from an instructional designers point of view. I have studied the syllabus and read several articles and watched videos produced about the course. You can read the syllabus.

What I can’t find is how many credits the course was. Just guessing from the workload in the syllabus, I’d guess 2 credits. Could be 3 but it also could be 1. I severely doubt it’s 4.

Where do I get the platform to critique this course?

1. I have 14 years full time experience teaching online. Until ~2034, there are very few that can match me with that kind of full time teaching experience. Now Bailenson’s class was arguably not “online” by definition (it happened in June 2021 or so and that would be post-shutdown), but it appears to have happened entirely remotely with the exception of picking up the headsets. So I can claim some expertise about what SHOULD happen with digital-based instruction.
2. My doctorate is in Instructional Design specifically *for Online Learning*. So I’ve spent my time focusing on that.
3. My research focus was and is learning in immersive environments (hence this article series).
4. Uniquely, I ALSO taught a course using the Meta Quest 2s which had a similar “survey” type of design. So what Bailenson did by visiting topics each week briefly is NOT part of my critique.

Three things are my main concerns here:
1. Video clips show a ridiculous amount of on-boarding malarkey. Said another way, bringing learners into a 3D environment, not acclimating them to this and then bringing in various models and just letting the users play is nice for an introduction. It does NOT make a course and certainly it does not argue for a widespread use of the technology.

I’m sure that in one version of the video, I could hear learners over and over again gathered in small groups supposedly “doing” something in VR only to hear “can anyone hear me?” as a COMMON statement. Take my word for it; a class filled from beginning to end with learners not being able to hear or be heard does not count for much learning.

My point: there isn’t evidence that anything other than some “visits” to VR happened. And yet, over and over, this flagship course (my phrase) has learners that can’t walk, wave, or follow instructions and (I guess) hear instructions. After week one, the learners *should* be on-boarded, all practiced up and ready to do harder things. ‘Just walk over here for a group photo’ should not feel like an instructionally-impossible task– and the videos sure do make it look like it was.

(I had to giggle because in that “all class” photo, there is one avatar in 2D (not in a headset, because they don’t have hands and their movement is all 2D-type) and they are the only one that looks “logical” in their behaviors.)

2. Bailenson really shows his excitement (in the somewhat unprofessional video) but also the “un-put-togetherness” of this experience with the quote I provided:

I
can now stand up in front of all my students and there’s, you know, two
hundred in the class, and I can say you will actually have a better
chance of getting a job in the Valley because of taking this class
because as of about a year ago, the most sought-after job in the Valley
went from a data scientist to a VR engineer. (Bellini, 2024, para 12)

I find it VERY hard to believe that this one course at the 100 and 200 level will lead for a number like 200 new VR engineer’s getting jobs in “the Valley”. Insert hard eyeroll here. 🙄 It looks extra bravado-y when he phrases it as “I can now stand up” as if he’s really planning to do this or HAS done it. It’s a brag. No humble about it. Last I checked, the Valley wants to hire computer scientists, who should be in calculus class at the same time as this headset romp. Fact check: The Valley has been laying off VR teams. So how’s that ‘better chance of getting a job’ brag going for ya?

3. The learn-by-doing quote gets under my skin as an instructional designer. Learn WHAT by doing WHAT, in this case? His students had to use pre-existing 3D models included in the ENGAGE platform (OK, fine– but note that I didn’t see ANY examples of models beyond ones we’ve already seen in ENGAGE advertising) to build a scene that was basically their final project.

(Again, disclosure: my students final project was a video mock-up of an immersive experience that they would design, if they could. The course taught no programming skills.)

So OK, it’s fine that learners can’t program after 1 course. Totally understood. But then the learners put together a final project scene that sounds like Bailenson’s team spit out their coffee over…J. Brown source described the team experience as, “jarring” and wanted to coin a new phrase, “mis-experience.” What the phrase? Garbage in, garbage out? You don’t design a compelling course and the results surprise you? Sigh.

It appears that they took the “made lemonade from lemons” approach. Note that I haven’t mentioned ANYTHING about comparative learning outcomes related to this heralded course. Because there isn’t any data on that. Not like there should be, but the research is remarkably silent on that.

Also fact check on this: the Meta Quest 2 headsets are officially OUT of support and sale from Meta. So they are, as of this writing, outdated. I wonder how it’s going over there at Stanford. Do they just ring up Mark and ask for 266 more headsets in the Meta Quest 3 type now?

I haven’t mentioned much, (actually I left it OUT), how much ENGAGE got free advertising from this mess. That’s because they are really the main characters in the NEXT episode.

References

Bailenson, J. M. (2021). Stanford “Virtual People” class in the metaverse. [Video.] YouTube. https://youtu.be/gOLI_OIV3nc?si=if6DbOX43GESWTBd

Bellini, J. (2021, December 7). Stanford virtual reality class immerses students in metaverse. Scripps News. https://www.scrippsnews.com/us-news/education/stanford-virtual-reality-class-puts-students-in-metaverse

Brown, A., & Sugar, W. (2010). Second life in education: The case of commercial online virtual reality applied to teaching and learning. Themes in Science and Technology education, 2(1-2), 107-115.

Brown, J., Bailenson, J., & Hancock, J. (2023). Misinformation in virtual reality. Journal of Online Trust and Safety, 1(5).

Cuban, L. (2001). Oversold and underused: Computers in the classroom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.

Hadhazy, A. (2021, November 5). Stanford course allows students to learn about virtual reality while fully immersed in VR environments. Stanford Report. https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2021/11/new-class-among-first-taught-entirely-virtual-reality

Han, E., & Bailenson, J. N. (2024). Lessons for/in virtual classrooms: designing a model for classrooms inside virtual reality. Communication Education, 73(2), 234-243.

Harrison, D. (2010, November 3). Linden Lab to end Second Life educational discounts. THE Journal. https://thejournal.com/Articles/2010/11/03/Linden-Lab-To-End-Second-Life-Educational-Discounts.aspx?Page=1

Oppenheimer, T. (1997, July). The computer delusion. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/07/the-computer-delusion/376899/

Wecker, M. (2014, April 22). What ever happened to Second Life? Chronicle Vitae. https://chroniclevitae.com/news/456-what-ever-happened-to-second-lifeYoung, J. (2010, April 21). Woodbury U. banned from Second Life, again. Chronicle of Higher Education. Wired Campus. https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/woodbury-u-banned-from-second-life-again

(more…)
October 6, 2024
From Myths To Principles: Navigating Instructional Design in Immersive Environments Part 1 Introduction

From Myths to Principles: Navigating Instructional Design in Immersive Environments

Part 1 Introduction

This article begins a new series where I intend to continue to bust myths related to learning in immersive environments while also advocating for research-based decisions related to instructional design.

Now if that sounded like gobbly-gook, this might not be the series for you. But, for anyone with an interest in virtual worlds, the metaverse, or even a simple 2D simulation and the uses of these for education, this is the RIGHT place for you.

This is an updated version of my original 8-part Instructional Design in the Metaverse series. (Did you miss that? Here’s my 3 minute explainer video.) I estimate that I have at least 15 parts right now to start this series and new research comes in every day. However, this being my blog, I intend to spill a little more tea here than I do in other places.

Buckle up buttercups!

(more…)

October 2, 2024
Total Solar Eclipse 2024 Observations, Heuvelton NY
Credit: NOAA, GOES East Satellite image, 2024 April 08, 19:20 UTC. Source: 20240991920_GOES16-ABI-FD-GEOCOLOR-5424×5424.jpg

A total solar eclipse occurs on any given spot on the planet once every 375 years.

I am honored and blessed that I was inside totality right from my front yard.

Preparations

Preparations began with me realizing that the path for totality for this solar eclipse was going to come directly over my home. So I didn’t need to make any plans for travel.

Map: Path and Visibility, April 8, 2024, Total Solar Eclipse Source: https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/globe/2024-april-8

I purchased “VisiSolar Solar Eclipse Glasses Made in USA Pack of 1 CE ISO Certified NASA…” from Walmart.com for $7.99 on March 11, 2024. Later on the day of my online order, Heuvelton Free Library announced that they were giving away eclipse glasses for free. 😖 Bummer. Actually, I don’t have a final positive opinion about these flimsy glasses. I found the view to be less detailed than what I saw through welder’s glass. However, they WERE a bit easier to finagle over my smartphone camera lens for a photo.

Test photo the day before the eclipse:

Yup, the sun is out there.

We were forecast for ~ 2 minutes and 59 seconds of totality.

The following Detailed view of timing is from Time and Date.com and I did not review it in advance of this writing. It’s already interesting that some of my observations match up. The times look a little off, but I couldn’t get more exact on the location with Time and Date.

These predicted details were correct in that the moon moved from the lower right to the upper left in apparent view across the sun at my location. (Some video shots from astronomical equipment reverse up and down).

Fortunately, St. Lawrence County Chamber of Commerce put out a detailed timing list and I was able to note it for my location. This was VERY helpful and I scribbled it on a post-it that I kept in my pocket to remind me of official start and end times.

I had also heard that welder’s glass or a welder’s helmet would be OK for viewing the eclipse. As a blessing, Dad and more likely, my Grandpa left a welder’s mask in my barn workshop that I dusted off and tested beforehand. I thought that worked out very well, you can even see details of my house in the photos I took with it…although taking photos was a struggle to get it the camera inside the face mask.

One more prep that I did was to decide to do the NASA Globe Observer app eclipse temperature observations. So I purchased a special digital wired thermometer for that (it’s in the photos) but I found it to be a constant nuisance because the readings were different from each other (inside and outside) and that should not be happening when the entire unit is in the same air — outside! Grr. I thought the readings were consistently 0.4 degrees off, but that was not true as they did fluctuate. I brought out 3 more thermometers just to guess who was reading what temperature correctly. We were advised in the Globe Observer eclipse training to NOT depend or use a weather app for the temperature. I would verify that that was good advice as the weather app didn’t update, I think, anywhere near as dynamically as the temperature did change. At some points, I had more than 1 degree air temperature change inside of 5 minutes.

The Globe Observer app also collects cloud observations, mosquito habitat mapping, land cover, and tree observations. I took several cloud observations during the event. NASA should email me later to let me know if they can calibrate my “ground truthing” photos of the clouds with a GOES Satellite overhead. I also took one land cover measurement to show my thermometer, as per the eclipse suggested protocol.

I chose to stick with the Globe Observer app and temperature readings because I could do those even if we had cloud cover. I was tempted to try the SunSketcher app which was designed to try and capture Baily’s Bead photos. But the app wasn’t ready until late before the eclipse (just a few days before?) so I wasn’t logged in and ready like I was with NASA Globe Observer.

