Knowledge is the consequence of experience – Piaget.

So – Choose your own adventure.

Today was the first day of Constructing Modern Knowledge 2018, a teacher institute that I have had the pleasure of attending now for the fourth time. I love coming to Manchester and this institute, and this year we are in a different space at the hotel (formerly the Radisson, soon to be a Hilton DoubleTree) – this gorgeous space called the Armory. Imagine a giant teacher play-room with educators from all over the world. I am a Cynthia Solomon Fangirl, and I hope I get a chance to talk with her again this year. I will PURPOSELY choose a Logo or Turtle Art project after tomorrow morning so I can ask her questions.

Today Bethany, Samantha, and I took up the challenge of creating a Virtual Reality Choose Your Own Adventure game. We thought that it was going to take a long time, but three middle school teachers can accomplish a lot, especially if they are all good at using a search engine and not afraid to try stuff.

We started with Google StreetView, and using the camera on my cellphone I was able to take a pretty decent 360° image. Here’s one shown as a panorama:Using a 360° viewer, like the StreetView app, you can really move it around. StreetView makes it easy to take this photo in increments. It stitches them together for you, and it will let you know if you have take an image of all 360°. If there are people in the photo you get some crazy mutant beings – a free floating torso, a head with legs – very Floopy.

StreetView really wants you to publish your pics to their maps, but you can share them privately as well. The Share-row (sharing arrow) appeared on my newly downloaded version of the app, and I could send them by Airdrop. We brought the pictures into VIAR360, and online product (from Slovenia, you will be amused at the sample VR project) that looks like it was designed for marketing firms trying to find a platform for clients to use VR technology to sell stuff, but it has functionality and the ability to create narrative through hot-spots that lead you from one VR space to another. The 360° images organically work in the space. The site is persnickety about the files you upload. It required the .jpg extension and not .jpeg that StreetView exported them as.

We looked at creating our own backgrounds using PhotoShop (learning curve TOO steep), and we also used a website called CoSpaces that allowed us to create a 360° image using their templates.

You can export the environments and use them in VIAR360. There is a programmable component to CoSpaces, but the program doesn’t seem to export. 

With image creation understood, the three of us independently realized we have to figure out how to view them using Google Cardboard. We have some headsets ordered, and we have some thoughts. We can send a link from VIAR360 or Momento360, a 360° image sharing site. So our homework was to bring in at least two 360° images that we can link in a narrative, having more than one path to the end.

That is a task for the morning. But first, a tutorial on programming designs to be embroidered by machine.

I leave you with a bit of whimsy (this moose). See you tomorrow.