The 2020 Educators in VR International Summit, February 17-22, is hosted on multiple virtual social and educational platforms. The following is a list of events hosted on one of our partner educational platforms, ENGAGE.
We are proud to announce that Charlie Fink, author, columnist for Forbes magazine, and Adjunct Faculty member of Chapman University, will be presenting “Setting the Table for the Next Decade in XR,” discussing the future of this innovative and immersive technology, at the 2020 Educators in VR International Summit. He will be speaking in AltspaceVR on Tuesday, February 18 at 11:00 AM PST / 2:00 PM EST / 7:00 PM UK/GMT.
Charlie Fink is a long-time expert and evangelist in VR. We hope he brings his crystal ball (or the time vortex) with him as he explores what we should expect from the next ten years of immersive technology in VR, AR, and XR. He is a former Disney, AOL and AG Interactive executive who writes a popular column about XR for Forbes, and consultant to some of the leading companies in the space. As a 27 year old junior executive at Disney, Fink famously came up with the idea for The Lion King. In the 1990s, he was EVP & COO of VR pioneer Virtual World Entertainment. Variety calls him “XR’s explainer-in-chief.”
We are eager for him to share his expertise, experience, and what he sees in his crystal ball, and welcome you to join us during this ground-breaking International Summit.
To Attend the 2020 Educators in VR International Summit
We are so excited to announce that right after the “Rock In the Summit” opening ceremonies for the 2020 Educators in VR International Summit, Monday, February 17, at 2:00 PM PST / 5:00 PM EST / 10:00 PM UK/GMT in AltspaceVR, Professor Tom Furness will be our keynote speaker.
Tom Furness will also be on a panel called “Vision of the Future” with Gabriel Rene, Anson Ho, and Charlie Fink, hosted by Daniel Dyboski-Bryant in ENGAGE, Wednesday, February 19 at 1:30 PM – 2:30 PM PST / 4:30 PM EST / 9:30 PM UK/GMT.
Presenting at 3:30 PM PST / 6:30 PM EST / 11:30 PM UK/GMT, Tom Furness will discuss “Playing with Fire.” Over a career spanning 53 years, Prof. Furness has explored and developed technologies for getting bandwidth between humans and computing machines. His work has encompassed fighter cockpits, virtual reality, retinal displays, educational tools, medical simulators, pain, phobias, molecular modeling, scanning fiber endoscopes and entertainment systems. This quest has been punctuated with side trips and ‘aha’ experiences that led to unanticipated destinations. Dr. Furness plans to talk about lessons learned on his journey including unexpected delights – with a focus on the potential of VR to set minds on fire for education and training applications.
Tom Furness is the founder of the Virtual World Society, and a pioneer in human interface technology and virtual reality. He is widely known as the ‘grandfather of virtual reality.’ He received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Duke University and the Ph.D. in Engineering and Applied Science from the University of Southampton, England. Dr. Furness is currently a professor of Industrial Engineering with adjunct professorships in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Human-Centered Design and Engineering at the University of Washington. Educators in VR celebrated the life of this amazing pioneer recently.
Furness is the founder of the Human Interface Technology Laboratory (HIT Lab) at UW and founder and international director of the HIT Lab NZ at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, NZ and the HIT Lab Australia at the University of Tasmania, Launceston, Tasmania. He is also an Erskine Fellow and Adjunct Professor at the University of Canterbury and the University of Tasmania.
Prior to joining the faculty at the University, Dr. Furness served a combined 23 years as an U.S. Air Force officer and civilian at the Armstrong Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, where he developed advanced cockpits and virtual interfaces for the Department of Defense. He is the author of the Super Cockpit program and served as the Chief of Visual Display Systems and Super Cockpit Director until he joined the University of Washington in 1989.
Dr. Furness lectures widely and has appeared in many national and international network and syndicated television science and technology documentaries and news programs. He is the inventor of the personal eyewear display, the virtual retinal display, the HALO display and holds 25 patents in advanced sensor, virtual display and interface technologies. With his colleagues Dr. Furness has started 27 companies, two of which are traded on NASDAQ at a market capitalization of > $ 10 B. In 1998 he received the Discover Award for his invention of the virtual retinal display and in 2013 the SPIE Prism Award for the invention of the ChromaID technology. He has also received the Proto Award, the IEEE VRTG Career Award, and the AWE Lifetime Achievement Award. He is the founder and chairman of the Virtual World Society, a non-profit for extending virtual reality as a learning system for families and other humanitarian applications. He is a fellow in the IEEE.
We are honored to have Professor Furness speak at the Educators in VR International Summit.