The National Weather Service in Burlington sent out a Tweet that high clouds were moving in but that thicker clouds around Buffalo might not make it into the North Country before totality.

Everyone west of the Adirondacks and north of the Jefferson county line started to hold our breath. There was one reply tweet offered a helpful maneuver:

Partial Eclipse

After a hurried lunch, I set up my camping chair, telescope (hopeful that I could see the comet during the eclipse), binoculars (I am experienced at how to safely use binoculars during a solar event), water, notebook, pen, thermometers, and nervous chocolate (no shame). I realized at that point that the Globe Observer wanted one to start 2 hours before. It had actually jingled my phone and I ignored it. Oops. So I was a little late on that start time.

IMAGE: photo of my air temperature reading setup.

2:09 First cloud observation, overhead. Yeah that’s my finger. These are raw photos, yo.

2:11 Birds and bugs all behaving normally.

2:16 Took first bite photo through welder’s mask. Notice that you can see the house and trees.

2:18 Attempted same photo with flimsy glasses over smartphone camera. You can see the “bite” better.

2:45 Clouds moving in, light breeze.⛅🍃

2:51 Cool enough to put on a long sleeve shirt.

2:53 ~50% of sun covered. Last temperature reading switched from “outside” to “inside” as it calibrates to 2 other thermometers. (The outside temperature only matched 1 other thermometer.)

2:55 Can’t barely see sun at all with cloud cover. Merlin 🐦 flying around.

2:59 Eclipse progresses.

3:02 1/4 of sun left, filtered light. Distinctly cooler and darker.

3:04 Indirect photo with binoculars, and there’s my notes!

3:05 chatted with neighbor. I mentioned my nervousness over how dark it’s going to get. He said his outdoor light had already gone on and off once. He mentioned that it felt quieter.

3:09 Chickadee came by for a drink. This photo shows that it was still remarkably light out for 12-14 minutes before totality.

3:12 Bird activity: Chicadees and robins.

3:15 More sun crescents with the indirect binoculars method

3:16 Flimsy glasses but you can see that it is a sliver of sun

3:17 Feels darker – like wrong weird dark.

3:20 Clicking sound from the ground- like a temp drop. Mosquitos eating. Darker, heavy clouds but still can see a shadow.

3:22 Sky colored, reddish, gray.

Totality

The darkness approached fast. I took photos as what looked like a sudden storm bank.

3:23 I grabbed my camera as the darkness approached. I could hear my neighbors who were at most 4 houses west starting to whoop and holler. I had time to get these 7 next photos almost in serial fashion in one minute.

Something’s coming.

The photos are getting blurry b/c I was taking them as fast as I could and the low light conditions were forcing me to hold the phone still. I like the way the clouds look “fingery”– like a dark hand was reaching out.

Distinctly scarier now. Folks are yelling.

My camera time stamps this as still 3:23, so according to the prediction, this is Diamond Ring.

Light dropped by the second.

Street light on!

3:24 Quick into darkness.

Could see. Not “thick” darkness.

Neighbor called out “We survived!” and laughed.

Looking southeast. Sorry that this is blurry. Again the “low light” indicator was forcing a slow take and I was clicking so quickly.

Looking east

East north east

Looking northeast

North

I don’t know why the photos improve but it probably was a combo of me slowing down and the street light shining more brightly (as it warms up).

West

3:25 Then, even though I said I wouldn’t, the conditions were safe and I walked out into the street.

3:26

That’s an amazing shot (above) for on wide-angle.

Ugh. Zooming in does NOT help.

Here comes the daylight, racing back to us.

One robin kept singing the whole time.
Could see the horizon of light around us.

Temp dipped ~10 degrees in total (Fact check: It was 12.1 degrees total). It read the 40s on one thermometer on the ground.

Neighbors were whopping it up, I took photos, the sun looked lovely as a ring in clouds!

Partial Eclipse Again

Right after, Blue Jays calling a lot. Also could hear: mourning doves, robins, starlings, dogs barking.

3:32 light feels back to normal, can see shadow, sliver of sun back

3:37 same light cracking sound from surface of the ground, not deep. No observed problems with birds.

3:38 Merlin flying again, seemed to call to its mate.

3:42 Still enough sun to see a shadow. Mosquitoes are bad– hovering! Have to move away.

3:49 50% of light of sun showing now. Lots of things already back to normal. Temp is rising significantly now.

Cheap glasses did not go through the clouds as well as the welder’s glass or more truthfully, the cheap glasses blocked more.

Didn’t move thermometer. Wore long underwear — glad I did if only against the mosquitos.

I didn’t expect that “feeling the shadow” would feel so small– you could see out of it to the horizon nearly the entire time.

3:55 60% of the sun back.

3:56 small airplane (prop plane), direction south, another small airplane direction SW

4:00 another attempt with the flimsy glasses

4:02 more sunshine, but cloud thickness has felt the same since the thicker clouds moved in.

4:04 Distinctly brighter now, 75% of sun back.

4:06 birds seem all normal– so unusual calling for the time of day. (I don’t know what I meant there)

4:07 another jet leaving

4:12 junco came nearby. Cloud over the sun is thicker with fingers over it, as viewed through the welder’s glass.

4:18 (drew picture)

4:20 Thick cloud moved in to cover sun.

4:27 another 2 small planes: 1st to the south and lower altitude, 2nd to the SW and higher altitude

Rich folk who flew in for the event?

A third! South.

4:30 A fourth.

4:32 Sunshine! Breaks in clouds!

4:36 Local forecast end of time of eclipse. Clouds observed with mottled pattern. (drew picture)

5:15 been raking and moving leaves from spring cleaning. No unusual worm data. 🙂

5:21 Sun coming out strong now. Fully sunny in a cloud break.

5:45 Stopped observations (this was more than 2 hours after totality). Very sunny now with Cirrus clouds.

Temps were up and down due the sun, clouds, and wonky thermometer that I fought most of the time.

Thermometer set up at the end, showing 62.3 in outdoor (air level) and 59.0 at indoor (ground level)

Thoughts

I’ll note one strange observation. I did hear a cracking or crackling
sound lasting 2-3 seconds coming from the ground BEFORE (3:20pm ) and AFTER (3:37pm) the eclipse. Totality was timed for 3:25 for my location (but we were in diamond ring at 3:24). So ~5 minutes before and ~12 minutes after peak totality this sound happened. The list from Time and Dates predicts that “animals and nature affected by falling levels of light”. It was very faint and it sounded like the
cracking sound a metal roof makes when heating up or cooling down. But
the sound was coming from dry leaves on the ground, not from under the
ground. It last long enough that I could turn my head around and hear
it distinctly. I could not determine if it was just the decrease in
light causing the leaves to cool and crackle (which is what I thought at
the time) or if the slightest of breezes skirted the ground.

I was ever so thankful that my neighbor and his kids
were outside in their yard through the event because I was nervous. Not
“the apocalypse is going to happen” type of nervous. Don’t be
ridiculous! I am a follower of Jesus so apocalypse are not outside of my understanding but God works in a much more sneak
attack manner than a predictable eclipse. My type of nervousness was
more like “how dark is it going to get? Deep dark? Plunge into
never-ness dark?” I could not picture how we get from cloudy to dark.

In the end, it swept over–just like those plague scenes from Exodus movies.

Right
as totality started and we “winked” into deep twilight (that’s how dark
it was), my neighbor shouted “We survived!” with laughter. At that
moment, I thought of all of the folks hiding underground in the first
days of the Ukraine war, or of family members staying close to each
other in Gaza and I thought “Yeah, we humans, we survive. We survive
because we stick together.” I’ve often wondered that if I was one of
those people stuck in those situations, if I’d have the guts to sing. I
think I’d want to sing. Just to be defiant and to show hope. Just to
show, even if it was with my last breath, that evil doesn’t have me. It
was very emotional for me. I didn’t come down off the adrenaline until
about 7 p.m. last evening.

However, to
keep myself calm and focused (and admittedly, I probably looked like a
proper dork 🤓 walking around with a notebook and pen), I did citizen
science all through the event with our 90% but translucent cloud cover,
with the NASA Globe Observer app, taking temperature readings (there was
a 12.1 degree Fahrenheit drop, see below) and observing changes in
nature (birds, insects, light, wind, etc.).

While
no animals (besides humans 😜 ) behaved strangely DURING the eclipse,
one robin sung all the way through (my spirit animal?) and it’s wasn’t a wrong or forelorn song. It was just his song– like what he would sing at daybreak. After the
eclipse, several birds, robins, mourning doves, starlings, blue jays,
and the local merlins, seemed to do a repeat “morning cacophony” like
they were re-finding each other.

Here were my temp readings:

Seeing the comet was a bust but I’ll say I would NOT have had enough time even if I had my wits about me. I haven’t seen the comet and getting the telescope onto something takes 5 minutes in the best of times.

In sum

In conclusion, I reached first for the words glorious, biblical, and scary/creepy. I can understand how this event would have frightened people not knowing what it was because you didn’t get the feeling that something weird was happening until just 3-5 minutes before totality started.

The eclipse did have a feeling to it. It’s not pure science. It shook me. I spent some time contemplating these Bible verses:
- Clouds and darkness surround him; he rules with righteousness and justice. Psalm 92:7He tore the sky open and came down, with a dark cloud under his feet. 2 Samuel 22:10
- He tore the sky open and came down with a dark cloud under his feet. Psalm 18:9
- But the people continued to stand a long way off, and only Moses went near the dark cloud where God was. Exodus 20:21
I’ve been re-watching scenes from Gods and Kings by Christopher Nolan and I find that I’m liking that movie more each time — despite others’ objections (and my own). A good old fashioned epic, sweeping “you are about to get spanked, bad guy” movie hits the spot sometimes. The speed of this eclipse which was the speed of earth?, the moon? was breathtaking. It just reminds you how quickly something can happen. And this was just the dance of the sun and moon. There are bigger things in the universe.

It reminded me that God’s power supreme, awesome, and not to be messed with. These two celestial bodies, the sun and moon, obey HIS rules. That’s entirely why this prediction of when a total eclipse of the sun would happen worked. 😏
April 9, 2024
Total Solar Eclipse 2024 Observations, Heuvelton NY
Credit: NOAA, GOES East Satellite image, 2024 April 08, 19:20 UTC. Source: 20240991920_GOES16-ABI-FD-GEOCOLOR-5424×5424.jpg

A total solar eclipse occurs on any given spot on the planet once every 375 years.

I am honored and blessed that I was inside totality right from my front yard.

Preparations

Preparations began with me realizing that the path for totality for this solar eclipse was going to come directly over my home. So I didn’t need to make any plans for travel.

