Darryll Starr is a former game developer who now teaching underprivileged youth how to create VR experiences with Unity at the David E Glover Education and Technology Center in Oakland, CA. Starr is the lead instructor and curriculum developer who has been adapting the Exploring Computer Science curriculum to use more state-of-the art tools from the games industry. I had a chance to talk with Starr at the Samsung Developers Conference about his various initiatives to increase the accessibility of emerging technologies to the diverse and underrepresented communities in Oakland. He talks about some of the experiences his students have created, the different programs and initiatives at The Glover Center, and the level of engagement and excitement that he’s seeing from getting an opportunity to develop immersive experiences.
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.452] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. My name is Kent Bye and welcome to The Voices of VR Podcast. So on today's episode, I wanted to feature some pretty inspiring and amazing work that's happening in Oakland, California at the David E. Glover Education and Technology Center. So Daryl Starr is a lead instructor and curriculum developer there at the Glover Center, and he is coming from the gaming industry. And so rather than using some web-based technologies or Scratch, which is what is usually used in the Exploring Computer Science curriculum, he's teaching his students how to use Unity and how to create fully immersive virtual reality experiences. And so I had a chance to talk to him about this program, all the various initiatives he has to serving immersive technologies to underprivileged and underrepresented communities there in Oakland. So we're going to cover all that and more on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Daryl happened at the Samsung Developers Conference on Wednesday, October 18th, 2017 in San Francisco, California. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:01:16.867] Darryl Starr: Hi, I'm Daryl Starr, and I am with the Glover Center, which is actually the David E. Glover Education Technology Center, and we are specializing in basically building up STEM and boosting engagement with STEM with the public schools in Oakland, expanding it to San Francisco, and hopefully one day we're going to expand it to California, where there's a huge disparity with CS education and accessibility to advanced technologies. Our technology's being used today, but for careers.
[00:01:45.456] Kent Bye: Great, so maybe you could tell me a bit about how we're using these immersive technologies with this population.
[00:01:50.402] Darryl Starr: OK, so one thing is that there's a curriculum that a lot of schools are adopting across the nation called ECS, Exploring Computer Science. The problem with it is that they're using older browser-based technology called Snap and Scratch. Right. So what the kids end up doing is they use this in school and it's interesting for like an hour to two weeks, but then they end up going home and playing PSVR where the technology just lights up their mind. And there's a huge bridge there that needs to be crossed because they feel like they're not really doing anything interesting and some feel like they're not doing anything relevant in schools.
[00:02:28.056] Kent Bye: So what's your solution? Are you using something like Unity or Unreal Engine or what are you doing that's beyond scratch?
[00:02:34.220] Darryl Starr: Absolutely. So we jump them into Unity, which we feel is the best accessibility. We build them into the Unity community, which is awesome. And then they go on to build applications, mirroring some of the stuff they're doing with ECS curriculum and VR. So they build their own Instructables as well.
[00:02:51.316] Kent Bye: Wow. So maybe you could tell me a bit about some of the experiences that they've been creating. OK.
[00:02:54.918] Darryl Starr: So one of our top experiences was built this summer at our Summer of Innovation, this Summer of Innovation 17. And it's called Food by VR. OK. So the way this game works is that you basically go to a dinner party. You figure out that people are throwing food at each other. And then they start throwing food at you. So then you throw food back. And you discover the more you throw, the more you grow. All right, so you grow to be like King Kong or Granger in size. You're able to pick the rooftops off of buildings and scrape the tables off with cars. So this is the kind of innovation that we're seeing when the youth get access to technology. One of the biggest challenges being affordability. So we really love these all-in-one solutions that the VR companies are now starting to offer, such as the Pico Goblin, which is a great all-in-one solution, and now finally the Oculus Go.
[00:03:43.554] Kent Bye: So Oculus Go is going to be coming out later this year. So the challenge with doing mobile VR development, though, is that you have to know a lot about optimizing these experiences. And so maybe you could talk a bit about the asset production pipeline. Because it seems like creating either 3D assets or getting access to the assets and then just making them run well on a mobile environment is something that even the best VR developers can struggle with. And so how are you approaching that with these high school students?
[00:04:12.910] Darryl Starr: Okay, so there's, I think there's multifaceted, right? So my background comes from traditional game development. I started with the Commodore 64. That's where I made my first game in high school, 6502, a simile language. So I'm a very low-level guy, and I've always been low-level when I take an outlook at machines. So I'm able to bring, like, local cue maps and things like AMD's optimization papers to the youth when they're ready for it. But what I've seen is that the youth jump right on it, and Unity has a great on-ramp, being their virtual reality toolkit and their virtual reality sort of, like, starter platform, starter pack. It's just perfect, because a lot of games don't need, like, super optimum or single pass, you know, stereoscopic rendering, stuff like that.