To Attend the 2020 Educators in VR International Summit
The event requires no registration, and is virtual only, free, and open to the public. Platform access is required, so please install one of the above platforms to attend the International Summit. You may attend in 2D on a desktop or laptop computer with a headphone and microphone (USB gaming headphone recommended), or with a virtual device such as the Oculus Go, Quest, and Rift, Vive, and other mobile and tethered devices. Please note the specifications and requirements of each platform.
Educators in VR is a social, member organization dedicated to providing educational events, trainings, and workshops for educators and learners to prepare them for the future of spatial technologies in education. We offer free weekly workshops in AltspaceVR and other platforms. We need your help to fund this International Summit as well as our ongoing educational programs, workshops, outreach, and scholarship programs. Please help us out by donating to our GoFundMe campaign, and consider volunteering by filling out our volunteering application. We need volunteers for as little as an hour or two. Every hour is appreciated. Familiarity with VR and VR platforms recommended.
Consider subscribing to our Educators in VR event subscription channel to receive regular reminders of upcoming events, including International Summit events.
Have we got a month of events for you this month! Oh, where to start?
Let’s begin with our regular weekly Educators in VR workshops on Tuesdays in AltspaceVR. Last month we had some amazing events with Chris Madsen of ENGAGE discussing how to set up a VR classroom and the standards and practices you should consider.
Nicolas Barone of the Universe dazzled us with tips and tricks on how he presents computer science and programming workshops in AltspaceVR.
With these and other exciting workshops and events behind us, what’s coming up?
February Workshops and Social
We will get to the information on the International Summit, but let’s look at what we have for our regular Tuesday Educators in VR workshops and events.
February 4, 2020 – Educators in VR Social: We have a fun Educators in VR Social event where you will have a chance to meet other educators from around the world and network and learn what others are up to in integrating VR into education, from the classroom to research to development. With the International Conference in a couple weeks, this is a great opportunity for speakers and volunteers to meet up, and you to meet them as well. We are expecting a full house, so get there early.
February 11, 2020 – Creating Educational Events in AltspaceVR: This popular event explores creating educational events in AltspaceVR, and in other VR educational and social platforms. It’s a great introduction for those new to hosting educational events in virtual reality, exploring the considerations of the event space or world, making it public, private, or paid, and tips and techniques for immersive classroom experiences.
February 25, 2020 – Educators in VR After Summit Social: Come party with us to celebrate the After Summit Social, an opportunity to network with attendees, speakers, and volunteers who survived the International Summit. We will be partying hardying!
2020 Educators in VR International Summit
Honestly, we started out with a goal of 40 speakers spread across 5 or 6 days in a couple of VR platforms. Little did we realize when we sent out the speaker application during the holidays, the worst time possible to coordinate an event, we would be flooooooded with applications. They were so good, we decided that since we were doing this virtual, and virtual reality is infinite – right? What’s the harm in expanding?
We will find out February 17-22, 2020, in AltspaceVR, ENGAGE, rumii, Mozilla Hubs, and Somnium Space. We have about 170 speakers and panelists lined up for almost 24 hours a day for six days. Are you ready for this? The schedule will be published shortly.
To manage all this, we have volunteer meetings in AltspaceVR and in our Discord server, and training sessions to help speakers.
Speaker 101: Training Sessions: To help speakers prepare for the 2020 Educators in VR International Summit, we’re hosting a series of training sessions exploring options on how to present in VR including the use of the moderation and hosting tools, slides, presentation styles, and how to keep your audience in their hot and heavy headsets in their virtual seats and engaged for the full length of your presentation while fiddling with all the little bits behind the scenes. These are open to the public as well, so if consider presenting educational events in VR, especially in AltspaceVR, you won’t want to miss one of these special presentations.
February 6, 2020 Thursday – Public Volunteers Meetup for Educators in VR International Summit: Considering volunteering for the Educators in VR International Summit, or volunteering to help with Educators in VR in general, or maybe an AltspaceVR event, Lorelle and the Educators in VR team will introduce you to the opportunities to support Educators in VR events and activities, and teach you a little about how this volunteering in VR thing works. Volunteering doesn’t take much time. We need volunteers willing to give an hour or two during the International Summit, or maybe longer. It’s up to you. We need people of all skills and abilities, from office style work (spreadsheets, email, taking notes, project management) to moderating events to filming and recording events in VR. Even if you don’t know how, we are here to help you learn. Stretch a little and learn something new! This is a great opportunity.
These are all open to the public. If you are a speaker or volunteer, you will be provided with private event information.
Many of the sessions will be live streamed and/or recorded and posted to our YouTube channel, but we need volunteers to help make this happen.
The master calendar will be on our website on our International Event page, and we will be announcing speakers in the next few days.