Map: Path and Visibility, April 8, 2024, Total Solar Eclipse Source: https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/globe/2024-april-8

I purchased “VisiSolar Solar Eclipse Glasses Made in USA Pack of 1 CE ISO Certified NASA…” from Walmart.com for $7.99 on March 11, 2024. Later on the day of my online order, Heuvelton Free Library announced that they were giving away eclipse glasses for free. 😖 Bummer. Actually, I don’t have a final positive opinion about these flimsy glasses. I found the view to be less detailed than what I saw through welder’s glass. However, they WERE a bit easier to finagle over my smartphone camera lens for a photo.

Test photo the day before the eclipse:

Yup, the sun is out there.

We were forecast for ~ 2 minutes and 59 seconds of totality.

The following Detailed view of timing is from Time and Date.com and I did not review it in advance of this writing. It’s already interesting that some of my observations match up. The times look a little off, but I couldn’t get more exact on the location with Time and Date.

These predicted details were correct in that the moon moved from the lower right to the upper left in apparent view across the sun at my location. (Some video shots from astronomical equipment reverse up and down).

Fortunately, St. Lawrence County Chamber of Commerce put out a detailed timing list and I was able to note it for my location. This was VERY helpful and I scribbled it on a post-it that I kept in my pocket to remind me of official start and end times.

I had also heard that welder’s glass or a welder’s helmet would be OK for viewing the eclipse. As a blessing, Dad and more likely, my Grandpa left a welder’s mask in my barn workshop that I dusted off and tested beforehand. I thought that worked out very well, you can even see details of my house in the photos I took with it…although taking photos was a struggle to get it the camera inside the face mask.

One more prep that I did was to decide to do the NASA Globe Observer app eclipse temperature observations. So I purchased a special digital wired thermometer for that (it’s in the photos) but I found it to be a constant nuisance because the readings were different from each other (inside and outside) and that should not be happening when the entire unit is in the same air — outside! Grr. I thought the readings were consistently 0.4 degrees off, but that was not true as they did fluctuate. I brought out 3 more thermometers just to guess who was reading what temperature correctly. We were advised in the Globe Observer eclipse training to NOT depend or use a weather app for the temperature. I would verify that that was good advice as the weather app didn’t update, I think, anywhere near as dynamically as the temperature did change. At some points, I had more than 1 degree air temperature change inside of 5 minutes.

The Globe Observer app also collects cloud observations, mosquito habitat mapping, land cover, and tree observations. I took several cloud observations during the event. NASA should email me later to let me know if they can calibrate my “ground truthing” photos of the clouds with a GOES Satellite overhead. I also took one land cover measurement to show my thermometer, as per the eclipse suggested protocol.

I chose to stick with the Globe Observer app and temperature readings because I could do those even if we had cloud cover. I was tempted to try the SunSketcher app which was designed to try and capture Baily’s Bead photos. But the app wasn’t ready until late before the eclipse (just a few days before?) so I wasn’t logged in and ready like I was with NASA Globe Observer.

The National Weather Service in Burlington sent out a Tweet that high clouds were moving in but that thicker clouds around Buffalo might not make it into the North Country before totality.

Everyone west of the Adirondacks and north of the Jefferson county line started to hold our breath. There was one reply tweet offered a helpful maneuver:

Partial Eclipse

After a hurried lunch, I set up my camping chair, telescope (hopeful that I could see the comet during the eclipse), binoculars (I am experienced at how to safely use binoculars during a solar event), water, notebook, pen, thermometers, and nervous chocolate (no shame). I realized at that point that the Globe Observer wanted one to start 2 hours before. It had actually jingled my phone and I ignored it. Oops. So I was a little late on that start time.

IMAGE: photo of my air temperature reading setup.

2:09 First cloud observation, overhead. Yeah that’s my finger. These are raw photos, yo.

2:11 Birds and bugs all behaving normally.

2:16 Took first bite photo through welder’s mask. Notice that you can see the house and trees.

2:18 Attempted same photo with flimsy glasses over smartphone camera. You can see the “bite” better.

2:45 Clouds moving in, light breeze.⛅🍃

2:51 Cool enough to put on a long sleeve shirt.

2:53 ~50% of sun covered. Last temperature reading switched from “outside” to “inside” as it calibrates to 2 other thermometers. (The outside temperature only matched 1 other thermometer.)

2:55 Can’t barely see sun at all with cloud cover. Merlin 🐦 flying around.

2:59 Eclipse progresses.

3:02 1/4 of sun left, filtered light. Distinctly cooler and darker.

3:04 Indirect photo with binoculars, and there’s my notes!

3:05 chatted with neighbor. I mentioned my nervousness over how dark it’s going to get. He said his outdoor light had already gone on and off once. He mentioned that it felt quieter.

3:09 Chickadee came by for a drink. This photo shows that it was still remarkably light out for 12-14 minutes before totality.

3:12 Bird activity: Chicadees and robins.

3:15 More sun crescents with the indirect binoculars method

3:16 Flimsy glasses but you can see that it is a sliver of sun

3:17 Feels darker – like wrong weird dark.

3:20 Clicking sound from the ground- like a temp drop. Mosquitos eating. Darker, heavy clouds but still can see a shadow.

3:22 Sky colored, reddish, gray.

Totality

The darkness approached fast. I took photos as what looked like a sudden storm bank.

3:23 I grabbed my camera as the darkness approached. I could hear my neighbors who were at most 4 houses west starting to whoop and holler. I had time to get these 7 next photos almost in serial fashion in one minute.

Something’s coming.

The photos are getting blurry b/c I was taking them as fast as I could and the low light conditions were forcing me to hold the phone still. I like the way the clouds look “fingery”– like a dark hand was reaching out.

Distinctly scarier now. Folks are yelling.

My camera time stamps this as still 3:23, so according to the prediction, this is Diamond Ring.

Light dropped by the second.

Street light on!

3:24 Quick into darkness.

Could see. Not “thick” darkness.

Neighbor called out “We survived!” and laughed.

Looking southeast. Sorry that this is blurry. Again the “low light” indicator was forcing a slow take and I was clicking so quickly.

Looking east

East north east

Looking northeast

North

I don’t know why the photos improve but it probably was a combo of me slowing down and the street light shining more brightly (as it warms up).

West

3:25 Then, even though I said I wouldn’t, the conditions were safe and I walked out into the street.

3:26

That’s an amazing shot (above) for on wide-angle.

Ugh. Zooming in does NOT help.

Here comes the daylight, racing back to us.

One robin kept singing the whole time.
Could see the horizon of light around us.

Temp dipped ~10 degrees in total (Fact check: It was 12.1 degrees total). It read the 40s on one thermometer on the ground.

Neighbors were whopping it up, I took photos, the sun looked lovely as a ring in clouds!

Partial Eclipse Again

Right after, Blue Jays calling a lot. Also could hear: mourning doves, robins, starlings, dogs barking.

3:32 light feels back to normal, can see shadow, sliver of sun back

3:37 same light cracking sound from surface of the ground, not deep. No observed problems with birds.

3:38 Merlin flying again, seemed to call to its mate.

3:42 Still enough sun to see a shadow. Mosquitoes are bad– hovering! Have to move away.

3:49 50% of light of sun showing now. Lots of things already back to normal. Temp is rising significantly now.

Cheap glasses did not go through the clouds as well as the welder’s glass or more truthfully, the cheap glasses blocked more.

Didn’t move thermometer. Wore long underwear — glad I did if only against the mosquitos.

I didn’t expect that “feeling the shadow” would feel so small– you could see out of it to the horizon nearly the entire time.

3:55 60% of the sun back.

3:56 small airplane (prop plane), direction south, another small airplane direction SW

4:00 another attempt with the flimsy glasses

4:02 more sunshine, but cloud thickness has felt the same since the thicker clouds moved in.

4:04 Distinctly brighter now, 75% of sun back.

4:06 birds seem all normal– so unusual calling for the time of day. (I don’t know what I meant there)

4:07 another jet leaving

4:12 junco came nearby. Cloud over the sun is thicker with fingers over it, as viewed through the welder’s glass.

4:18 (drew picture)

4:20 Thick cloud moved in to cover sun.

4:27 another 2 small planes: 1st to the south and lower altitude, 2nd to the SW and higher altitude

Rich folk who flew in for the event?

A third! South.

4:30 A fourth.

4:32 Sunshine! Breaks in clouds!

4:36 Local forecast end of time of eclipse. Clouds observed with mottled pattern. (drew picture)

5:15 been raking and moving leaves from spring cleaning. No unusual worm data. 🙂

5:21 Sun coming out strong now. Fully sunny in a cloud break.

5:45 Stopped observations (this was more than 2 hours after totality). Very sunny now with Cirrus clouds.

Temps were up and down due the sun, clouds, and wonky thermometer that I fought most of the time.

Thermometer set up at the end, showing 62.3 in outdoor (air level) and 59.0 at indoor (ground level)

Thoughts

I’ll note one strange observation. I did hear a cracking or crackling
sound lasting 2-3 seconds coming from the ground BEFORE (3:20pm ) and AFTER (3:37pm) the eclipse. Totality was timed for 3:25 for my location (but we were in diamond ring at 3:24). So ~5 minutes before and ~12 minutes after peak totality this sound happened. The list from Time and Dates predicts that “animals and nature affected by falling levels of light”. It was very faint and it sounded like the
cracking sound a metal roof makes when heating up or cooling down. But
the sound was coming from dry leaves on the ground, not from under the
ground. It last long enough that I could turn my head around and hear
it distinctly. I could not determine if it was just the decrease in
light causing the leaves to cool and crackle (which is what I thought at
the time) or if the slightest of breezes skirted the ground.

I was ever so thankful that my neighbor and his kids
were outside in their yard through the event because I was nervous. Not
“the apocalypse is going to happen” type of nervous. Don’t be
ridiculous! I am a follower of Jesus so apocalypse are not outside of my understanding but God works in a much more sneak
attack manner than a predictable eclipse. My type of nervousness was
more like “how dark is it going to get? Deep dark? Plunge into
never-ness dark?” I could not picture how we get from cloudy to dark.

In the end, it swept over–just like those plague scenes from Exodus movies.

Right
as totality started and we “winked” into deep twilight (that’s how dark
it was), my neighbor shouted “We survived!” with laughter. At that
moment, I thought of all of the folks hiding underground in the first
days of the Ukraine war, or of family members staying close to each
other in Gaza and I thought “Yeah, we humans, we survive. We survive
because we stick together.” I’ve often wondered that if I was one of
those people stuck in those situations, if I’d have the guts to sing. I
think I’d want to sing. Just to be defiant and to show hope. Just to
show, even if it was with my last breath, that evil doesn’t have me. It
was very emotional for me. I didn’t come down off the adrenaline until
about 7 p.m. last evening.

