NubianVR’s Diary Entry #2: Build Educational Infrastructure in Virtual Reality — Project Konko
Virtual reality is revolutionizing the world of education, and NubianVR is at the forefront of this innovation. We believe that virtual reality has the potential to transform education by making learning more immersive, engaging, and effective.
With support from UNICEF Innovation Fund, NubianVR embarked on a mission to develop an open-source tool that would expedite the content creation process. Our interactions with science teachers in the Ga-East District showed us that interactive demonstrations, adaptive exercises, animated video lectures, and game-based learning techniques were the most important features of virtual reality simulations.
We took this feedback and set out to build Project Konko, an open-source virtual reality lesson creator built in Unity and targeted at the Oculus Go. The project is named after a Ghanaian acronym for modular cars built out of recycled food tin cans. Project Konko seeks to provide developers, creators, and educators with the tools to deploy 2D and 360 video lessons, manipulate 3D objects in virtual reality environments, and build multiple-choice lesson assessments for virtual reality lessons without excessive code writing.
In order to test the functionality of Project Konko lesson creator tools, we built a virtual reality lesson on Basic Electronics, targeted at Junior Secondary School teachers and students. The lesson included “18” 2D animated videos, “5” 360 videos, several circuit-building activities, and numerous multiple-choice assessments.
Our efforts have not gone unnoticed. In 2020, Project Konko was nominated as a digital public good by the Digital Public Good Alliance. DPGs are “open-source software, open data, open AI models, open standards, and open content that adhere to privacy and other applicable laws and best practices, do no harm, and help attain the SDGs.”
At NubianVR, we are committed to building educational infrastructure in virtual reality that will transform education in Ghana and beyond. With Project Konko, we are providing educators with the tools they need to create immersive and engaging lessons that will help students learn better. We believe that virtual reality is the future of education, and we are excited to be at the forefront of this revolution.
NubianVR’s Diary Medium Series is intended to give readers a holistic view of our work as an interactive product company focused on making games for learning & entertainment. Through these diary entries, we share our experiences, challenges, and progress as we develop innovative interactive solutions. Our goal is to use this platform to provide insights into our development process, share best practices, and document our journey
NubianVR is an interactive development company with operations in Ghana & the United States. It was officially founded in 2015; our team consists of multidisciplinary creators, learning experts & developers with experience in building interactive products, virtual reality simulations & games primarily for learning, training & fun. Some of our learning products include The Life Skills App & Nubian Storybook.
