Eamonn Powers: 0:00
I think the scope of what games and simulations, to that point, can do in our very real world is pretty tremendous.
Intro music plays: 0:08
Heidi Kirby: 0:14
Hello friends! Welcome to the BLOC, the building learning and organizational culture podcast. I’m your host, Heidi Kirby. On this episode, we have Eamonn Powers, who is a learning experience architect at FlightSafety International and an instructional design Ph.D. student at Old Dominion University. We talk about virtual reality and simulations used for learning. We also chat a bit about Star Wars and video games! So, there’s a little something for everyone. I had so much fun geeking out with Eamonn! I hope you enjoy this episode after a brief word from our sponsor, Verasana.
Verasana Narrator: 0:56
Your business needs a better way to train. The better that your team needs is training that leads to performance. Verasana is interactive and repeatable. So your employees can return to lessons as many times as you need to. And we optimize the training… so they and you can review their progress. The power of mobile makes it possible. Our team has decades of experience and expertise. We do it because we’ve been where you are. Verasana - the better way to learn.
Heidi Kirby : 1:26
Hey Eamonn, how are you?
Eamonn Powers : 1:28
Hey Heidi how's it going?
Heidi Kirby : 1:29
Good, good. Thanks for joining me on the BLOC today.
Eamonn Powers : 1:35
I'm happy to be here. Yeah, no, such an honor. Thank you.
Heidi Kirby : 1:38
So if we could just get started and you could just tell me a little bit about your career and education... and fun fact for our listeners, Eamon and I are in the same instructional design PhD program at Old Dominion, and that's actually how we met. So, I'll let you tell the rest of your story.
Eamonn Powers : 1:58
Well there was a child once... no - (laughs) I'm in the PhD program with Heidi. She beat me last year in a instructional design contest and I've held it against her - I think - I will until I die, obviously.
Heidi Kirby : 2:15
It's true.
Eamonn Powers : 2:16
Yeah, so I mean, you know, the path to where we sit now is pretty straightforward, I think actually. So yeah, I originally was a pilot, went to undergrad and all that to be a pilot, technically to be a baseball player and that didn't work out. So then I was like, "oh I'll be a pilot instead." So I did that for a little bit, and then for a number of years, I ran my own company out in California, where we did just that - we taught people how to fly. And so it has really kind of been my passion, you know? I really like airplanes and aviation and - And I just think it's cool right? I mean that's really what it comes down to. So I did that for a while and then I started working. I sold the company when I had little children. My kids are a little bigger now, but I sold the company when the kids were just getting to be toddlers, because it was kind of either that or them, and I picked them obviously. So I went and got a job at FlightSafety International. We do pilot training, obviously, for airline and mostly corporate pilots. So guys that are flying business jets pilots and mechanics and cabin attendants. And so I was an instructor there for a short period of time, and then after that, I got into their version of courseware development. And I was an assistant director up in St. Louis and then director down here in Dallas, and now I still have the director job, but I'm the learning experience architect at FlightSafety International. So we're trying to forge a path forward with, you know, good bit of technology and a good bit of interesting stuff that we can do, but specifically within the aerospace sector, so it's fun, it's good times.
Heidi Kirby : 4:02
Very cool. Yeah, and you get to do a lot of stuff that most companies probably don't get to do right?
Eamonn Powers : 4:09
Yeah I mean I'd say that's fair I mean the - So a number of our peers, you know, a number of the peers that we work with, they're in higher ed or K through 12 or something like that and there's absolutely an element about our business. And so like our worlds are very different, you know like, whereas the K through 12 or higher ed situation is like, you know, semesters of time, our people, our clients, our learners, are here for a very short period of time, you know maybe a month of training would be considered to us a long period of training, but rather than focusing on discussion forums and collaborative workspaces - things that are probably pretty typical in say, K through 12 or higher ed. We're not focused on that at all - we're really focused on fidelity of training simulation, so we have full motion airplane simulators that are literally the cockpit of the aircraft, and with wrap around, essentially virtual reality display. So you've got all these, like - Yeah, that's, that is not normal. (laughs) You know that would be really impressive... If you went into, you know, tenth grade biology and you walked into a holodeck - you know - I mean that's that's kind of what I have available and it is - it's wild to think about and sometimes we take it for granted. But every now and - I make sure to go fly - I make sure to go fly one of these things at least once a month and I'm like, no yeah this is still impressive. Yep.