However, to
keep myself calm and focused (and admittedly, I probably looked like a
proper dork 🤓 walking around with a notebook and pen), I did citizen
science all through the event with our 90% but translucent cloud cover,
with the NASA Globe Observer app, taking temperature readings (there was
a 12.1 degree Fahrenheit drop, see below) and observing changes in
nature (birds, insects, light, wind, etc.).

While
no animals (besides humans 😜 ) behaved strangely DURING the eclipse,
one robin sung all the way through (my spirit animal?) and it’s wasn’t a wrong or forelorn song. It was just his song– like what he would sing at daybreak. After the
eclipse, several birds, robins, mourning doves, starlings, blue jays,
and the local merlins, seemed to do a repeat “morning cacophony” like
they were re-finding each other.

Here were my temp readings:

Seeing the comet was a bust but I’ll say I would NOT have had enough time even if I had my wits about me. I haven’t seen the comet and getting the telescope onto something takes 5 minutes in the best of times.

In sum

In conclusion, I reached first for the words glorious, biblical, and scary/creepy. I can understand how this event would have frightened people not knowing what it was because you didn’t get the feeling that something weird was happening until just 3-5 minutes before totality started.

The eclipse did have a feeling to it. It’s not pure science. It shook me. I spent some time contemplating these Bible verses:
- Clouds and darkness surround him; he rules with righteousness and justice. Psalm 92:7He tore the sky open and came down, with a dark cloud under his feet. 2 Samuel 22:10
- He tore the sky open and came down with a dark cloud under his feet. Psalm 18:9
- But the people continued to stand a long way off, and only Moses went near the dark cloud where God was. Exodus 20:21
I’ve been re-watching scenes from Gods and Kings by Christopher Nolan and I find that I’m liking that movie more each time — despite others’ objections (and my own). A good old fashioned epic, sweeping “you are about to get spanked, bad guy” movie hits the spot sometimes. The speed of this eclipse which was the speed of earth?, the moon? was breathtaking. It just reminds you how quickly something can happen. And this was just the dance of the sun and moon. There are bigger things in the universe.

It reminded me that God’s power supreme, awesome, and not to be messed with. These two celestial bodies, the sun and moon, obey HIS rules. That’s entirely why this prediction of when a total eclipse of the sun would happen worked. 😏
April 9, 2024
Total Solar Eclipse 2024 Observations, Heuvelton NY
A total solar eclipse occurs on any given spot on the planet once every 375 years. I am honored and blessed that I was inside totality right from my front yard.

NOAA, GOES East Satellite image, 2024 April 08, 19:20 UTC. I was right in the middle of that black spot.

Preparations

Preparations began with me realizing that the path for totality for this solar eclipse was going to come directly over my home. So I didn’t need to make any plans for travel.

Map: Path and Visibility, April 8, 2024, Total Solar Eclipse

I purchased the “VisiSolar Solar Eclipse Glasses Made in USA Pack of 1 CE ISO Certified NASA…” from Walmart.com for $7.99 on March 11, 2024. Later on the day of my online order, Heuvelton Free Library announced that they were giving away eclipse glasses for free. 😖 Bummer. Actually, I don’t have a final positive opinion about these flimsy glasses. I found the view to be less detailed than what I saw through welder’s glass. However, they WERE a bit easier to finagle over my smartphone camera lens for a photo.

Test photo the day before the eclipse:

Test photo of placing flimsy “eclipse glasses” over my smartphone camera lens.

Yup, the sun in out there.

We were forecast for ~2 minutes and 59 seconds of totality.

The following Detailed view of timing is from Time and Date.com and I did not review it in advance of this writing. It’s already interesting that some of my observations match up. The times look a little off, but I couldn’t get more exact on the location with Time and Date.

These predicted details were correct in that the moon moved from the lower right to the upper left in apparent view across the sun at my location. (Some video shots from astronomical equipment reverse up and down).

Fortunately, St. Lawrence County Chamber of Commerce put out a detailed timing list and I was able to note it for my location. This was VERY helpful and I scribbled it on a post-it that I kept in my pocket to remind me of official start and end times.

I had also heard that welder’s glass or a welder’s helmet would be OK for viewing the eclipse. As a blessing, Dad and more likely, my Grandpa left a welder’s mask in my barn workshop that I dusted off and tested beforehand. I thought that worked out very well, you can even see details of my house in the photos I took with it…although taking photos was a struggle to get it the camera inside the face mask.

One more prep that I did was to decide to do the NASA Globe Observer app eclipse temperature observations. So I purchased a special digital wired thermometer for that (it’s in the photos) but I found it to be a constant nuisance because the readings were different from each other (inside and outside) and that should not be happening when the entire unit is in the same air — outside! Grr. I thought the readings were consistently 0.4 degrees off, but that was not true as they did fluctuate. I brought out 3 more thermometers just to guess who was reading what temperature correctly. We were advised in the Globe Observer eclipse training to NOT depend or use a weather app for the temperature. I would verify that that was good advice as the weather app didn’t update, I think, anywhere near as dynamically as the temperature did change. At some points, I had more than 1 degree air temperature change inside of 5 minutes.

The Globe Observer app also collects cloud observations, mosquito habitat mapping, land cover, and tree observations. I took several cloud observations during the event. NASA should email me later to let me know if they can calibrate my “ground truthing” photos of the clouds with a GOES Satellite overhead. I also took one land cover measurement to show my thermometer, as per the eclipse suggested protocol.

I chose to stick with the Globe Observer app and temperature readings because I could do those even if we had cloud cover. I was tempted to try the SunSketcher app which was designed to try and capture Baily’s Bead photos. But the app wasn’t ready until late before the eclipse (just a few days before?) so I wasn’t logged in and ready like I was with NASA Globe Observer.

The National Weather Service in Burlington sent out a Tweet that high clouds were moving in but that thicker clouds around Buffalo might not make it into the North Country before totality.

Everyone west of the Adirondacks and north of the Jefferson county line started to hold our breath. There was one reply tweet offered a helpful maneuver:

Partial Eclipse

After a hurried lunch, I set up my camping chair, telescope (hopeful that I could see the comet during the eclipse), binoculars (I am experienced at how to safely use binoculars during a solar event), water, notebook, pen, thermometers, and nervous chocolate (no shame). I realized at that point that the Globe Observer wanted one to start 2 hours before. It had actually jingled my phone and I ignored it. Oops. So I was a little late on that start time.

My air temperature reading setup. It’s a top-down angle. Sorry about that. This collects two readings: one at the sensor propped ~4″ above ground level (that’s the 66.3°F showing here) and one reading at the unit itself at ground level (that’s the 65.1°F showing here). So that’s an inherent four degree difference from the still cold spring ground and the air temperature. Both reading are in the shade.

2:16 Took first bite photo (see the lower right of the sun) through a welder’s mask. Notice that you can see the house and trees.

2:18 Attempted same photo with flimsy “eclipse glasses” over smartphone camera. You can see the “bite” a little bit better.

2:45 Clouds moving in, light breeze.⛅🍃

2:51 Cool enough to put on a long sleeve shirt.

2:53 ~50% of sun covered. Last temperature reading switched from “outside” to “inside” as it calibrates to 2 other thermometers. (The outside temperature only matched 1 other thermometer.)

2:55 Can’t barely see sun at all with cloud cover. Merlin 🐦 flying around.

2:59 Eclipse progresses.

3:02 1/4 of sun left, filtered light. Distinctly cooler and darker.

3:04 Indirect photo with binoculars, and there’s my notes!

3:05 chatted with neighbor. I mentioned my nervousness over how dark it’s going to get. He said his outdoor light had already gone on and off once. He mentioned that it felt quieter.

3:09 Chickadee came by for a drink. This photo shows that it was still remarkably light out for 12-14 minutes before totality.

3:12 Bird activity: Chickadees and robins.

3:15 More sun crescents with the indirect binoculars method

3:16 Flimsy glasses but you can see that it is a sliver of sun

3:17 Feels darker – like wrong weird dark.

3:20 Clicking sound from the ground- like a temp drop. Mosquitos eating. Darker, heavy clouds but still can see a shadow.

3:22 Sky colored, reddish, gray.

Totality

The darkness approached fast. I took photos at what looked like a sudden storm bank.

3:23 I grabbed my camera as the darkness approached. I could hear my neighbors who were at most 4 houses west starting to whoop and holler. I had time to get these 7 next photos almost in serial fashion in one minute.

Something’s coming

The photos are getting blurry b/c I was taking them as fast as I could and the low light conditions were forcing me to hold the phone still. I like the way the clouds look “fingery”– like a dark hand was reaching out.

Distinctly scarier now. Folks are yelling.

My camera time stamps this as still 3:23, so according to the prediction, this is Diamond Ring.

Light dropped by the second.

Street light on!

3:24 Quick into darkness.

Could see. Not “thick” darkness.

Neighbor called out “We survived!” and laughed.

Looking southeast. Sorry that this is blurry. Again the “low light” indicator was forcing a slow take and I was clicking so quickly.

Looking east

East north east

Looking east northeast

Looking northeast

Looking north

I don’t know why the photos improve but it probably was a combo of me slowing down and the street light shining more brightly (as it warms up).

The street light really lights up this scene (artificially)

Looking west, the house and barn are lit up by a streetlight.

3:25 Then, even though I said I wouldn’t, the conditions were safe and I walked out into the street.

3:26

That’s an amazing shot for wide-angle. It’s my favorite photo from the event.

Ugh. Zooming in does NOT help.

Here comes the daylight, racing back to us from the west.

One robin kept singing the whole time.
Could see the horizon of light around us.

Temp dipped ~10 degrees in total (Fact check: It was 12.1 degrees total). It read the 40s on one thermometer on the ground.

Neighbors were whopping it up, I took photos, the sun looked lovely as a ring in clouds!

Partial Eclipse Again

Right after, Blue Jays calling a lot. Also could hear: mourning doves, robins, starlings, dogs barking.

3:32 light feels back to normal, can see shadow, sliver of sun back

3:37 same light cracking sound from surface of the ground, not deep. No observed problems with birds.

3:38 Merlin flying again, seemed to call to its mate.

3:42 Still enough sun to see a shadow. Mosquitoes are bad– hovering! Have to move away.

3:49 50% of light of sun showing now. Lots of things already back to normal. Temp is rising significantly now.

Cheap glasses did not go through the clouds as well as the welder’s glass or more truthfully, the cheap glasses blocked more.

Didn’t move thermometer. Wore long underwear — glad I did if only against the mosquitos.

I didn’t expect that “feeling the shadow” would feel so small– you could see out of it to the horizon nearly the entire time.

3:55 60% of the sun back.

3:56 small airplane (prop plane), direction south, another small airplane direction SW

4:00 Another attempt with flimsy eclipse glasses.