[00:04:53.034] Kent Bye: So why do VR rather than just normal 2D gaming?
[00:04:57.298] Darryl Starr: Oh, I think that what I saw recently with Samsung PhoneCast, I thought that was pretty great because it seems like you could capture both worlds, VR being the final medium that we think, right? But I think that VR just opens up so many different experiences that now we can find fun in gaming and pleasure and more than just like, you know, pointing something at something and then launching something at it, you know. So, I mean, I'm having so much fun exploring the VR grammar in an application like IKEA's application, you know. And then mothers and students are able to come together and enjoy this and see the enrichment of programs like ours.
[00:05:35.650] Kent Bye: So one of the topics that I've been exploring on the podcast is embodied cognition, just this idea that we don't just think with our brains, but we actually think with our entire bodies. And it seems like one of the key innovations with virtual reality is that it's going to allow us to bring more of our bodies into the learning process. And so is this a concept that you've started to explore in any way by teaching computational thinking using your body?
[00:06:02.555] Darryl Starr: Absolutely. So we're exploring this with NeuroSkies technology using EEGs and stuff like that to combine with motion analysis where we're gauging, you know, like the hips and the velocity to the hips like that. We're trying to do this with the Oakland Unified School District with their swimming program and with their athletics program like basketball where we put augmented reality over where we think the body is going and try to analyze these kinds of things. The kids are driving most of that process, so it's a pretty open-ended thing. We hope to get somewhere, but our main thing is, like you said, transforming that outlook to be less consumer-driven and more computational-driven, and looking at the data as stacks.
[00:06:39.290] Kent Bye: What are some of the experiences that these students are bringing in terms of either their gaming or life experiences that you think are coming together in virtual reality and something that may be new or different?
[00:06:50.714] Darryl Starr: I think fun first. I mean, that's one of the greatest things. I'd love for you to talk to one of the teams because they'll just be the best to express how they chase experiences by what's the funnest thing that they're experiencing. For instance, the Foo Fight VR team made the game in two weeks and then polished it up in another two weeks. I think one of the great things about it was made in between where a lot of kids travel. So there's like a hundred students zooming around the summer program and they were right there in the center throwing it in their faces, throwing it on their bodies and letting them try it. And that's the way the game got funner and funner and they discovered these new sort of grammars.
[00:07:26.894] Kent Bye: What are some optimal team sizes that you found? Because I can imagine that there's a limit in terms of how many people could be working on the same project at the same time, such that you kind of get everybody involved equally.
[00:07:37.882] Darryl Starr: Very interesting. So you know, I want to kind of capture this around this theory or subject of grouping or structure, where we feel we can really measure and then kind of like find the best cases with those structures. So we found like groups of four, where we have like, maybe one new learner or one learner transitioning to a new level of knowledge. Okay, and then we'll be having supporting nearest neighbors. And then finally, we have an expert in that to sort of isolatus basically.
[00:08:08.158] Kent Bye: What's that called?
[00:08:09.079] Darryl Starr: Isolatus. That's a little theory that we have. But it's tied to this other kind of system that we're trying to develop, which is over online learning, peer assisted learning, where we have blockchain type of style, traversal through knowledge.
[00:08:23.189] Kent Bye: So what does that actually look like? How does the blockchain inspire this pedagogy?
[00:08:28.751] Darryl Starr: I think it inspires it because we don't have to rely on just me transmitting my knowledge. I'm able to transmit the knowledge to others, and then these others are the keepers of that knowledge, and they become good caretakers of the knowledge that they got. And they actually are guided with certain kind of rules or tips and things like that to help them teach others. So in Africa, they have this proverb called, each one teach one, and it's certainly like that.
[00:08:51.429] Kent Bye: It sounds like from my own experiences of learning is that sometimes some of the best ways to learn is actually to teach other people. So it sounds like you're able to create these tribes of people that have different levels, but they're able to teach each other. And that in the process of them teaching, then they learn it more, it sounds like.
[00:09:07.496] Darryl Starr: I love how you used the word tribes, because I think we do kind of have to go back to that in our current economy, which is hyper-localized.
[00:09:15.543] Kent Bye: Great, so what's next for this program? Where is it at now and where is it going in the future?