Heidi Kirby : 5:41
That's good that it never gets old. That's great. So can you tell me about a project that you're working on right now, maybe, that really excites you?
Eamonn Powers : 5:50
Yeah so, we're doing a couple things. One - one thing that we just did was actually really low tech; in fact our, our clients are, we call them clients obviously because we're business, but our learners will receive them for the first time on Monday, so it's actually really exciting. We made playing cards. Okay, so a little deck of playing cards, and we have this product that we've been, you know, giving out to our clients for a number of years called flashcards and these things got - they got very unwieldy for a period of time like you know we'd have like 400 or 500 of these things and they were out of control. And it's like, well, how could someone memorize 500 things? That doesn't seem reasonable. So, we were trying to figure out like kind of practical ways of limiting the number of cards we would be making. And, you know, my team and I, we were like okay, well, what if we made them like playing cards right because that automatically limits them to 54 right? And we could come up with subsequent decks and so on and so forth, so it's become a whole thing. It's really, really interesting so they - Yeah, they've got suits and every card is different so that was really interesting and that the idea - what's funny is. This is one of these things that's really interesting it's like, people that we talked to when we were kind of vetting it and we were doing some of the initial evaluations in it, they would all say the same thing, they'd be like, well, people are gonna know what card the other guy has. And I'm like, exactly. Because you memorize the information, like, so at some point you're right, the cards become - you know what the other guy's got, which is interesting, but but that means you actually, you've gotten the information like you know what the information is, which is the exact point for the cards to begin with right? So obviously, we will have different versions of it everything, but it's - that was interesting. So that's one, that's kind of a little thing we're working on. The big kind of a big thing we're working on at the moment is we have a new data analytics platform, that's going to be in our full motion simulators called Flight Smart. And in the next few months that will be implemented in a number of simulators across the enterprise. What's cool about that is, and the reason I'm super interested in it is, it's a way to give clients - be more transparent with the clients in terms of their evaluation right? You know so we can. Okay, instead of it just being an instructor saying, "hey," like, you know, "I think you could do this better." We could literally then say, "Well, you see here where you didn't apply this much pressure on this control service, well if you, if you had done this thing 10 or 20, more percent, you would have been successful," right? And we really want to make sure that people feel successful and confident and comfortable. And I think things like that are going to start giving them the tools that they're really needing, so that's cool.
Heidi Kirby : 8:31
That's great. Yeah, absolutely. Why do you think other companies don't utilize simulation in the same way that you get to?
Eamonn Powers : 8:39
I think the thing about simulation is. Well it's interesting, right? Simulation is not always - so we make a number of products right? So simulation can do various things, and I think sometimes what happens is, simulation is a can be quite expensive. Right? It's built - we have very high fidelity simulators. But one thing that happens with products that we make that we don't think are going to - say - bring in the revenue expectations that we're looking for is we'll do a real hard look at - we'll do like a very detailed task analysis of the actual thing we're trying to do - what the learners are really trying to walk away with, right? I mean, I'll give you an example of our maintenance training, so you know what's happening there is we're really emphasizing troubleshooting, which is actually kind of a cognitive thing - it's not so much a physical thing. So, while the physical thing is important, obviously you want to make sure that a person can do the thing they're supposed to be doing, what we've noticed is in certain times, you know, like in certain courses, we're really not trying to go all the way - we just want them to start thinking about the order in which it's being done. And so what we wind up doing is, we wind up only simulating a portion of the environment, right? So we essentially say, "Well, we want to be able to simulate the logical ways that this decision process can go without simulating the whole environment, right? So, that's one way that that we've been able to kind of, you know, scope simulation appropriatel. But the sort of the thing that - I think the one thing with simulation that is often kind of misunderstood is that simulation is kind of what you want when you don't explicitly know what you're looking for. And that's, in itself, like, kind of weird. You know, because we build, obviously as instructional designers, we build things to meet specific objectives. And in the fact that - if you, depending on the fidelity of the simulation you're kind of building to, simulation is really built to essentially encompass whatever you say is the real world, right? And so, you'll have to work within that space, but it's very possible you're not even trying to know what the person is going to do. So, in our simulators, we simulate a vast environment, you know, we have a fully modeled airports and fully modeled, you know, portions of the actual globe. And do we use all of that? No, we certainly don't, and you know there's arguments to be made about this or that. But what we are doing. We recognize that an airplane - you sit in an airplane. You do have the capability of going anywhere in the world; you do have the capability of doing all these different things. And so it's really important then, from from our standpoint, to say, well, we want to make sure that when you get into our simulator you feel the exact same way so that the transfer of training can happen. Because the unique thing about us is, and something that I think the general public doesn't know is - when an airline pilot or a corporate pilot first flies their plane with people behind them - you know with like paying customers - generally, they never they've never actually flown the plane, they they flew -
Heidi Kirby : 12:03
Oh wow.