4:02 more sunshine, but cloud thickness has felt the same since the thicker clouds moved in.

4:04 Distinctly brighter now, 75% of sun back.

4:06 birds seem all normal– so unusual calling for the time of day. (I don’t know what I meant there)

4:07 another jet leaving

4:12 junco came nearby. Cloud over the sun is thicker with fingers over it, as viewed through the welder’s glass.

4:18 (drew picture)

4:20 Thick cloud moved in to cover sun.

4:27 another 2 small planes: 1st to the south and lower altitude, 2nd to the SW and higher altitude

Rich folk who flew in for the event?

A third! South.

4:30 A fourth.

4:32 Sunshine! Breaks in clouds!

4:36 Local forecast end of time of eclipse. Clouds observed with mottled pattern. (drew picture)

5:15 been raking and moving leaves from spring cleaning. No unusual worm data. 🙂

5:21 Sun coming out strong now. Fully sunny in a cloud break.

5:45 Stopped observations (this was more than 2 hours after totality). Very sunny now with Cirrus clouds.

Temps were up and down due the sun, clouds, and wonky thermometer that I fought most of the time.

Thermometer set up at the end, showing 62.3 in outdoor (air level) and 59.0 at indoor (ground level)

That’s emergency chocolate, thank you very much.

Thoughts

I’ll note one strange observation. I did hear a cracking or crackling sound lasting 2-3 seconds coming from the ground BEFORE (3:20pm ) and AFTER (3:37pm) the eclipse. Totality was timed for 3:25 for my location (but we were in diamond ring at 3:24). So ~5 minutes before and ~12 minutes after peak totality this sound happened. The list from Time and Dates predicts that “animals and nature affected by falling levels of light”. It was very faint and it sounded like the cracking sound a metal roof makes when heating up or cooling down. But the sound was coming from dry leaves on the ground, not from under the ground. It last long enough that I could turn my head around and hear it distinctly. I could not determine if it was just the decrease in light causing the leaves to cool and crackle (which is what I thought at the time) or if the slightest of breezes skirted the ground.

I was ever so thankful that my neighbor and his kids were outside in their yard through the event because I was nervous. Not “the apocalypse is going to happen” type of nervous. Don’t be ridiculous! I am a follower of Jesus so apocalypses are not outside of my understanding but God works in a much more sneak attack manner than a predictable eclipse. My type of nervousness was more like “how dark is it going to get? Deep dark? Plunge into never-ness dark?” I could not picture how we get from cloudy to dark.

In the end, it swept over–just like those plague scenes from Exodus movies.

Right as totality started and we “winked” into deep twilight (that’s how dark it was), my neighbor shouted “We survived!” with laughter. At that moment, I thought of all of the folks hiding underground in the first days of the Ukraine war, or of family members staying close to each other in Gaza and I thought “Yeah, we humans, we survive. We survive because we stick together.” I’ve often wondered that if I was one of those people stuck in those situations, if I’d have the guts to sing. I think I’d want to sing. Just to be defiant and to show hope. Just to show, even if it was with my last breath, that evil doesn’t have me. It was very emotional for me. I didn’t come down off the adrenaline until about 7 p.m. last evening.

However, to keep myself calm and focused (and admittedly, I probably looked like a proper dork 🤓 walking around with a notebook and pen), I did citizen science all through the event with our 90% but translucent cloud cover, with the NASA Globe Observer app, taking temperature readings (there was a 12.1 degree Fahrenheit drop, see below) and observing changes in nature (birds, insects, light, wind, etc.).

While no animals (besides humans 😜 ) behaved strangely DURING the eclipse, one robin sung all the way through (my spirit animal?) and it’s wasn’t a wrong or forelorn song. It was just his song– like what he would sing at daybreak. After the eclipse, several birds, robins, mourning doves, starlings, blue jays, and the local merlins, seemed to do a repeat “morning cacophony” like they were re-finding each other.

Here were my temp readings:

Seeing the comet was a bust but I’ll say I would NOT have had enough time even if I had my wits about me. I haven’t seen the comet and getting the telescope onto something takes 5 minutes in the best of times.

In sum

In conclusion, I reached first for the words glorious, biblical, and scary/creepy. I can understand how this event would have frightened people not knowing what it was because you didn’t get the feeling that something weird was happening until just 3-5 minutes before totality started.

The eclipse did have a feeling to it. It’s not pure science. It shook me. I spent some time contemplating these Bible verses:
- Clouds and darkness surround him; he rules with righteousness and justice. Psalm 92:7
- He tore the sky open and came down, with a dark cloud under his feet. 2 Samuel 22:10
- He tore the sky open and came down with a dark cloud under his feet. Psalm 18:9
- But the people continued to stand a long way off, and only Moses went near the dark cloud where God was. Exodus 20:21
I’ve been re-watching scenes from Gods and Kings by Christopher Nolan and I find that I’m liking that movie more each time — despite others’ objections (and my own). A good old fashioned epic, sweeping “you are about to get spanked, bad guy” movie hits the spot sometimes. The speed of this eclipse which was the speed of earth?, the moon? was breathtaking. It just reminds you how quickly something can happen. And this was just the dance of the sun and moon. There are bigger things in the universe.

It reminded me that God’s power supreme, awesome, and not to be messed with. These two celestial bodies, the sun and moon, obey HIS rules. That’s entirely why this prediction of when a total eclipse of the sun would happen…worked. 😏

Post Script

I had the chance to talk about my observations with a representative of the National Weather Service office in Burlington, Vermont. He immediately noticed that I had a 12°F temperature drop whereas most of the official Mesonet stations in my area recorded, at most, a 10.2°F temperature drop. I theorized that I had pretty significant cloud cover and was the most “west” of any of the official stations, thus my results simply could be my own unique results. To be clear, notice how the temperature did bounce right back up afterwards despite the cloud cover moving in throughout the event, which could have been considered a confounding variable. Thus, I still feel like my 12°F was legit.
April 9, 2024
Diversity training gone bad

I’ve been sitting on this blog post idea for awhile. But it’s St. Patrick’s Day and some good hearted self-deprecating humor has come before me. So while THIS story isn’t about being self-deprecating (I wish it was!), this story is about making fun of a culture.

One of my very frequent job duties as a mid-level manager at a university was to translate directives that came from above down to the underlings. Sometimes that was easy. Sometimes it was hard. Sometimes it was ridiculous.

In one of those moments where I was in a discussion with my team about what to do about some new directive, near the end of the phone conference discussion, I rolled off the line “You’ve got to do, what you’ve got to do” a riff on “Then I’ve got to do, what I’ve got to do” from Robin Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire when he’s quitting a job.

The line in the movie essentially says that sometimes when you are stuck between a rock and a hard place, you have to pick the right thing to do even when it isn’t easy. If you remember the scene, Robin Williams is mimicking Gandhi’s voice. To me, it immediately conjured non-violent peaceful protest. And it was the vibe I was leading with with my team. If we weren’t going to fully do the directive, we had our good reasons not to.

After that meeting, one of my team members wanted to talk about that during our 1:1 private phone call. They proceeded to tell me that that line was, essentially racist, because I said it with the Indian accent. She told me that it was inappropriate. I started to get the idea that they were really serious about what they had said (and had totally missed the movie reference) when they stopped talking and let out a big “wow, that’s done” sigh.

I was…flabbergasted. I wasn’t quite sure where to start. I thought the line was actually complimentary. I mean, Gandhi is a person that humanity reveres. We aspire to be like him. He was a good man. How could mimicking his accent be slurring him? It was a phone conference, I want to be clear on that point. I didn’t make any visible head shakes or any other references to Indian culture. And the line itself is about facing a very important, difficult choice and still choosing to do the right thing. But I had a feeling that none of these finer points would help at this moment with the person.

So I asked them a little bit more about WHAT exactly they found offensive. They quickly answered, “There were no Indians in the room.”

Oh, I said, so it felt like I was mocking Indians with the accent?

Yes, they said. When they are not in the room, you can’t do that.

I moved quick on my mental feet.

So anyone using an accent of a person NOT in the room is offensive.

Yes, they said.

I explained that accents are part of communicating online and verbally on phone calls. I find that they enrich the story and add depth (and I’d used them– infrequently — with students in the past for years) especially when the accent adds depth to the story. I find online teaching involves a great deal of performance and acting. But I kept at their point with them.

So you are from the Boston area and there’s a pretty distinct accent there. If I had used a Boston accent, it would be OK because you were in the room?

Yes, they said quickly.

OK. At this point, I wrapped the discussion. I apologized that no offense was intended and indeed, I never used that accent with that group ever again.

But I had the sudden and stark feeling that an attempted “schooling” had just happened to me by a person who attended Day 1, Hour 1 of diversity training and then no more training.

You see, their second example actually showed what the problem was.

You see, if accents are used derogatorily, it wouldn’t matter who or who was not in the room. Bad form is simply bad form.

But in their own example, they privileged their own accent as “OK to be made fun of” and I…actually…found that offensive. Boston isn’t where I’m from, but I do consider it a nearby city.

So it’s NOT OK WITH ME to make fun of anyone’s accent.

But I wasn’t making fun with my line. I was quoting Robin Williams who was quoting Gandhi. GANDHI. That’s far from making fun or speaking derogatorily. I went over this story with a lawyer friend afterwards just to make sure I wasn’t crazy and she reminded me of Gandhi’s human rights and lawyer background himself. His quotes are always about the betterment of people. It would be almost impossible to use a Gandhi quote in a slur. There just isn’t material.

I would have a severe problem with anyone making fun of their Boston accent of anyone else’s accent in or out of the room. Their allowance that making fun of their own accent showed me that they didn’t understand diversity and inclusion.

Sign. Bother. Face Palm.

I never did quite “get along” with that team member after that and (shudder) they went on to train others. I have no idea how well.

But I’ll leave you with the context of the line, where an actor quits because a cartoon shows a bird smoking.

Police! Civic authorities! ASPCA! ASAP!

***! Betrayal! Kidnapped!

No, birdnapped!

A cup of garlic, a twist of parakeet.

Eat your heart out, Julia Child.

Excuse me, but isn’t it customary

for the jailbird to get one telephone call?

In your case, I think not.

Afternoon snacks have few civil liberties.

But I’m not wholly without heart.

How about a nice soothing cigarette?

Pah! Agh! Ugh!

Oh, I will not do this. I cannot!

Oh, what a foul way for a bird to die!

I don’t want to get beak cancer.

No! My lungs are blackened!

Here we go again. Cut, cut, cut! Roll it back.

– Help me…

–

What are you doing? Daniel…

That line is not in the script.

Why did you add it?

–

I wanted to comment on the situation.

–

What situation?

