Makropol at CopenX, September 2016

We are from Macropole, which is broadly said a transmedia production house. And yeah, basically we're here to talk about education and virtual reality. And I'll start by talking a little bit about the education and why we've chosen to do this in virtual reality. And Marie is going to talk more about our concept and Pernille will get you through the whole content and what it actually is that we did. So first of all, well, as mentioned, we are a production company and we mainly do fictional storytelling and narratives. So why have we chosen to go into virtual reality or sorry, education? And basically our philosophy in Macropole has been to push the boundaries on how we tell stories. So that includes, of course, maximizing the emotional experience, stimulating all the senses to the maximum and also affecting people subconsciously. So of course, when we started experimenting with virtual reality, we started doing different productions and installations, one of them called the Dog House. I don't know if anyone has tried that. Well, we use this point of view technology where we or point of view tool, you can say, where you basically embody the character and see the whole experience through their eyes. So you can be the brother and then you see the whole family dinner, which is the story is about a family dinner. You see the whole family dinner through their eyes in virtual reality. So this was just sort of like a new way for us to tell a story. But what we realized when people took off the old school DK1 headset, we realized that they started talking to each other about, of course, the experience because they wanted to get to know the full experience. But we also realized that they started talking about themselves as if they were the character. So not only did they embody this person, they also emotionally started to talk on their behalf and react on their behalf. And this was, of course, for us a very fun thing to discover and a strong tool to go and research on and do a lot of things in storytelling. But what we realized is, well, how can this also be a strong tool or powerful tool? Where can it really have an effect? And that was when we started thinking about education. And it's, of course, our hypothesis right now and our findings right now that it has an effect on education. But basically, what can virtual reality add in education and learning in general? And to answer that, we have to look more into what is learning and when does a school child, they actually gain knowledge. And that's pretty difficult to define. There's so many different dimensions about learning and when you actually gain knowledge. But we have chosen to lean upon these four elements, which we can sort of say already now are showing some good results. First of all, when we go and test whether our education material has any value, we have to look at what the objectives are from the Ministry of Education, of course. They have created some concrete objectives that we have to be able to fulfill. And there's a lot of different objectives here, but one of them is empathy and perspective taking. That the school children basically have to gain a broad range of perspectives. In which from our experience, you can sort of say that through our qualitative results, that empathy is something we feel that they gain and we've sort of talked about them that they gain, but also some very research people from Stanford University has done a lot of more qualified and valid research on this empathy and perspective and attitude change. And they can actually conclude that in virtual reality, the virtual reality learning environment does actually affect positive and has an effective in terms of perspective taking. And another thing that we also see that virtual reality can add on to is learning through experiences. That's because as you've seen today, there's a lot of things that virtual reality can do and one of the things is that it sort of simulates an environment and it sort of helps you become present. You've probably heard that word quite a lot of times this day. And Marie is going to tell a little bit about how we are utilizing this whole virtual reality creating an experience. And theory is actually supporting this type of learning, learning through experience basically. So we also feel that virtual reality is strong in that sense. The next one is the learning styles and that's basically because we as individuals have different ways of gaining knowledge and stronger sites. Like some of us are visual learners, some of us are auditive learners and tactile learners and kinesthetic learners and some have all elements. And basically virtual reality right now is touching upon many of these perception abilities at once. So that's also another effect where we think virtual reality has an add in terms of other mediums. And also the last one which is not that research valid but when we go out and show pupils our stuff and when we went to almost last week and showed it to 200 students we can see that they think this is so cool because it's something new. So there's basically also the fact of engaging and motivating them just because virtual reality is a new thing. And yeah. Yeah, so virtual reality is really awesome and we know all of these things about the medium but you can't really just learn something by putting it into virtual reality because virtual reality is nothing but a medium. You also have to put content inside that will make learning. So we're here today because we have created one of the first teaching materials which is a course that incorporates virtual reality that we're working on right now called New Eyes on the World. Yeah. And as I said if you want to learn something you have to find out well there is this medium virtual reality it has a lot of good things happening but you also have to get the content. So you have to know the medium what can it do then you have to know the target group in this case it's the students and then you have to create a story that makes the learning happen. And the teaching material that we are doing now is about the UN sustainable development goals that were decided upon last September and these are basically just 17 goals to create a sustainable world by the year of 2030. And this is a huge agenda by the UN and I'll just call them SDGs from now on because it's such a long word. So this is a huge agenda and it's really important that everybody in the world knows about it because if nobody knows about it nothing will ever