[00:09:20.445] Darryl Starr: Okay, right now we're at a very exciting point. We've had a couple of VR hackathons where we saw a lot of growth with students. So one of our biggest challenges there was getting everybody ready to develop. applications, right? Because not everybody had the experience, right? I come from the demo scene, so, you know, and that kind of thing, you just kind of get thrown in there, and you either have the skills or you don't, but eventually you get those skills, you know, everybody just loves it so much. So we're trying to inspire that along with the continuity that you have in the demo scene, because in the demo scene, you don't just show up and then you, like a hackathon, you're expected to make something brilliant in like 8 hours, 16 hours. But in a demo scene, people realize that you're going to come with your algorithms already pre-baked, and you're going to let them loose, right? So it's like a certain kind of investment you're making. So this kind of continuity we're trying to build up with our VR hackathons, where we do them seasonally, and we try to keep the teams as a family, you know, competitive with each other, but also cooperative. So, oh, that was one of the things we're doing. So our hackathons are something we're doing seasonally. But then also we have our Summer of Innovation. And then we do one more thing called the VR Odyssey program, which is dedicated to VR storytelling and actually deploying apps on the store. So we do that on Saturdays at the Glover Center.
[00:10:32.579] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I'm curious to hear some of the metrics that you're looking at in terms of how do you know whether or not you're succeeding or not.
[00:10:40.936] Darryl Starr: You know, our metrics, surprisingly, are getting more like virtual reality, where we actually experience these things. So we're not just seeing data as something you see on a piece of paper, right? So our data becomes visual, like videos, and also there's applications that are developed. So that's going to be the biggest teller, is when we deploy this first round of applications from these students, I want the world to provide those students feedback, and then That way we'll be able to not only measure, but to help these communities guide more into the field that we're already in. I feel like the current ceiling of VR financial success is given by the amount of diversity in the industry. Because I'm seeing a lot of wine games, you know, and that's cool. That's very cool. I'm a D&D player myself. But the market is a much bigger market than spellcasters. Hey, maybe there's barbarians. Hey, maybe there's rangers. Hey, maybe even there's economists or something like that, or astrophysicists. But we have all those things in our community, especially in Oakland and other underprivileged, underrepresented communities, and LBGT, all that, you know. All those stories need to be told, just like we have in literature, just like Amazon figured out how to make the most diverse ecosystem, financial system ever, you know.
[00:11:56.368] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I'm curious to hear how that's been going because I imagine that your program is perhaps introducing VR into these communities perhaps for the first time. And so what has that process been like to start to bring these immersive technologies into your community?
[00:12:10.020] Darryl Starr: It's been easy, but one of the things I did prior to is I was real deliberate about researching VR. I got into like the Virtual World Society. given by your show, I like listen to every one of your broadcasts, and I have someone favorite, you know, so one of the things that I think I heard was not standing in the way of VR, and that's been one of the biggest guides. You know, I still have to catch myself, like, make sure, you know, you don't get in the way of somebody who likes a certain thing, right? So I think the transfer of knowledge is the easy part, but the biggest impediment is the accessibility and affordability of those platforms. Accessibility is more than the price. It's also the location, because of our facility, we can actually deliver warehouse-scale VR experiences, which is something that can become very valuable for future-proofing our community.
[00:12:59.628] Kent Bye: Yeah, I know that Tom Furness is really interested in a lot of the potential learning applications and, you know, for me that's a dimension of a mental and social presence that comes from that, and that, you know, there's that active presence of actually engaging and interacting, and I think that's sort of like a certain amount of pedagogy where you're actually engaged within the process of constructing your own learning and your own meaning within that process of being able to actually really interact. Almost like going on a field trip of being able to choose what you're looking at, choose how you're interacting with the experience. But that some of these game design components of being able to learn how to engage students in that way It may be the process of vanquishing enemies or, you know, something that, you know, may not be at the highest ideal of, you know, our values in terms of what kind of society we want to create. But at the same time, it sounds like, you know, with these experiences that they're creating, they're fun interactions to do within VR. And at the same time, they're able to learn how to participate and engage in these technologies in a new way.
[00:13:57.727] Darryl Starr: It feels like you just cast a ray into gamification and some of the limits of it. Yeah, that's really it, you know. And I'm fascinated by your theory of presence, you know. So one of the things that I sort of was inspired by that theory was like how we've taken it for granted that we want to just go on, students should go on expeditions, right? Go places, right? But we've tried to expand that and say, okay, not only do you want to go on that expedition, but you actually want to do something with it. which then says, how are you going to do something with something that hasn't been done something with before? You see this a lot with the location-based technology, right? We've got this great technology now that tells us where we are, but doesn't tell us what it is, where we are really at from a context perspective, you know? So we as humans have to basically stitch our memories to these locations, right? And that's what we kind of have to do with this content and everything like that. Yeah, so, yeah, big fan.