Eamonn Powers : 12:04
Yeah, they flew only in the simulator.
Heidi Kirby : 12:06
Yeah, I definitely didn't know that (chuckles).
Eamonn Powers : 12:08
So, there's control here right yeah so the idea is, they always have a training pilot with them, that obviously has flown the airplane. But yeah, the first time you fly you're -You've never actually flown it, right? And that's the level of fidelity that we need to do in the simulator, and obviously, that's expensive. So I think what happens is the reason the simulation is maybe not use as much as it could be is one - sometimes we think of - one - it is expensive, depending on the fidelity you're looking for. And two - it's very possible that the people that could use it don't realize that it's a viable option at differing levels of expense, you know, and so then they go with something that's a little more tried and true. And that's yeah that's where they're at.
Heidi Kirby : 12:54
So I could see some industries that are more, I guess the word is maybe low stakes, where they don't need as high fidelity as simulation saying, "Man, you know we can't afford that" or "we don't have the budget for that," but, you know, you're saying that there's like the "top-shelf" simulation and then like the more practical-use simulation.
Eamonn Powers : 13:16
So, yes, and in reality, a significant amount of the work that we're doing right now actually is using video game engines, right? So, we use - we're extensively using both Unity insome circles and Unreal Engine in other teams too; we're kind of vetting both of those, the pros and cons of them, right? I mean like - so, and those are varied, but they're kind of - somewhat of a Coke and Pepsi kind of thing, and you'll get the love of one over the other. In my experience, it's - I've seen very similar deliverables come out of them. The benefit with those things - with game engines like that and the reason we use them quite a bit is the simulation part kind of comes baked in, right? So, as long as you have people that are capable of working within 3d, you could have a fairly high fidelity, like, depending on what rules you want to make. The other thing that I think you're you're getting to is that while a simulation is ideal in testing out scenarios that maybe you haven't conceived yet, which is the best thing for simulation. I mean like, there are things you're hoping for, you know, like incidental events, which especially in technical training, it's those incidental things that are really the things that are teaching you. "Oh, well this moves that way," right? Yeah, so there's something very, very significant in using simulation like that. But even going all the way down to say - role playing is, in a way, simulation, except we're using the environment that we live in, right? So you're essentially - if you set a stage or a theme in a classroom, that is, in a sense, simulation because you're playing by certain set of rules, and you're essentially allowing a not pre-scripted situation to unfold, right? And that's fair. I think that's the real differentiator; if you don't have a set script, then simulation is a pretty good way to go. It's almost like improv. But the thing is, it's really important, just like in a video game - it's really important to understand what the ultimate goal of the training environment is and then the mechanics of it, right? And that's where simulation and I think game-based learning, they work really well together because, you know, in many games you're - that's exactly what you're doing. Whether it's a board game or a card game or a video game... you have goals, and those goals are kind of what the point of the game is, but sometimes the point of the game isn't, you know, go and steal this rock from this ogre, right? Sometimes it's-
Heidi Kirby : 15:54
Yeah.
Eamonn Powers : 15:55
Sometimes the true point of the game is to play with your friends. And so, you know, you've got all these kind of weird intangibles that happen there, but all games do share certain, you know, they need to have solid mechanics, they need to have some role of narrative, whether it's an implicit or an explicit narrative. They've got these kind of different variables in there, and I think that's where simulation, if people are interested in using it for their application, you know obviously there's a monetary side of it, but there's also just a thought process side, like "what are we trying to get out of this?" And the answer to that question is really - probably the place where you have to enter into the "well I can physically produce" that's outlining limitations of what's possible.