happen. So we wanted to make a teaching material about this but the thing about these goals are that they're not a part of the students everyday life here in Denmark. There's not a lot of students experiencing hunger or lack of clean water and stuff like that. So we needed to make these goals relatable and we needed to make them memorable to the students. So we already know that virtual reality has some qualities as a medium to make an experience and to really in learning it's really good at making something abstract as these goals make them tangible and make them relatable. But also we needed to know so the target group how will they perceive this and as these goals are very far away from the everyday life we have to break down the distance between the student and the goals. And also what we found out researching on the target group which was students from about 13 years old to 16 years old is that in their life at this point they're very focused on creating an identity because they're figuring out what do I stand for, what are my values, who am I to others and am I cool, am I not cool. So they're very, like identification is key to them because if they can mirror something it's like oh this is a part of how I perceive the world. So we really needed these goals to be something that they could identify with and as these goals are not very prominent in Denmark of course we have to show them from other countries but the problem is that a lot of students these days and a lot of Danes in general are experiencing some kind of compassion fatigue which means that they've seen so much misery and tragedy and they've seen kids with big bellies and flies in the eyes and they've felt sorry for them but at one point you just stop feeling sorry because you can't take it in anymore. So how can we talk about these problems in the world without everybody being like oh I can't take more tragedy. Well we found out then we have to find a character that they can identify with somebody that when they look at her or him they're like oh he's like me or she's like me and wow she's struggling with these issues so then maybe it does that it is something we should even though I'm not experiencing it people like me are experiencing it all over the world. So like the basic like the knowledge from the target group we had to we had this medium creating a great experiences but then we had to add a strong character that they can identify with to break down the distance to these abstract goals to make them more relatable and then we also use this technique of point of view where you can look down and have a body because then they really feel like I was there I met this girl I can I have I now have a relation to these goals that are really abstract and now I've been talking about a girl and an experience and I think maybe we should show a video we have to get the funding to make this big project we have made a pilot video for free last year in Uganda and we just wanted to play this short video to get a sense of what the new eyes on the world material is and then afterwards Panilla will talk about the current project we're doing now where we have just been to Sri Lanka filming yes I'm a little bit unsure how do you turn on new eyes on the world is a little material which combines video virtual reality assignments and discussions everything has been planned out so that teachers can start teaching right away the material has been made in cooperation with the Danish UN Association and it is designed to give the students new eyes on the world to understand the consequences of a globalized world global connections and their own role in our global society to put it briefly to understand the state of the world both the good and the bad and how we can improve our future together it can however be a bit abstract for students to discuss and relate to these enormous questions especially since the world can seem incredibly far away when they are sitting in a classroom in Denmark but now teachers can do something totally new and bring their students along on a journey to literally get new eyes on the world by using virtual reality glasses the students get the chance to experience on their own what this is all about the students travel to Africa and meet a girl their own age welcome to my house who shows them around and gives them a letter to take back home thank you for coming and when you get back to Denmark I want you to take this last note for me in the new eyes on the world package teachers will find real envelopes for the students inside the students will find assignments which relate to what they have just experienced and also contains extra information to facilitate in-depth discussions look this was once a very big first but now I think I don't it makes me sad see nature being destroyed like this and if I can't do anything about it after their trip to Africa the students have a new and better starting point to discuss the state of the world Dan Schoonerman Danish expert in virtual reality explains the students experiences you can see to all sides and you feel you stand there is a discussion or an outflow even if you are sitting in class on the table and looking at a screen and hopefully you can get home with new inspiration or new perspectives it is important that the students have understood this problem that they can understand the context and they are able to discuss it you just account for three two one we have only one planet and therefore we also need to create some global books that can take responsibility all you need to do is to order the learning material follow the lesson plan and the teaching can begin enjoy yes so I will talk to you about the actual content of this vr film and we just got back from Sri Lanka three weeks ago producing this new material that is going to be launched in January this is not supposed to happen yes I'll continue so this vr material is integrated in a whole course and a whole yeah course of learning and the key thing to this vr experience is actually the meeting between a Danish pupil and a Sri Lankan girl so before the pupils will have this meeting with the Sri Lankan girl we have made a short three minute traditional film that will do the presentation of this girl so that when the students or the pupils enter the vr environment or the vr space they will actually meet a girl that they already know and this girl that they meet she will be expecting the pupils so she will be greeting them in a very warm way so already there we have the identification and