Shoving a cigarette into Pudgie’s mouth

is morally irresponsible.

This is a cartoon,

not a friggin’ Oprah Winfrey Special.

Lou, millions of kids see this cartoon.

It’s like telling them “Light up.”

You can’t put words in Pudgie’s mouth

if his mouth isn’t moving.

It’s voice-over. An interior monologue.

Maybe even the voice of God.

(imperious voice)

Pudgie, don’t smoke.

–

Actors.

–

What? Let’s ask the technicians.

Do you think it’s morally right

to promote smoking to the youth of America?

(whistles)

They’re biased. That’s a mistrial.

Daniel, this session

is costing the studio thousands.

If you want a paycheck, stick to the script.

If you want to play Gandhi,

then do it on somebody else’s time.

(as Gandhi)

Then I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do.

That’s very funny.

Where the hell are you goin’?

If you leave, you’re not comin’ back in.

I’m not takin’ any crap from you, pal.

Well, in the words of Porky Pig:

P-P-P-P-P-P-*** off, Lou.

March 17, 2024
Happy Twelvetide! 12 of My Most Favorite XR for Education Examples

Happy Twelvetide or the name you might recognize, The 12 Days of Christmas!
For
you, I’ve arranged 12 of my most favorite XR-for-education examples.
These are virtual sites, simulations, companies, or concepts.

But what’s a good story without some twists?
– Some of these no longer exist. Let that twist your noodle. 😕
– Some are concepts.
– These were originally posted to LinkedIn as separate posts. This blog posts represents all 12 in one place (so buckle up, this will be long).

Day 1 Heritage Key

Happy Twelvetide! Number 1 on my 12 favorite
XR-for-education list is Heritage Key by Rezzable. It was in Second Life
and then Open Sim ~2008-2010, but no longer exists. Visitors could
visit recreations of Stonehenge or the Valley of the Kings.

My fav parts?
–
Users **participated** in the building of Stonehenge. (THINK: NPCs
giving instructions to quests in games.) Did you know that there were
different versions of Stonehenge over thousands of years, including a
wooden one?

–
Time travel – The Stonehenge location (if I’m remembering it correctly)
had “time travel” for visitors to go to Stonehenge in different times
by directing users BACK to an underground Visitors Center where
(unbeknownst to the visitors) the overhead scene would change and go
forward ~500 years or something. Nice time travel technique!

–
Avatar clothing. Each location offered avatars garb to wear appropriate
to the builds (all of them, at once). I remember the choices where:
Druid-theme, Thebes-theme, or Indiana Jones-theme. All a super fun way
for users to keep playing along with “we are participating with” these
locations. THINK: DRESS FOR THE JOB YOU WANT.

Will
someone resurrect this concept fully, please? It was so cool despite
being from more than 10 years ago. And it outperforms a lot of XR for
education even today.

YouTube video from Heritage Key: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SqTwaa0HVg

IMAGE 1: Capture from Heritage Key of a clearing in a woods scene of a male avatar
carrying a log to assist in the building of Stonehenge. A further
female Indiana-Jone type character (that was me) is seen just behind.
Circa 2010.

IMAGE 2: Capture from
Heritage Key tour that I believe Virtual Worlds Education Roundtable
took back in 2010. Image shows a scene in Thebes between palaces and
temples. Avatars are dressed in Egyptian, Druid, or Indiana Jones-like
apparel.

#VR #XR #vreducation #SecondLife #OpenSim #HeritageKey #Avatar #Stonghenge #ValleyOfTheKings #Participation #Best #Favorite #InstructionalDesign #Design #edtech

Day 2 NASA goes to Mars

Happy Twelvetide! Number 2 on my 12 favorite XR-for-education list is NASA goes to Mars!

My fav parts?
– Users had first person experiences walking around a Martian base in 2008.

–
This kind of build checks every one of my ‘saves time, money, danger’
boxes and as such, represents a great investment in XR. Experiences like
this should be replicated.

Yes, this
is another defunct XR location, however there are still space clubs in
Second Life and other platforms have picked up the gauntlet to recreate
Mars, the Moon, and beyond.

Is NASA
done with virtual reality? Far from it. She’s just grown with the times.
One of my favorite XR-for-education things that NASA has done recently
is the First Woman graphic novel (comic book) demonstrating the
diversity of thought that it will take to get successfully back to the
moon. It’s XR-enabled and I’m happy to report that RT (the waving robot)
has visited my living room.

IMAGE 1: Capture from NASA CoLab recreation of
the Victoria Crater on Mars. Capture credit: Eric Hackathorn, NOAA,
February 22 2008. Source: https://lnkd.in/gWFu7aKn Image is in the public domain.

IMAGE
2: Capture from NASA website about First Woman. Comic book style scene
from the angle of moon boots shows a nearby moon rover with a robot
waving in the back seat.

IMAGE 3: Capture of cover of the First Woman, NASA’s Promise To Humanity, Issue Number 1 Dream to Reality graphic novel.

#XR #VR #NASA #CommanderCallie #RT #VictoriaCrater #SecondLife #CoLab #SpaceEducation #edtech #InstructionalDesign

Day 3 Dinosaur Track Lab

Happy Day 3 of the 12 Days of Christmas! Today’s favorite XR-for-education example is for the curious InstructionalDesigners out there, wondering “how do you design instruction in VirtualReality?”

I
suggest this example from the Grand Cache Tourism and Interpretive
Centre, that I saw demonstrated by Mike McCready of Lethbridge College,
Alberta. This is the best example of instructions given in a VR
experience that I’ve seen!

I
should disclose my judging bias– I have taken many science labs in my
time and a good set of lab instructions is a good set of instructions.
Full stop. So these are good instructions. Direct, to the point, and
helpful for completing the task at hand. Not too much detail in the
objects presented to the learners and completing the lab *should* be
within the physical capabilities of VR controllers (grabbing, placing,
brushing, etc). Modification of target sizes could be done for Accessibility.
I’m guessing that the VR artist and developer, Benjamin Blackwell,
transposed real life lab instructions. I could be wrong, maybe someone
wrote these instructions for the VR experience. But hey, either way, it
works!

The
backstory of this VR experience isn’t bad either as it DOES tick
Heather’s boxes of saving time, money, and danger. The real world
dinosaur footprints are up on a sheer rock face at an angle in a
preservation area. Getting there takes time, doing a dinosaur imprint
IRL costs money (for supplies), and the location itself is dangerous to
learners (and to environmental & historical damage). (Source: https://lnkd.in/gcWjFBXb)

There’s
a chance I would suggest adding an element that increases the stress
level for learners (what??) but that’s just to add a narrative to the
experience. I would throw in an approaching thunderstorm that the
learners have to boogie and get out of the site ASAP. But hey, I like
narratives with my educational XR.

I do not endorse any Lethbridge College program.

IMAGE: Capture showing entry instructions for VR controllers.

IMAGE
3: Capture of prep table for taking a plaster cast of a dinosaur
imprint. Equipment on the table includes a bag to carry the supplies up
to the footprint location.

IMAGE 4:
Capture showing that learners have to use a spray (I think it was an
adhesive) to position the frame in place to hold the plaster.

IMAGE 5: Capture of the user grabbing the wooden frame to place over the footprint.

IMAGE 6: Capture from a Lethbridge College site showing the angled sheer rock face with the dinosaur footprints.

#InstructionalDesign #VR #XR #InstructionsMatter #ScienceLaboratory #Dinosaur #PlasterCast #VirtualInstruction #edtech

Day 4 VR for Distraction/Pain Management

Happy Day 4 of Twelvetide, where I’m sharing 12
of my XR-for-education favorites! Today’s example is a concept– XR for
distraction/pain management.

I’ll admit
that this example is tangentially associated with education. But two of
the three examples I’m sharing are targeted for children. So in a way,
VR is part of helping the children learn to live healthier lives!

1.
VR Vaccines – using VR to distract children during vaccine
administration. Combine this with the “Buzzy” concept and I think the
entire fear of needles (for anyone) could be eliminated! https://lnkd.in/gQsn39W9

2.
VR in a MRI – LOVE this but it’s still experimental. My favorite part
of this design is that the clicks and whir sounds are incorporated INTO
the VR experience. (Learning what the “sounds” mean is part of fear of
flying courses so I think this could be incorporated into future virtual
reality fear of flying experiences too.) https://lnkd.in/gZ6xnPEz

3.
VR for pain management. There are several companies working on this and
kudos to ALL OF THEM! But I’ll shine a light on my friend Heather Bucalos, RN and her advocacy of using it for hospital patients (https://lnkd.in/g8s7q4_y ). It looks like Beth Savoldelli has a new initiative coming up in 2024, the XR Impact Network. Best wishes to all!

IMAGE
2: Capture from inside VR Vaccines where the user is about to have a
special stone placed on their arm at the same timing as a vaccination.
The user is presented with a story about how the stone “protects” them.

IMAGE
3: VR use during an MRI. Experimental but includes the typical sounds
of an MRI and particularly helpful for children to stay still and calm
during the procedure.

InstructionalDesign VR XR PainManagement Distraction Pediatric CancerTreatment edtech #XRImpactNetwork

Day 5 National Geographic Explore VR

For Day 5 of Twelvetide, where I’m sharing 12 of
my XR-for-education favorites, I list National Geographic Explore VR,
whose name, perhaps in a clever move, puts the “VR” in the right
place…last. It just HAPPENS to occur inside the media of VR, but the
star of the show IS the Nat Geo content.

My favs of this?

This puts the explore in Explore VR. Basically if you want to use VR to go places, this is your golden ticket.

Plus,
there is an impressive story line (I’m referring ONLY to the Antarctica
experience here): going from a ship, via kayak, to an ice shelf,
climbing it, and then waiting out an Antarctic storm in a camp.
(Playthrough video here: https://lnkd.in/ggMtNxy8 )

When I taught an Introduction to XR (Design) course using the Quest 2s (https://lnkd.in/gYi9RWCU),
I placed Nat Geo as the very first experience in the course after the
Oculus First Steps primer. I also framed it within the design element of
Function. That is, does the experience take advantage of VR
affordances? If not, could it be done some other way just as well? In
the case of exploring, there is a long history of high quality National
Geographic TV shows. Could doing something in VR measure up?

In
this case, the learner has to paddle their kayak, choose and take their
own photos (they are on a mission from Nat Geo, of course, to get
photographs), and climb an ice shelf. Either way, it’s arm work!

So
the user is not simply a viewer as would be for a TV show. There are a
few folks right here that would like to pipe up and state that the
movement *causes* learning or as I saw it phrased the other day:

“It
feels more like an earned learned experience than something you
passively learned about or were informed about,” Bill Briggs, Deloitte
CTO, told VentureBeat. “The retention and recall is just higher. Your
brain is storing it in a different place.”

