#6 Why Google is Leading the Charge in Educational VR
What Google is planning for the education sector using Virtual Reality, with Lyman Missimer
Google is known for lots of things. Online search engine, cool internships, Android, Cardboard, Chrome. But what a lot of people might not be aware of is Googles involvement in the education space, with Google Drive being used in almost every single educational institution, and Chromebooks being the most popular device among students.
Lyman Missimer is Chief of Business development, Education at Google. I first saw Lyman speak at the Columbia Entrepreneurship festival on VR back in April 2016 and he was part of the panel that initially spurred my interest in VR to begin with.
Lyman and I discuss what Googles plan is for educational VR, and how Google Expeditions is being used by teachers to take virtual field trips around the world. Many companies and individuals look to Google for leadership in various fields, so if you want to know what they’re up to I suggest you give this a listen.
Click on any of the links on the left to listen to my talk with Lyman on your favorite Podcasting platform!
Read the interview here
I’m sure a lot has changed since I last heard you speak. Most recently I heard you were at SXSWedu. What was it like speaking on the panel Ready Player One: How VR Will Transform the Classroom?
LM: My fellow panelists were teachers that used VR in the classroom, so I was there to represent the business side of the industry. We really focused on the approach that businesses, such as Google, are taking to connect VR and education. My fellow panelists went into detail about the applications of VR in the classroom. Surprisingly, educators are not just using Google Expeditions [Google’s first educational VR project], but instead, they are exploring more heavy-duty products like HTC Vibes, Oculus, and even AR projects, too. The panel also covered some of the more hands-on uses for VR in the classroom and what benefits it can bring.
People look to Google as a leader in the education field. What do the expansion and adoption plans look like for Google Expeditions?
Lyman: You’re definitely right that Google is a thought-leader in the field. It’s interesting though because typically in the education space, Google brings products into the market that are second, but better. For instance, we launched G-Suite (which includes Google Docs, Google Drive, etc.) This project focused on productivity and collaboration. The program gained so much traction that it has been adopted into 70% of the higher education institutes in the U.S. and has 60 million users worldwide.
We used G-Suite as a stepping stone to create Google Classroom. This program essentially makes Google Docs, Google Drive and assignment workflows easier for teachers and students. It currently has 20 million users. Additionally, Google has introduced Chromebooks into the classroom setting. This low-cost, easy-to-manage, and easy-to-scale computer is now one of the most popular devices in education.
With the launch of these products, it’s safe to say that Google has gained a strong foothold in the education space. Since we develop products based on teacher feedback, we are typically second to the market. But with VR, this is the first time that Google is entering into a market “first.” Of course there are many other smaller players that have some VR-related initiatives, but not a full hardware and software solution. We’re really testing the waters for everyone, so we’re a bit nervous. But the industry is looking to us and expecting big things based on our past successes in education.
So what exactly is Google Expeditions?
LM: It’s a product that takes students on a virtual field trip. Through VR, students can travel to countries and cities across the world or to places one can’t really go to — like inside the human body or the Aurora Borealis. We have a ton of awesome virtual field trips which are created by compiling six to eight 360° photos. The images are usually stereoscopic and 3D, which means they look a little more realistic.
Teachers can use Google Expeditions as a supplemental tool within a broader lesson plan. The virtual field trip acts as super-engaging hook to drive more interest and immersion into the broader lesson. Our aim is to inspire students to perform better in the classroom using this VR technology.
Would you say that education is usually late to adopt such new technology?
LM: Yeah, you are right. We notice that when groundbreaking media or communication technology is invented like TV, radio, desktop computers, and cell phones, these new life-changing technologies become part of our day-to-day interactions. Then ten years later, the necessary infrastructure around the product is built to support classroom use.
It’s taken a long time for schools to catch up on the hardware-front, but we’re trying to get ahead of that with VR because we see the potential. We’re designing a product that’s for education first — not something that’s only going to be useful ten years later.
I remember you mentioning how you didn’t want VR going down the same path of the Smart Board.