Heidi Kirby : 16:39
Sure, sure. But there's always a way to kind of work within the scope that you have.
Eamonn Powers : 16:44
Yeah, of course. Yeah.
Heidi Kirby : 16:46
Yeah, yeah. So how does what you do on a daily basis relate to your research interests and what you're studying for the PhD program?
Eamonn Powers : 16:57
Well, I try to be pretty direct (laughs). So, I did a study last semester, and that'll be in a special issue of TechTrends here a couple weeks, hopefully, or a month - I don't know when that actually gets published. That (the study) actually has to do with our learning management system, you know, so one of the problems we have with simulation, with especially these new deliverables that we're building in game engines is, you know, how do you physically deliver those?
Heidi Kirby : 17:22
Sure.
Eamonn Powers : 17:23
Right. And then - So, the physical delivery of things, you know, it kind of gets overseen but when you're, you know, higher ed has this problem obviously significantly. Even now, especially with COVID happening, you know the physical delivery of materials is going to be a challenge, right? So, we had a significant amount of work that we just did there, so I mean that was - that was a big part of my research last semester. What we're - what I'm doing now is, so it's kind of twofold - it's kind of the reason I started the whole PhD process and the reason I'm doing most of this is - ultimately, the goal is to help people. The goal is to make people feel comfortable in training environments. Anyone that's been in higher ed - anyone that's gotten to a PhD program has going through a number of teachers, they've gone through a number of classrooms, done a number of different modalities, you know, and I think education sometimes - we try to fit everything into a certain box of "this is what training is," right? Weirdly enough, what I've noticed is - in, you know, in fandoms if you will - so I'm a big Star Wars guy. I'm sorry about that.
Heidi Kirby : 18:39
This is not the place to be sorry about that. Let me tell you that (laughs).
Eamonn Powers : 18:44
So one of the things that has always interested me about that - fandoms - if you will, is yeah how much that has in common with this pretty common perception of the community of practice that we talk about within education settings, right? Yeah, so I'm super interested in, like, okay, so - I'm gonna get into it, so here we go (laughs).
Heidi Kirby : 19:05
I love it! I'm ready.
Eamonn Powers : 19:09
The research that I'm interested in is ultimately the core of instructional design - it's like, what's the what's the best thing that I can do to help a person activate this part of their brain or this part of their knowledge right now? And I actually think Star Wars is a good example of exactly how it's done because there's so many different modalities that Star Wars is in, and so there's the movies and you're going to get, you're going to operate to a certain percentage of the population that way. And then there's, you know, there's the books, which is kind of a lower one and then there's toys and there's books and when in reality, you're always operating in the same universe, right? There's this - kind of - a certain set of rules, and those rules are kind of, they're not rules in the sense that it has to be that way. They're almost like these are the means in which you can participate in education. I think we miss that sometimes, right? We think "oh well we're doing this eLearning course, and that's the way that's going to be." You know, I can't imagine - it doesn't make sense from - if you're Lucasfilm to say "oh we're we're just going to make movies" because obviously, there's a number of people out there that are really interested in operating either in a video game or in an ad or buying shirts or even just talking to each other about it, right? And losing their minds on Twitter about, you know, characters. I mean, all of those are means of interaction. And, you know, those are the experiences that we gain. So how that relates back to my research interest is kind of - well what I'm interested in is - I want to make sure that the things we make kind of reflect that, right?
Heidi Kirby : 20:47
Yeah.
Eamonn Powers : 20:48
You know, if you're going to be building things, those things should likely be built to give the people the feedback they're looking for rand in appropriate time and an appropriate format. And you know what I'm laser focused on at the moment is really performance analytics, which goes you know all the way back to Skinner and behaviorism and stuff like that but what's old is new, you know.
Heidi Kirby : 21:13
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I know that the community has been talking a lot about police training and just some of these different things that have shifted to the more touchy-feely constructivism type of training, and my thought is well if that's not working, does some of this training stuff need to just go back to the behaviorist way,? Do we not - did we go too far? Do we not have enough balance between behaviorism and constructivism anymore? You know what I mean? So, that's kind of been been something that I've been thinking about as well is - there is an element to - and having a toddler who's almost four years old, behaviorism is very real and it's very useful because I mean the English language is pretty much rote memorization, right?