That’s a bunch of horse hockey.

Your
brain is storing it in a different place? Oh, like that prepper
pantry? Experiences ARE experiences. Full stop. The brain encodes them
exactly the same, whether they are in VR or IRL. What this person was
doing was a backhand slap at traditional instruction (code word:
passive), which (according to them) has been dreadful for ages. On
behalf of all teachers…thanks? (not really, grr)

But
I digress. Back to enjoying Nat Geo because they did a good job. It’s a
good starter experience if you can afford it for your learners. It’s
listed at US$9.99 in the Meta Quest store.

IMAGE: Capture from inside of Explore VR looking down to see some whales in a small bay dotted with icebergs.

IMAGE: Capture from the Meta Quest store of the purchase page from National Geographic Explore VR.

InstructionalDesign VR XR NationalGeographic Explore Antarctica Kayak Penguin Whale IceClimb Photography

Day 6 VR for Conflict-Related Sexual Violence

Trigger warning: today’s entry refers to sexual violence.

I went to an entrepreneurial conference last year to speak on the topic of the metaverse. I know my ad hoc speaking style (which I enjoy but I lose my train of thought), so in advance I scribbled up a list of truly GREAT applications of virtual reality so that I could glance at it. Today’s entry made that list.

A VR for conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) pilot study includes everything from seeing a courtroom in advance, seeing visual assurances of identity protection, reenactments, and post trauma healing and comfort. I see it is still in the experimental stage but the results are about to come in.

https://lnkd.in/gG7knz4y

In September 2019, I was sexually attacked. I had to describe the event to the State Police three times. A friend rushed to me, took one look at me, and said that I was in shock. The shock goes on for a long time. I can only imagine what circumstances are like when sexual attacks occur as part of conflict or war. Therefore, I wish this pilot Godspeed.

Good on yer to the sponsors: The Royal College of Art, Immersonal, Frontier Tech Hub, UK International Development, and the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.

#VR #XR #BestUseCase #CRSV #SexualViolence #Crime #VictimProtections #RoyalCollegeOfArt #TechHub #UK #InternationalCriminalCourt

Day 7 Tsunami Simulation from NOAA

Day 7 from my 12 Days of Christmas favorite VR-for-education examples is a multi-step process. We have to time travel back. I’m going to stop our time machine at 14 years ago, the year 2010. NOAA had built their 2nd iteration of a tsunami simulation on their Second Life island, Meteora, that my old friend and colleague AJ Kelton captured in video here: https://lnkd.in/dCNDXnAH. (To see an even OLDER version of the same simulation, see video here https://lnkd.in/d2csDTyA) On the timeline, 2004 the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami was just 6 years prior when an estimated 227,000 people died (https://lnkd.in/du6sTWGt)

OK, Heather, this looks chunky and old. What’s the deal?

The point is that NOAA only built 5 experiences in VR– and a tsunami remained one of them (https://lnkd.in/dGD62bv6). I’m going to go out on a limb and state that NOAA thought it was *important* that humanity learn what tsunamis are and why you just can’t “outrun them”.

Why was XR a good choice for this particular natural hazard?

Because in XR, the viewer can stand still and let the tsunami wash over them and get a hint at it’s height, power, and devastation. (Hat tip to the movie, The Impossible for their depiction here https://lnkd.in/dSx-PHnv). READ: Avatar height actually means something here.

Time machine forward to 2011, March 11 and the Great East Japan Earthquake. (https://lnkd.in/djjVKSsP ) For the first time, humanity would see in real terms the devastation of a tsunami.

Fast forward one more time to 2016 and simulations advanced to this stage (see video clip below). By now, humanity had begun to take tsunamis MUCH more seriously with early warning buoys, escape routes, and *hopefully* people evacuating the coast when it could happen.

Do you see the connection between SEEING what a tsunami could do and future safety? Humans have a habit of clinging to “seeing is believing.”

It is areas like this that hit my 3-item (time, money, danger) checklist hard and for the good: XR for reducing danger.

In a sad twist, I’m late getting this posted on January 3 and another earthquake and tsunami occurred in Japan on the day I should have posted this, January 1, 2024. Thankfully, it appears that warnings went up fast and folks did evacuate. (Edit: I’ve now heard that at least 200+ people have died.)

In summary, we can’t look at this Day 7 example outside of its historical context. More emphasis on the real dangers of tsunamis can save lives.

#VR #XR #InstructionalDesign #Tsunami #Earthquake #Preparedness #NaturalDisaster #Awareness #EscapeRoute #Practice

Day 8 Apart Gallery

Day 8 of my Twelvetide favorite examples of XR-for-education is a true favorite. If you’ve never been in the metaverse, I’ll take you here first: the Apart Gallery.

1. Surf to https://apartposters.com/

2. Click on Virtual Gallery.

3. Click on Join Room.

4. Click Accept to agree to your avatar. (Yup, you can change it here if you want or you can change it later, either way. Because metaverse!)

5. Turning on mics is optional so you can skip that if you want. Click on Enter Room.

See? 5 Clicks. And if you’ve been in before, it’s actually 4 clicks b/c your browser will remember you.

This is WebXR, the spatial web, or the immersive web. Names are not yet nailed down because it’s still relatively new. You entered the metaverse with your browser. That doesn’t sound like much, but to gamers, it’s a big deal.

Gamers are used to:

– Large downloads

– Required log-ins

– Running extra programs for sound or dialog.

– Turning off other programs to preserve memory and increase speed.

– All kinds of special doohickeys.

In this example, hosted by Mozilla Hubs, you don’t need to do any of that. You are free as a bird! (Movement is with your W,A,S,D keys and your mouse).

This *particular* example is on my list of favorites because of this ease of entry. It’s the comfortable on-ramp into the metaverse. 🚗

But there is one OTHER reason why I take newbies to the Apart Gallery. It’s an art gallery and it’s a time capsule of a sliver of American time. The original gallery artwork was produced between February and April 2020. Think back to what we were doing then:

– Social distancing

– Stay home

– Wash your hands

We were NOT talking about immunizations, unnecessary lock downs, and vulnerable populations. We didn’t even know COVID could be airborne. The artwork reflects the public health propaganda of those months. I use that word NEUTRALLY, not in a negative way. (I’m FOR public health!!) The word propaganda to me means “relaying an idea that you want someone to agree with”. Another word might be “rhetoric”. It’s fascinating to look back on what we were telling each other might work. Truly, we have our own stories now, just like the haunting stories from the 1918 flu.

The great folks at Paradowski Creative have since expanded the build so if you have time, wander around a bit. Not every version of the coming metaverse will be Second Life 2.0 ( 😏 ).

#VR #XR #InstructionalDesign #ImmersiveWeb #SpatialWeb #WebXR #ApartGallery #ApartPosters #Propaganda #SocialDistancing #WashYourHands #StayHome #Immunizations #Art #VirtualReality

Day 9 The Naturalist’s Workshop

Today’s entry in my 12 Days of Christmas favorite XR-for-education examples is an odd one. For all those independent projects, developers, and small teams slogging away on tiny VR experiences and wondering…does anyone notice this?

My answer is YES.

I received exposure to the Naturalist’s Workshop (from North Carolina State University and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences https://lnkd.in/duyS4xaW ) via a colleague. While I’m sure it’s great for learning some basic tree identification (yes!) I liked it for the basic design and how I could use THIS design to teach some elements of basic spatial design to others. How do you situate a learner in a virtual space? How close is everything? How far away? Does the learner have to walk?

I didn’t use this experience with any instructions. It was just headset on, app on, and go. So I didn’t even know it had a name or purpose. I was plopped in a small clearing in a forest on a slightly elevated concrete-looking platform with a desk and some stuff.

I did some basic spatial awareness practice. I looked at my hands. I looked at my feet. I looked to the front, to the left, to the right, behind me, below me, and above me (oh! Nice opening the tree canopy). I looked at my stomach (missing. huh.) So users have no avatars. But they don’t need them to identify trees, do they? Even though the area is closed in, it did NOT feel claustrophobic at all…because trees just fade off into the distance. The color theme is a bright spring green. The platform had a low knee-level wall and 2 gaps for going out into the forest (cough, expansion plans please!)

I bent down and looked under the desk and then discovered that the desk drawers do open! Hey there is stuff inside! So I started to pick those things up and when I placed them on the desk, something happened. Sometimes, I was temporarily transported to a 360 degree photo with one tree dominant in my view. Oh! I had placed an object FROM the tree (a leaf or a seed) into a place and could learn more about it! Level 1 tree identification unlocked.

You can get this app via SideQuest.

It’s paced at 5-15 minutes. I assume the 5 minute-rs would know what they are doing. I’d say it’s nicely at the 20 minute mark if you want to fool around.

It’s little projects like this (and the Dinosaur Track cast from Day 3) that are actually moving us forward in the XR for learning market. It doesn’t escape me that both were built in partnership between a university and a museum. Are you writing this down? You should be.

#VR #XR #InstructionalDesign #NaturalistsWorkshop #VirtualReality #VirtualNature #TreeIdentification #NorthCarolina

Day 10 Sandboxes

Happy Day 10 of the 12 Days of Christmas! You’re
probably getting tired of this by now, aren’t you? But we are almost to
the end!

For today, my favorite
example of XR-for-education is back to a concept– NOT a specific
platform, app, or game. The concept is sandboxes.

No,
these are not virtual boxes on the ground filled with sand. These are
locations in virtual reality where users are endowed as creators.
Virtual reality needs these spaces. I’m reminded of the name of one of
my favorite Facebook groups, I Require Art. I feel like that name needs a
second clause “like I need air.” Virtual reality needs places where
users of any kind can experiment.

I’m
going to name 2 platforms because they meet this standard: Upon entry,
users are endowed as creators. Of course, it often matters where you are
standing. You can’t just create anywhere and everywhere. You must have
wisdom about this.

When I first
described Second Life to my best educational psychology friend and said
“All users are endowed as creators”, he quipped back “Oh, you all can
have God complexes!” God, I loved working with that guy. He both kept me
grounded and pointed to the stars.

But,
yes, users can have God complexes. Or to put it more finely, users can
explore their desires to create, to shape their world, to build, to
paint, to sculpt, to cook, or do all kinds of creative things that
humans have been doing for millennia.

I
used to have a tiny patch of ground in Second Life, thanks to a grant
to educators via Montclair State University in New Jersey. I could
build whatever I wanted (that was free b/c I was cheap). I set up a
free pavilion, campfire, and space-pod office where-in I placed a
Tiffany lamp and tiny velociraptor, as one would do. It wasn’t much,
but it was my space.