and the meeting going on so what we or what we have experienced that the pupils react upon when they leave this vr space after having this six minute video experience is that they will say so she talked to me and she showed me around and that was also what you could see the pupils in this film mentioning so what we find really fascinating is that we're working with a media that can actually imitate a meeting and it can make the pupils feel like they've had a very personal experience and that's and something that we have not experienced in any other media that we have been working with yes so I will tell you a little bit about the actual content of the vr film that we've created you are traveling with this young girl called Sajani she is 17 and she's taking you to four different scenes in her life and each scene is supposed to be attached to one of the SDGs so the first one you see is at her house where she will talk about the increased use of electricity in Sri Lanka which is a problem next you will be going to garbage disposal area here you have like a huge pile of garbage maybe you can see it in the background and the lower picture and this is a problem because only a few meters away there's a residential area so this is obviously very problematic and after that you will she will be taking us to a tea plantation where she will be standing in this very beautiful surroundings and behind her four tea pluggers are working and she will be talking about malnutrition malnutrition among the workers which is also a huge problem in Sri Lanka lastly she will take us to a deforested area where a lot of trees have been cut due to production and together the pupils will plant a tree with this girl so between each of these scenes we have had to come up with a method of transporting between the scenes so we have used a little bit of magic so before you go from her room to the garbage disposal area she will do a countdown from three she'll say one two three and snap her fingers and then you will be transported from one scene to another and also in each of these scenes maybe you can see it on the first picture she will hand you a letter that she the pupils are told to bring back home to Denmark so this letter is a way of bringing this very visual experience into the physical classroom and creating a bridge between the two spaces that the pupils are are in so in each of these four letters which the teacher will be handing out to all of the pupils while they are they are in this VR experience in each of these letters there will be assignments and discussions and this will lead to the further education that they will that the pupils will get so we have also had to discuss how we could actually activate the pupils in this VR space and some of the things that we did to use the fact that there's a whole 360 space around us is that Sadyani here will always encourage the students to look around so when she's standing right in front of you she will ask you to notice the garbage pile just behind her and also she will encourage to grab things at one point she will hand you a soda can that you can actually touch and that's a way of like enhancing the illusion of actually being present and that's what VR is really about so what is the output for the pupils of this material well they shouldn't really know all the cold facts about the STGs when they get back from this VR experience the most important thing or the goal for us is that the pupils will actually remember this experience because they are there's a lot of subjects that they are presented to and most of them are read in a textbook or seen in a film so we would like to give them an experience where they will actually have some feelings about what they have just experienced so that is the main goal for doing this VR film so they will be they will actually have some feelings about a subject that they would otherwise feel very distanced to yeah and in general we are still we're still in the process of actually identifying what virtual reality can do in in education and this is one of our projects and when we we're right now we're testing it on primary schools and while we're testing it we're sort of identifying okay this works and this works and but we're still we're still learning every day about how this should be done in the right way and I think for each project it's going to slowly develop to become better and better and and of course more utilizing more of the virtual reality and other medias for instance also and yeah this is very new and we're expecting that it will explode but as of now we've only heard of our project right now that will actually introduce a full course integrating VR in the primary schools but we we guess that we will see that very soon coming more and more and our next project will be a classical music project where the students will travel to different castles and experience music from that period while being within an orchestra so that they get both the visual and the musical feeling of an era in music and also there will be some experiences where they can play as a professional violinist or a cellist so they will be in the body of a professional musician to experience how it is to produce classical music and get like a closer more intimate relationship to a musical genre that is maybe not the one that they always listen to at home yeah yeah so you're welcome if you have any questions or want to get in touch with us to write us an email and we'll always we'll also be here for an hour or something and hang out and so you're welcome to look us up and talk to us if you have anything and also if you know any primary schools in the second school let us know because we're looking for sign-ups and t-shirts that we can pick the brains of so yeah that's it yeah all right thank you so much just uh just one quick question uh the biggest challenges for you guys doing this making a vr documentary and stuff like that for the schools what what's the biggest challenges for you well the biggest challenge is actually not to make the virtual reality documentary but to launch it because right now nobody has the devices so we're actually still working on how can we actually show our materials in primary schools because they don't have the hardware so we're figuring out should we provide the hardware in the beginning and hoping that in years to come that schools will buy the equipment themselves but actually it's just to launch it that is the biggest uh challenge it is the new frontier so but thank you thank you thanks