Eamonn Powers : 22:03
Yeah, yeah, no, you're absolutely right and then that's so I - you know, last semester I did a significant amount of reading into Skinner. It was part of a - part of the coursework - we had to pick a person that we were going to focus on. Yeah, you know, in the first few years of the program, you do pick up on this "oh, are you a this or are you that?" And, yeah, I kind of always thought that was a silly way of - like why would you eliminate tools that are available to you? You know, that doesn't make sense you know, and no - I'm not suggesting that we should be Pavlovian, and everything comes with a piece of candy. No, I don't think that's -
Heidi Kirby : 22:45
Candy's good.
Eamonn Powers : 22:46
Yeah, candy's fine.
Heidi Kirby : 22:47
Let's not rule out candy here (laughs).
Eamonn Powers : 22:50
No, but I mean, it's interesting so like, you know, in the 50s Skinner made his machine - the teaching machine or whatever. And part of me is like - Well, right, like every interaction we have - truthfully Blackboard or any LMS is incredibly capable of measuring every unit of performance you could ever do and then correlating that with your grade performance or your future, you know like, your future employment status or - you know we could easily leverage a number of data points across both personal and educational, and I know that starts to get kind of Orwellian, and you're like, "Oh no." But with that being said, that certainly, I think if Skinner was alive today, and mid research, I think he'd be all about big data, and I think he'd be saying that this is the way that these nuanced actions, these physical performance objectives are the way that we can tell people are really getting it. I think that's probably good you know, and especially if you start building that into simulation, which is kind of where we're at and that's kind of the reason that I'm in the path that I am at the moment with the research I'm doing is because, well, if you can find the things that lead to something being potentially dangerous and especially in a, you know, high-threat situation like flying or mining or medical or even police officers - absolutely. You know, we can do that. I mean, that's actually current state technology to take through someone through that experience, and it's interesting because right now one of the biggest games came out two weeks ago. And there's been a number of articles about it that have already come out is The Last of Us Part Two.
Heidi Kirby : 24:49
Oh yeah. I'm very familiar.
Eamonn Powers : 24:53
Very familiar. Yeah. So, I've read a number of articles that are - I haven't played it yet - but a number of articles that are like, "this is a misery simulator," you know, this is gonna make you feel - and you're like you start to think of it, and you're like "well, wow." We have all these like kind of nuances and like, what's gamification and what's serious games? We try to define these things - and like, from everything I've read - and I played the first game, so I know the genre, don't get me wrong. Realistically, whole point of that game is for you to kind of search within yourself for what you're willing to do, right? And your participation in the game is ultimately the implicit understanding of "I'm going to try to build empathy with these people that are kind of reprehensible." So, you've got that really interesting thing so I mean like - I think the scope of what games and simulations, to that point, can do in our very real world are pretty tremendous that just requires our imagination. But again in the game world, like in The Last of Us I mean, there are things you have to do, performance-based objectives for the progression of the game, just like honestly in real life there are likely performance-based objectives that allow us to progress in real life and I don't see any problem with that. You know?
Heidi Kirby : 26:10
Absolutely. Yeah, and I think we can learn a lot more from what people are doing and, you know, you've just kind of mentioned entertainment industry, you mentioned sales and marketing with kind of the big data. And I think that it would be helpful for learning and development people to just watch those other industries more. I feel like sometimes we're really behind the times right, you know, we're still doing leaderboards, and there's The Last of Us Two out there. You know what I mean.? We gotta keep up, you know? And I think that sometimes we kind of become our own worst enemies in the sense that, "well this is how we do things," and "storyline is what we use," and "E-courses are how we teach." To, you know, go back to Star Wars like, "This is the way," right? (laughs) Like, no, this doesn't have to be the way though, and I think that as I see a lot of people in our program and just the diversity of people in our PhD program, it gives me a lot of hope because everybody is so interested in doing something different and innovative and kind of stretching outside that box. We're not changing the context, we're not changing the limitations of the fandom of l&d, we're just, you know, bringing in a new - we're just creating a graphic novel because we only have movies and books right now, you know, so just trying to step outside of that typical l&d experience.
