International Summit: Volunteer and Donate

February 5, 2020February 5, 2020 / Lorelle VanFossen / Leave a comment

The 2020 Educators in VR International Summit begins in less than two weeks and we’ve opened up a GoFundMe 2020 Educators in VR International Summit Campaign to help offset the costs of this free and open-to-the-public all virtual conference. We welcome your help.

The Educators in VR International Summit, February 17-22, 2020, is not just breaking new ground, it is causing an earthquake. The 6-day event features over 160 speakers from around the world presenting across over 200 hours of virtual events, with many live streamed and recorded for future airing on our Educators in VR YouTube channel. The Summit will be held across AltspaceVR, ENGAGE, rumii, Mozilla Hubs, and Somnium Space.

According to people who track these things, outside of Second Life, this is the largest virtual event ever, and the largest immersive, all-virtual conference ever. It’s amazing!

We are also trying to break the world record for the most people at a virtual event for our closing ceremonies in Somnium Space, February 22 at noon PST. We hope you will join us.

The Educators in VR International Summit is more than the 160+ speakers and panels and the diverse wealth of expertise and knowledge they are sharing freely. It is also about the dozens and dozens of volunteers giving freely of their time to help make this event a success by moderating, filming, managing the vast paperwork and schedule, and supporting us in so many ways. It takes a village, and our members come from their own international villages to help us in our virtual one.

We are asking for your help in two ways. You may choose both. We hope you will.

Volunteer: We need volunteers of all skills. Even helping to moderate for an hour or two during the 6-day event is helpful. Or an hour or two a day. Or longer. Join this historical event by filling out our Volunteer Form.

Donate: The funds raised through out GoFundMe Campaign not only help support the International Summit, but also help us fund:

Educators in VR scholarships funds for training, classes, workshops, and curriculum development.
VR and AR equipment as part of our outreach programs around the world.
Ongoing free and open-to-public workshops and training programs to future-proof educators in immersive and spatial technologies.
Research into the effects, practices, standards, and efficacy of VR/AR in education beyond the WOW-effect.
Our commitment to cut carbon emissions. We are calculating the carbon footprint of our event and comparing it to that of a similar real world event. We believe there is a great future for virtual conferences and summits and are proud to be blazing a trail!

Educators in VR is dedicated to providing educational training, resources, connections, and experiences to educators, learners, researchers, and passionate enthusiasts to help them integrate immersive technologies into education.

Last year, Educators in VR has hosted over 100 free educational weekly workshops in AltspaceVR as well as special events in ENGAGE and other virtual social and educational platforms, reaching over 4,000 attendees. Topics included immersive classroom experiences, textbook publishing with AR, cyberbullying in VR, developing VR classes with elementary students teaching teachers how to teach with and in VR, VR lab building, and reports on research in immersive and spatial technologies for education.

Educators in VR presented in-person and virtual workshops at AWE 2019, VRX2019 Conference in Amsterdam, the VR/AR Global Summit for the VR/AR Association, among many others last year. We’ve been featured in the AltspaceVR Community Spotlight newsletter, The Virtual Reality Podcast, and the upcoming WebXR Podcast.

Help us make our dreams come true for the thousands of attendees for the 2020 Educators in VR International Summit, and for our ongoing work in helping the education industry prepare for the future.

Thanks!

The Educators in VR Team

February 2020 Schedule of Events

February 2, 2020February 2, 2020 / Lorelle VanFossen / Leave a comment

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.

Join our Educators in VR Discord group, Facebook, and follow us on Twitter for information on meetups and how to become more involved.

To Attend Educators in VR Events in AltspaceVR

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.

You may attend as a guest or member using the free AltspaceVR mobile app or 2D version. AltspaceVR is available for Samsung Gear, Steam Store for HTC Vive, Windows Mixed Reality, and the Oculus Store for Rift, Go and Quest users. If you do not have a VR device, you may also install the 2D version for use on your Windows desktop computer. A headset and microphone (quality earbuds acceptable) is required to participate. Otherwise please stay muted during the event as the background noise and echoes may be disruptive. For more information on accessing and installing AltspaceVR, check out their download web page.

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.

Educators in VR: Good-bye 2019, Hello 2020

January 5, 2020February 5, 2020 / Lorelle VanFossen / 1 Comment

Now that we are starting off a new year and a new decade, we want to take a moment to look back on all that we’ve accomplished in our first year and be amazed. When Daniel told me he wanted our tagline to be “The sky is no longer the limit,” I thought it was cute. I didn’t realize it would become our motto.

Seriously, in spite of many personal disruptions, Daniel Dyboski-Bryant and myself have worked long hours in addition to full-time jobs to develop Educators in VR on a shoestring budget. Its success as a membership community and social profit company based in the UK is amazing because of you.

What started out as a conversation between four educators to host a social meetup to explore educators using VR for research and integration into the classroom exploded into weekly educational and training workshops and presentations in AltspaceVR, ENGAGE, and other social and educational platforms, and, coming in February, a ground-breaking six-day virtual conference called “2020 Educators in VR International Summit.”

In the past 13 months, Educators in VR has accomplished the following:

Hosted 48 workshops and meetups in AltspaceVR.
Hosted multiple events in ENGAGE, rumii, and Mozilla Hubs (with more on the way).
Averaged 40 attendees at each event (the cap in AltspaceVR for the past 6 months was 40 so that means standing room only. Before then, we averaged 80.).
Reached an audience estimated to be about 4,000 just in AltspaceVR across over 80 workshop hours.
Hosted 550 members on our Discord server, and our Facebook group is about the same with some overlap between the two. Discord is our most active social platform with over 7,700 comments in less than a year, and we’ve over 1,000 followers on Twitter.
Attracted 3,000 pageviews on our website in a few months time with little or no marketing.
Developed seven different educational workshops, along with a dozen variations for specific audiences.
Presented live virtual and in-person workshops at AWE, VRX2019 Conference in Amsterdam, and the VR/AR Global Summit for the VR/AR Association.
Co-hosted over 6 hours of the 24-hour International VR Day in November.
Presented 5 special events, speakers, and panels on cyberbullying in virtual reality as part of honoring Cyberbullying Month in AltspaceVR.
Featured in “Getting Social with VR Education” with VR Focus, AltspaceVR Community Spotlight: Educators in VR, Educators in VR Meetup by The Virtual Reality Podcast, and other media.
Lorelle built a custom event world for Educators in VR, and Mark S. of the UK took the prototype and turned into into a marvelous event and social space for our weekly workshops and social gatherings.
Continue to develop scholarship and donation programs to help fund educational programs for integration of VR into the classroom and provide equipment for students and educators in need.

The Educators in VR Project Teams

Of all the things we are proud of accomplishing this year, we are the most proud of our Project Team leaders and members. These are truly passionate and inspired people who’ve taken on leading these special project teams to host events, workshops, and dive even deeper into the research and curriculum for their specialties. I’d like you to meet them.

Continue reading →

Announcing the 2020 Educators in VR International Summit

December 10, 2019January 2, 2020 / Lorelle VanFossen / 5 Comments

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.

Come join the fun February 17-22, 2020.