Consider subscribing to our Educators in VR event subscription channel to receive regular reminders of upcoming events there.
Educators in VR is dedicated to providing educational events, trainings, and workshops for educators and learners to prepare them for the future of spatial technologies in education. We offer weekly workshops in AltspaceVR and other platforms, and a monthly meetup featuring key educators, trainers, and developers in VR, AR, XR, and MR technology and education.
We meet in AltspaceVR, a free virtual reality social app and community. You may RSVP on our events page and AltspaceVR will send you a reminder an hour before the event.
If you would like to present at one of our weekly workshops, please submit your speaker’s proposal to us. Considering joining one of our many team projects. If you have questions or need more information, please contact us or connect with one of our many social media channels.
The 2020 Educators in VR International Summit is a free, open-to-the public, virtual event lasting 6 days (over 80 round-the-clock hours) with a diverse range of speakers and presentations covering:
The Basics of VR/AR/XR/MR
Research into Spatial Technologies in Education
Corporate Uses for Training and Education
Language Arts Training, Education, and as a Classroom
Coaching and Personal Development
Medical and Science
Computer Science and Math
Student Maker/Creator Projects, Collaborations, and Apps
Virtual Applications and Hardware for the Classroom
The diversity of topics by educational professionals, developers, researchers, and even students is impressive, covering even more topics than those listed above. We’re eager to offer a wide smorgasbord of virtual presentations, and you are still welcome to submit your speaker’s application.
If you are an educator, expert, evangelist, trainer, app developer or founder, researcher, or passionate learner eager to share your educational virtual reality, augmented reality, extended or mixed reality passions, we invite you to submit a Speaker Proposal for the 2020 Educators in VR International Summit. The deadline is January 5. Speakers will be announced by January 10, 2020.
The 2020 Educators in VR International Summit will be hosted on AltspaceVR, ENGAGE, and other virtual social and educational platforms.
During our first year, Educators in VR has accomplished great things, bringing together a global community of educators, learners, and researchers integrating virtual and spatial technologies into education, and now we’re proud to announce another ground-breaking, pioneering event: 2020 Educators in VR International Summit February 17-22, 2020.
The 2020 Educators in VR International Summit is a free, open-to-the public, virtual event lasting 6 days (over 80 round-the-clock hours) with a diverse range of speakers and presentations covering:
The Basics of VR/AR/XR/MR
Research into Spatial Technologies in Education
Corporate Uses for Training and Education
Language Arts Training, Education, and as a Classroom
Coaching and Personal Development
Medical and Science
Computer Science and Math
Student Maker/Creator Projects, Collaborations, and Apps
Virtual Applications and Hardware for the Classroom
And so much more. We have topics under consideration covering the use of social media with virtual reality, education in religion and virtual worlds, world building, VR/AR app development, social and educational VR platforms, and open discussions with some of the world’s foremost experts in education and integrating extended reality.
The 2020 Educators in VR International Summit will be hosted on AltspaceVR, ENGAGE, and other virtual social and educational platforms.
This will be a one-of-a-kind event bringing together a global community focused on improving our educational technology and standards, and walking the walk in an all-virtual, immersive conference. Presentations will be scheduled around the clock to ensure access no matter what your time zone.
If you are an educator, expert, evangelist, trainer, app developer or founder, researcher, or passionate learner eager to share your educational virtual reality, augmented reality, extended or mixed reality passions, we invite you to submit a Speaker Proposal for the 2020 Educators in VR International Summit. The deadline is December 30. Speakers will be announced by January 5, 2020.
Volunteers are needed to help with moderation, hosting, or recording and streaming the events throughout the week. If you would like to volunteer, please sign up with our 2020 Educators in VR International Summit Volunteer Form.
We will be announcing partners and sponsors soon, along with partner and sponsor applications. It will take much collaboration and money to support and make this free week-long event possible, and your help will be needed.
We are breaking ground here with this virtual conference covering more than 80 hours of educational presentations in a mix of traditional conference with online and distance learning familiarity, combined with a generous pinch of unconference, in virtual spaces open to all with a passion for virtual education.
We’ve seen VR change lives. Now is our opportunity to share our passion with others and learn from each other. You will not want to miss this.
The 2020 Educators in VR International Summit, February 17-22, is hosted on multiple virtual social and educational platforms. The following is a list of events hosted on one of our partner educational platforms, ENGAGE. 
We are proud to announce that 
Tom Furness will also be on a panel called “Vision of the Future” with Gabriel Rene, Anson Ho, and Charlie Fink, hosted by Daniel Dyboski-Bryant in ENGAGE, Wednesday, February 19 at 1:30 PM – 2:30 PM PST / 4:30 PM EST / 9:30 PM UK/GMT. 