Eamonn Powers : 27:44
Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I mean, one thing that I think is like today, you know with the situation we're in is, I've read a lot of articles recently and Twitter posts and stuff about the challenges we're gonna have with distance learning, you know, coming in the Fall with COVID, right? And one of the things that we struggle - in my work we struggle with this too, because you know they're like the thing that we want to do the ultimate thing we kind of would like to do is mirror - and I think what everyone would like is - mirror the in-person experience, right? And you want that to be the same and like the one thing that video games have done exceptionally well, and I don't think we've looked into nearly enough is the is multiplayer, you know, so like Fortnight or Warframe or Call of Duty any any of these games, even Halo you know they're like all these games. They're all violent games - no question, but they're - they require massive amounts of people be playing at the same time so there's all these technological advancements that have been made in the game sector, and for whatever reason we just, you know, I agree with you and l&d sector we have not. I mean that could happen today, and sure there's plenty of interest in things like, you know, Second Life or other kind of VR experiences, but again, those are just - I don't know if we've really attempted to tailor the learning experience to operate within that realm of possibility. I think we're kind of right here... I think we're like kind of tiptoeing into it. And maybe we need to kind of dive in a little more.
Heidi Kirby : 29:24
Yeah, absolutely. The reason I made the focus of this podcast what it is, you know, creating that learning culture in organizations is because, I just think a lot of times, organizations, whether it be higher ed, corporate, military, whatever, treat l&d as a budget list item, right? We're not sales. We're not, you know, shipping the product, but you know we are - l&d at a good organization touches every single person in that organization, so I think until we kind of can change organizational culture a little bit more and make it more open to spending a little bit more money on the l&d people... but that's also a double-edged sword too because they see some of the work that we do - some of these outdated e-courses or some of these recorded lectures and they're like "why would I spend more money on this?" So, I think there's a good middle ground to find and it's just that people like you and I and other people in our program have to find that the organizations that are going to let us kind of run with it and show the world what we can, what we can do, you know?
Eamonn Powers : 30:43
Yeah, I think that's right, and I think it's going to require that forging ahead, and it's going to be some perseverance, if you will. Yeah (laughs).
Heidi Kirby : 30:53
Absolutely. So on that note, let me ask you... if there was a small thing - a small step that you could recommend to organizations and companies to just take that first step in integrating simulations or AR and VR. Is there something small that companies could do to kind of turn in that direction?
Eamonn Powers : 31:21
Yeah. So, one thing that recently became available, and well, in Unreal Engine specifically is - and Unreal is a relatively easy thing to get access to. It's initially free. And now, once you start to produce things that you're trying to sell, there are licensing requirements just like anything else, right? But one thing that's been absolutely amazing is initially, when we were using - when we were building 3d and simulated environments, we were building the whole environment where we were purposely building a two-mile space right and so like, yeah, if you were a company - if you were a real estate company or something like that you were trying to show someone a house or you were trying to train someone out of how to properly show house like - you would have to like build the house and you'd have to build all that stuff and there's a lot of overhead with 3d developers and shaders and people that work on lighting and the bar was really high on making that a top-notch experience. I could say now. The bar is really low actually. So, now what you can do is kind of two things - you can immediately put HDR photographs that are even just taken with your phone and make that the learning environment. The second thing that's just recently started to pick up pretty big time is with like the iPad Pro, even the regular iPad or an iPhone will do it, but the iPad Pro is particularly good at it. It can take 3d scans of real objects. Okay. And so instead of building a three-dimensional thing which requires, obviously, development time and thought, you could just take your phone out there and say "hey, I want to talk about this thing." And you can place it pretty much anywhere -
Heidi Kirby : 33:14
Very cool.
Eamonn Powers : 33:16
Yeah, you essentially give people the opportunity to then work with something in scale. And the thing I think that gets lost sometimes on with VR - And it's because when we talk about VR, we're looking on screens or we're looking at a piece of paper. VR doesn't make sense until you actually put the headset on. So, in aviation, we actually had this very same problem; people were like "why would we do that ?"And then what happened was, well, because the aircraft is huge, right or the aircraft's quite large. And what you're going to as soon as you put it on - it grounds you in... the spacing and the context and the size. So I would say if you're if you're an organization that has something that requires context, or depth, right? Like a physical environments or physical objects or even relationships between things, so even say, in physics or something like that, VR is actually something - pretty low hanging fruit right now. I mean an Oculus Quest is I think, like $400, and you know to take a couple pics with your phone or an iPad. Yeah, it's pretty reasonable, right? It just requires thinking about it and wanting to do something new. And like you said before, that's really what it's going to come down to... It's going to take an instructional designer to say, "Well, I know we've done it like this forever. Maybe this is a cool way to do it." And that's the real design work that's the real - design, development, evaluate like that's, that's really what we should be focusing on, especially if we're trying to innovate at all, you know?