I found that this location (https://lnkd.in/ek8h-22F) does
a good job of explaining a virtual sandbox. I don’t know them, but they
show the connection between space available, what you can do (rules),
and technical specifications (prim/polygon or memory sizes).

In
the world of WebXR, Hubs allows for users to be creators from their
first moment. As long as the space you are inside of standing allows it,
you can bring in your own .glb files or surf over to Sketchfab.

What’s my fav?

Humans
are creators. We bring order to chaos. The freedom to create is
important and yes, I think it is as important as air is to breathing.
None of our other human endeavors would have value if we didn’t have art
to express meaning. Onward artists, onward!

Post
script: You might not know that most XR platforms do not endow users as
creators. There could be costs, permissions, or it is simply not
available. That’s why this feature is remarkable.

(I actually do NOT know the platform Sandbox VR and this post does not constitute an endorsement.)

#VR #XR #InstructionalDesign #Sandboxes #CreativeSpaces #CreativePlay #Expression #Art #Freedom #BringOrderToChaos

Day 11 Action

Day 11 of the 12 Days of Christmas of my favorite XR-for-education examples! Today is another “concept”– it is action. I have some colleagues in the XR industry that believe that movement in XR is the best possible affordance of XR. I have disagreed with them.

See one example where a researcher hypothesized that movement in XR would cause more learning and then (gasp!) found that it made no difference: Johnson‐Glenberg, M. C., Bartolomea, H., & Kalina, E. (2021). Platform is not destiny: Embodied learning effects comparing 2D desktop to 3D virtual reality STEM experiences. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 37(5), 1263-1284.

But today I’m splitting that action hair super fine.

I’m actually FOR movement in XR when it facilitates learning. Said another way: when all other media choices would not allow for equivalent movement in a situation (or if movement in XR is a brand new thing under the sun), movement, then, in XR is, yes, helpful. I would not say it is the end-all be-all of XR-for-learning but it can help (facilitate) learning. I’m hinting at neuroscience and body memory.

For example, using XR before approaching a large, moving, and dangerous piece of equipment like a windmill to learn maintenance. YES. This is a good use of movement in XR because it makes something happen that no other form of media would easily do (not a drone or first person GoPro video). If it would be dangerous to approach with zero training, XR can provide action practice use of the equipment in a safe way.

Want some sources to support that?

Here you go:

Students at the University of East London practice using PCR equipment in XR before using it in real life. https://lnkd.in/eKhkRWks

Potential workers in windmill maintenance get exposed to the work conditions in XR to decide if they really want to pursue this career

https://lnkd.in/eqbzqceX

And the now somewhat buried Lowe’s Home Improvement Store use of VR to teach skills like bathroom tiling to customers https://lnkd.in/emJF7KRr

Other versions of “action” include programs like Tiltbrush or possibly GravitySketch that allow users to move and create from inside of XR, not on the outside and bring art of object creations into XR like is the current method with programs like Unity, Unreal, and Blender.

The key to remember here is: compare the XR experience to its closest cognitively competitor experience. (READ: if the experience is processed in the brain the same way). If XR is faster or cheaper or safer than that competitor choice, XR is the way to go.

Video clip from Simulwind. Capture shows the user selecting and placing the correct size wrench to open an equipment panel.

#XR #VR #InstructionalDesign #Action #BodyMemory #Safety #Movement #Art #Skills

Day 12 Emergency Services

Last but far from least, my 12th favorite XR-for-education example has, as far as I discern right now, the strongest connection between USE and LEARNING. (Translation: a safe bet!)

It’s XR for the emergency and military services– fire, medical, police, and military. As the daughter of a fire instructor, this use just makes me smile. I’m sure my Dad would have LOVED this. He loved teaching and learning via fire simulations– there was no time his skills shone brighter than helping trainee firefighters learn things like fire behavior, untapped rural water sources, and fire site safety. I’m sure I got my “adult educator” genes from him.

By now, I don’t have to tell you how XR for training uses here ticks every box of saving time, saving money, and reducing danger.

But I’ll spend this last moment on the list hinting – indeed – to the intriguing research connection here. What is it about emergency situations that makes XR work so well? I don’t know! The emotional hype? The practice-so-many-times-until-you-can-do-it-in-your-sleep-ness? The visual SEEING of emergency situations– and living thereafter?

So much cool depth to explore here, but in the meantime, using XR for these uses has my endorsement. May we never need these services, but I’m glad that our service people are getting well trained in the meantime.

Ending my 12 Days of Christmas on Epiphany (whew!) I wish you the gifts of peace, happiness, and good health in the New Year!

#XR #VR #InstructionalDesign #EmergencyServices #Police #Fire #EMS #Medical #Military #SaveTime #SaveMoney #ReduceDanger

January 15, 2024
Instructional Design in the Metaverse: Behind The Scenes
We should officially start our BTS story with the fact that this writing is a rejected academic book chapter.

😢

Rejected Book Chapter

Yeah. No shame, however, tossed towards the editors. Their decision gets to be their decision.

I was unnerved that the editors were entirely China-based. I’m not saying one way or the other on that. Just that I’m aware that when political winds change, something that seemed like an OK idea at one point could become a very bad idea later.

It was a bit of a strange call for chapters in the first place, putting
ALL of the approval at the END of the writing process. I went through a
review and a rewrite only to be informed after 8 months that my writing
didn’t seem to fit what the editors were looking for.

The only tip I’ll give about WHICH book it was was that I wrote a long section on myths and that aligned with the book’s title.

But…in the spirit of how the President of Stanford was brought down by
what was originally a blog…I figured I’d go for it with
self-publishing. Charging for a book? Right now, definitely not my
style. Plus, I didn’t want to wait another 8 months for another academic
publication process. I told some of my ID friends that I would “juice
it up” for LinkedIn and I did! The original chapter had NO images (strict publisher) and I
whooped it up on LinkedIn with all kinds of visual “borrows” to help
laymen deal with the academic language.

Key Points
1. Continuing to bang my drum on the 3 characteristics that make XR builds successful: reducing time, money, and/or danger.
2. A focus on plot as the driving theme of an educational XR experience.
3. A focus on purpose at every step in the process.
And
these 3 items are not new for me to say. I’ve been trying to get them
into the academy since 2013 with my dissertation, or maybe a little
earlier in a few mucky conference papers.

Misinformation

In my opinion, I pissed off some of both the XR research and XR industry stakeholders. And I got two rebuttals. The most attention and chuckling came from me doing a TLDR on the myth section and just coming out and saying

Virtual Reality Causes Faster Learning – Myth

That was surprising– mostly because I don’t expect to turn any aircraft carriers with that language. Did I? Time will tell.

Indeed, support for and any engagement with the articles dropped off over time. It was as though literally if one posted ANYTHING with the word Metaverse it in, a whole crowd of whoopdeedooers would drop by, hit the clap button, wish you well and…disappear. I mean I felt I wrote some uplifting, helpful, and cheap (for the price) advice in the latter articles and there…crickets.

Coda

There is too much XR-for-education misinformation going on out there for me to remain quiet on some of this shit.

Just this morning, I woke up to find fresh serving in my LinkedIn feed. It’s like I want to take a break from writing but the crap keeps flowing in the door.

In one sentence, nearly every good research rule is broken:

The numbers show that virtual reality in the workplace can improve communication, togetherness, output satisfaction, and the experience of working together in virtual workshops.

“The numbers show” – that’s an appeal to research results. What they mean is THEIR numbers from THEIR study which was not really structured as research at all. It was structured as a rah-rah-sis-boom-bah don’t-we-love-the-newest-shiniest-thing data collection exercise.

“Improve communication” – how? how measured?

Improve [implied] togetherness – how measured?

Improve [implied] output satisfaction – that is a “like” study, which means nothing to productivity. Tricky there….using “output” to make you think these might be widgets. Nope.

Improve [implied] the experience of working together in virtual workshops. You know what ALSO improves the experience of working together in virtual workshops? Free food.

All that implication was a bit of a grammatical somersault but alas, it is what it is.

Hopefully if you understood my point, you’d see that these “numbers” refer to novelty effect. Pretty much on the nail head. People had fun because it was new. It won’t always be new, so be careful.

AI

Because I wrote and published this article series in 2023, a valid question must be asked:

Did I use AI at all in the writing of this?
Answer: Yes. And I’ll tell you exactly where.

When I was proofreading myself (so long after finishing writing), I wanted to check on a somewhat novel phrase that I was using (coining?) just to make sure that my intended meaning matched what others might think it means.

I asked Bing to clarify the difference between these 2 phrases:
- Non-cognitively comparable methods
- Non-comparable cognitive methods
Sure enough, Bing helped clarify that the ‘non-‘ in front is the item negated. That is:
Non-cognitively comparable means that something is comparable but the DIFFERENCE is in the cognition. That’s exactly what I meant; the brain burden is different. This occurs when studies try to compare textbook learning to VR learning. It’s non-cognitively comparable. Therefore, null results. It’s like dividing by zero.

Non-comparable cognitive methods assumes that both methods are cognitive (yeah, duh) but that they are not comparable. No, that’s NOT what I meant. People try comparing like crazy, even if I don’t like.

So I stuck with my original writing and phrase: non-cognitively comparable.

And that’s the only AI I knowingly used. It’s possible that Google Scholar had some AI with reference writing?? But I don’t know that. That’s sort of pre-AI because really a reference is just an act of putting the right thing in the right place with the right formatting. It can be driven by code…not by some sort of intelligence.

I did use Midjourney to make the artwork but that was completely separate from the writing (and was really fun and educational!)

Conclusion

In summary, in over 12,000 words, is there anything more I can say that I didn’t cover?

Yes.

I sincerely hope that my freely given advice is not lost on decision makers. I constantly write for someone with her hands on a multi-thousands or multi-millions of dollars budget and she needs to KNOW WHAT TO DECIDE when she gets an XR or virtual reality for education proposal on her desk.

I wrote all of this with NO tie to money whatsoever. I’m not employed. I do not work for a company that will sell you XR. I’m not working as an instructional designer pushing XR choices on my bosses. LinkedIn articles, unlike Medium articles, provide NO pay-per-click (although, to be fair Medium pays less than pennies per click..so comparing pennies to nothing is a bit of a low blow). I do not have a monetized YouTube account. I don’t have anything social media wise that makes me money. I’m “employed” at my own Consulting business but that is just a front to make me “look” employed to LinkedIn. I’ve done no work for pay in 2023. Actually, during the writing and publication, I don’t own a car so I used the public bus and I utilized the provisions of a food pantry.

I have nothing at stake to sway a person one way or another. I’m simply calling out where the research points. I do hope it will be of value to someone.

Here’s my LinkedIn video summary of the 8 articles. In under 3 minutes, you can get it all! The bad news? It will come at you VERY fast.
November 7, 2023