Festival of Learning 2018

Participants are encouraged to bring their own laptop to this session

This session begins where 2017’s ETUG - Beyond a Toy: 360° Experiential Learning - left off. That session delved into how viewing 360° video had an immersive quality that could encourage meaningful connections to a topic. This mode permits class trips to anywhere in the world all within the space of a smartphone and Virtual Reality viewer.

The next step in the pedagogical journey switches the student’s role from passive viewer to creator and editor of 360° spaces.

In part one of the proposed session, attendees would view some of the best student created 360° projects from Camosun this academic year. Students have gone out into their community and documented diverse concepts from their classes, like tidal movements or patriarchy, in actions – via 360° images. What’s more, these groups then augmented a string of 360° spaces – bubbles – with text information, 2D photos, soundscapes, quotes, poems, and video.

In part two of the session, attendees will be invited into a series of pre-shot 360° images. From inside these bubbles, attendees will be taught how to augment these spaces – via Holobuilder.com, a US based virtual reality company who Camosun works with. After a short round of instruction, attendees will be encouraged to explore, play, and design their bubbles with the many tools Holobuilder makes available. The goal is to not only to have attendees get their hands and heads inside a thought bubble, but also to have attendees consider how they might bring 360° image augmentation to their classrooms and institutions. Instructors may consider having students explore an augmented 360° space the instructor has created. Others may ask students to define and delineate a 360° bubble – as a mapping project might. The goal will be to generate a discussion on the potential and pitfalls for this type of learning.

Ultimately, most disciplines aspire to have their students see the world through a variety of unique lenses that their discipline teaches. This project permits students to capture and describe these paradigms in the world around them.