LM: Yes. Google for Education has learned from what happened with Smart Boards. It was this cool technology with a lot of potential. Then it was thrown into the classroom and teachers were expected to know how to use it. It’s become the “white elephant” story about how not to build hardware for the classroom. So even with this very lightweight version of VR, we’re working on a lot of supporting instructional materials and professional development. We don’t want VR to become single-use technology that collects dust in the back of the room.
So, basically a lesson for everyone: avoid the Smart Board.
LM: Educators should follow a certain model for adopting new technology. It’s called the SAMR model, it stands for Substitution Augmentation Modification Redefinition. New technology should redefine the way a teacher can perform a specific task, instead of substituting a pre-existing method. The fact that teachers can write on a digital board instead of on an overhead projector isn’t really going to redefine the learning process. It needs to be useful for it to be sustainable. There’s going to be a lot of ed-technology that falls by the wayside and we really don’t want that for VR. There’s a lot of potential.
The SAMR model sounds pretty cool. Apart from avoiding Smart Board’s mistakes, what steps have you taken to improve the adoption and interest for VR?
LM: The first thing we did was have a million teachers and students use the product before we released it out into the open. We began what we called the Pioneer Program because we knew we had this very untested type of technology that teachers and students have never come close to using before. My colleagues designed this incredible program where we built VR kits and brought them to schools all over the world; We went to 12 different countries and showed teachers how to integrate it into the lesson for a day. We showed them how VR can be useful and what it can do. Through this experience we collected feedback that we used to alter our original product to make it more useful and usable in the classroom.
With this feedback we were able to add a pause button for teachers to be able to freeze the image students are looking at in the VR. Additionally, we added the ability for a teacher to point where students need to be looking in the 360° sphere and also the ability to see what students are looking at in the sphere. There’s no precedent for this new technology so we did the most market testing we could possibly do. The Pioneer Program ended in the spring. In June we fully released the app for download.
What about the hardware that was used?
LM: The program is based on Google Cardboard and the viewer is the Mattel View Master. Mattel designed a Google Cardboard version of that product. The viewer is great because it’s plastic, it’s very durable, and it can also be cleaned — key things for the classroom.
Then the second component of the product is that there needs to be a cell phone that can support a decent VR experience. In each Expeditions kit there are 30 phones, 30 headsets, a router, and a tablet for the teacher to lead the experience. The phones have been vetted and approved by our Google VR team. There are special requirements for a phone to support a sustainable and good VR experience: it needs a gyroscope, an accelerometer, a certain processing power, and it needs to be able to hold 60 frames per second consistently for a long period of time. We hold high standards for this because this is the first iteration of VR going into the market and it needs to be good or schools are just going to put it by the wayside.
What does the path look like for a new school to adopt this product? I can imagine the schools are filled with senior, not-super-tech-savvy people and a lot of bureaucracy.
LM: That’s a good question. The good thing about the product is that the app is free, so it’s really just a hardware procurement that needs to happen. Most districts have channels and partners that they use to procure the hardware. It’s the same partners that sell Chromebooks to schools. CDWG is a large one, Best Buy for Education is another.
Also, we’re doing a lot of work to make sure there’s a curated and quality ecosystem of Google hardware apps besides Expeditions available to use with these kits. Because you know — again going back to the smartboard example — it’s a bad idea to put a single-use piece of hardware in the education market. So the more we can show the value of VR outside of Expedition, the more sustainable VR will be.
It’s really incredible that Google is leveraging the processes from Chromebooks in the distribution of those kits. What influence did Google’s VR education initiative have on Daydream?
LM: It’s a funny line: Education had no influence on daydreaming. Google Daydream isn’t designed for education. We’re finding that the Google Cardboard headset is perfect for a lot of VR needs because you don’t have a strap, so the hardware is just you holding it up to your face. It’s easy to get in and out of VR, which teachers love — plus it makes it super social. A lot of times we’ll see students looking at some sharks, and then hear their friends say “hey, look over here” — the headsets allow for the students to interact, so they’re not walled off into this VR experience.
Daydream, however, is different and more immersive because it has a head strap. It’s a better quality headset and it also has a controller. It was originally designed for games. That’s the type of content that Google has been making deals for and trying to curate. We’ve been doing a lot of work to think about how Daydream can be used in education, in a way that fits with the market use cases that merit a more immersive experience that may require a controller.