Heidi Kirby : 34:54
Yeah, and who doesn't want to work on simulations and VR? I know I'd much rather do that than to spend all day in PowerPoint so... (laughs)
Eamonn Powers : 35:02
That's exactly true. Yeah, and I think anyone that started on this path, they'd be really surprised with - yes, initially, just like anything, the information, initially is very heady and high, but the thing is, there's enough people out there that have been working on it a long time that the world's best LMS has plenty of information. It's called YouTube, and I can promise you you'd be impressed with how much you can learn on there, in an afternoon about building in this kind of world or in this kind of environment. I think you'd be impressed with how much you could get done with the same exact budget you're using right now for articulator, or PowerPoint even
Heidi Kirby : 35:42
Very cool. That's good to know. That's encouraging for sure.
Eamonn Powers : 35:46
It doesn't hurt that PowerPoint accepts 3d at this point too, so that doesn't hurt.
Heidi Kirby : 35:50
Yeah, I've just seen a little bit of that. How much do you know about 3d in PowerPoint? Do you use it often?
Eamonn Powers : 35:58
We do. And honestly that's even cheaper than going say the whole Unreal Engine route. So, there's a free program, Blender, which is 2d-3d software, again, tons of tutorials, and it's really leaned into the open source kind of building framework, right? So no licensing costs or anything like that, but you can take your Blender file, save it, and import that directly into PowerPoint, and if you're looking to do some - if you're looking to give your facilitator that interaction element, it's a really great way to do that. So again, 3d is really only going to make sense - 3d and VR and AR really only makes sense when you're trying to either add context or layers, at least in my experience. I'm sure there's other ways to do it, but if you're adding context and layers to either the real world, or you need to show the elements of the real world without having the real world available to you. Those are really good places for it to be. If you're just trying to do something novel with it, you know - I don't know how helpful it is to have say, a Shakespeare avatar reading you Romeo and Juliet. Maybe that's helpful, but I don't know.
Heidi Kirby : 37:09
Yeah, they've still got the old videos of Vincent Price reading that so we'll just watch those (laughs).
Eamonn Powers : 37:17
(laughs) That sounds good. Yeah.
Heidi Kirby : 37:19
Okay, so I have one last question for you.
Eamonn Powers : 37:22
Sure.
Heidi Kirby : 37:22
What is just one piece of media - so it can be a book, a video, a podcast, infographic that you've come across... a YouTube video. What is one thing that we can consume that will help us better understand AR, VR, simulation in an educational context.
Eamonn Powers : 37:45
That's a good question. I'm gonna givethe Star Wars answer. So I think one way to really see what it can do is watch episode four of the Mandalorian Behind the Scenes, and you'll see what a simple concept can be applied to in a real world to kind of facilitate that. If you don't have Disney plus, I'll give you another one. There's a fantastic book by Charles Fink. It's called Convergence, and it's a AR-enabled book. You actually download the app, and you can use that. I highly recommended - it's kind of equal parts capability. Now, he comes at it from kind of the entertainment standpoint but when he means entertainment, he means a number of media platforms. And so, yeah, I mean, I'd say Star Wars, but if you're not gonna watch Star Wars and that's fine. For those out there. I don't know what's wrong with you, but um no (laughs). Go with Charles Fink's book, it's really fantastic. It's called Convergence - I think you'd be very happy with it.
Heidi Kirby : 38:52
Awesome. Well, thank you Eamonn for joining me and for being the first guest on the BLOC.
Eamonn Powers : 38:57
It's been fun! We've had a good time!
Heidi Kirby : 39:00
It's been great!
Outro music plays: 39:01
Heidi Kirby: 39:01
Thanks again for joining me on the BLOC. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with friends and review us on your favorite podcast platform. I hope you’ll tune in again soon.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai