Educators in VR Co-founder, Lorelle VanFossen, will be the guest in a Fireside Chat for the XR Innovators in Education series with Columbia University’s Teachers College on Wednesday, April 21, 2021.

To register for the event, use the XR Innovators in Education Series Registration Form. The event is a webinar online and live.

Lorelle will be discussing the challenges educators face to integrate XR technology into education and the classroom, the freedoms and affordances associated with teaching in a virtual environment, and covering her three guidelines for empowered education in VR: embodiment, engagement, and enchantment.

We’re honored to have Lorelle featured in the Columbia University’s Teachers College Fireside chats. Teachers College represents many of the ideals and missions of Educators in VR, founded in the belief that:

…education alone can’t correct our society’s inequalities – that to maximize the life chances of all people, we must also support poorer communities’ physical and nutritional health and psychological well-being.

They offer a wide range of programs in education psychology, nursing education, nutrition education, special education, conflict resolution and spirituality and education, preparing future-ready innovative educators for over 100 years with their multidisciplinary approach, studying how people learn and how they should be taught.

Long before Lorelle helped found Educators in VR she was a leader in digital storytelling, web publishing, social media, and online community building and teaching. As one of the founding members of the WordPress Community, she developed the WordPress Support Forums for the two versions of WordPress and was senior editor on the WordPress Codex, the online manual for WordPress users. As one of the world’s leading advocates and educators in web publishing technologies, she helped develop the first WordPress-foundational web development and design college course at Clark College in Washington. She continues to host one of the oldest websites in the world along with dozens of other sites, and helped establish many of the standards and conventions in continued use today.

Hitting the road full-time with her husband and cat to travel North America and the world in 1996, she became one of the early educational road warriors. Distance learning took on new meaning as they traveled and she taught online through internet connections with acoustic couplers hooked to payphones and borrowed phone connections. She also helped install some of the first WIFI networks in campgrounds to encourage travelers to stay in touch with others as they traveled, an excuse for her to continue teaching and developing online.

A long-time fan of Second Life and XR technology, the move into the immersive tech industry as an educator was natural. She quickly saw the need for educators to connect and work together to embrace the challenges of learning and teaching in VR, and founded the Educators in VR community and company with Daniel in the fall of 2018.

In February 2020, Educators in VR hosted their first 2020 International Summit held across five social VR platforms for over 6,000 event attendees attending 150 events by 170 speakers. They are repeating it this year in partnership with the Virtual World Society with their month-long UniVirtual Experience May 1-30 with over 200 events scheduled across more than a dozen virtual platforms.

Educators in VR hosts and produces over 600 free, paid, and commercial events annually for over 30,000 attendees in VR, proving that VR as a classroom, meeting, and conference space is not just viable, it’s essential in this time of the ongoing pandemic. Educators in VR supports almost 20 special interest groups called Team Projects to bring together like-minded members to collaborate and teach others. Educators in VR’s team has developed and built over 100 virtual educational and presentation worlds in AltspaceVR and other platforms available for educational and event rental uses.

The new EDVR Institute will offer extensive programs on teaching and training educators to teach in VR and use immersive technology along with a wide selection of educational classes and workshops on math, science, language, writing, genealogy, virtual coaching, and more.

Join us with this exciting conversation with Lorelle on Wednesday, April 21 with the Columbia University’s Teachers College.