[00:14:53.420] Kent Bye: Yeah, I feel like there's a lot of different learning styles for how people learn and you can look at the elemental theory of presence and look at that. And so some people may learn by just hearing a lecture and listening to the ideas and the theory and they get it. But other people need to actually like have a direct experience of it to be able to actually put it into their body and experience it. And I think some people need to have some Emotion or narrative component, you know where they're actually feel emotionally engaged within that in order before they really you know get a sense of why they care about it and I think some people need to just interact and play with the content to be able to really See how it dynamically reacts to their interactions And so it seems like there's different learning styles and that with that there's going to be you know with the immersive technologies that we can start to perhaps address a lot of those other learning styles that go beyond maybe just what we default to now, which is like sit in a classroom, don't move, and hear a teacher lecture at you.
[00:15:49.752] Darryl Starr: So yeah, I agree with you totally. And one other thing I'd like to add is like an African-American community, which I'm a part of, I think there's a very reflective side of learning where you feel like, am I good at this? How good am I at this? Am I as good as my friend at this? So that's something else we have to integrate into those experiences if we want to really expand it out.
[00:16:11.294] Kent Bye: What do you mean by that, reflective?
[00:16:12.797] Darryl Starr: Well, I mean, you know, you'll see a lot of times like, especially like I used to be a breakdancer. So we still like do stuff with each other. I would do stuff in front of the mirror and that's how I would gauge whether I should keep doing it, you know? So I think like having more signals and having more of a, uh, what would you call that, a social side of the learning, and remembering that can be valuable to different styles of learning, not just seeing the table or getting a grade. It's like, no, what are other people thinking about me? And I know in some cases that might sound awful, because I hate those kind of things where people judge you. But it's more like, oh, this is really cool. I like how you did that, more constructive styles. And something else I found really fascinating, just in a recent podcast that you put out, was how you identified Facebook not putting bad, sad things in there. And I think that would have been good because that could help people correct. When I made a game, I used to always say to my friends, hey, let's not look at just the good reviews. Let's look at those bad reviews. You know what I mean? Because we're going to try to get better. That's not going to stop us from getting better.
[00:17:18.100] Kent Bye: Yeah, I think having a full emotional dynamic range within VR is critical.
[00:17:22.484] Darryl Starr: Emotional hyperspectral.
[00:17:25.927] Kent Bye: Yeah, so that we're not just sort of focused on just the positive. But I actually think that VR is an amazing platform to be able to handle grief or to handle issues that we haven't been able to really handle before. I know that testimony VR experience where you are within a container to listen to women share their stories of sexual assault. I feel like as a culture, we're moving towards this appreciation of listening to the direct experience of people and that We have a culture that's really driven by, you know, objective facts and things that can be measured, but yet there's a lot of things that have to do with our direct experiences, and I think there's a certain amount of listening that we're cultivating to be able to actually listen to those experiences. And I think VR is a great medium to actually try to share your perspective of your story and to create an entire context of an environment that really describes maybe things that go beyond being able to describe in words, give people an experience of building empathy for your direct experiences.
[00:18:26.934] Darryl Starr: So what would you call that genre?
[00:18:29.216] Kent Bye: Well, I would say just generally it's about empathy VR but also traditional media tends to be like the hero's journey where someone is going out and going on some sort of quest and that is very rising of energy and expressive outwards and I think that VR is actually much more receptive as a medium Such that it's more about you being put into a context and environment where you are just taking it in and receiving it and that so it's much more about the body and much more about the emotions of being able to Trick your sensory motor contingencies into believing that you're in another place and then once you do that you're kind of tapping into like a certain dimensions of your unconscious psyche that you're able to give a holistic picture of something so To me, it's much more about creating these environments where you're trying to put someone into a place where they're able to receive the full experience from all the different senses. Traditionally, the 2D medium tends to be like, let's go on an adventure where we're going outward. That's much more like the mental and social and active presence, but yet I think that there's a new dimension of emotional presence and embodied presence. So, just thinking about the body and what it means to think about all the different senses of the body, but also all the different dimensions of our unconscious that are being able to be activated with this new medium.
[00:19:52.825] Darryl Starr: So, yeah, I think that's where the next, if you want to call it killer app or the Messiah VR app will come from. Those kinds of embodiment experiences, yeah. I mean, I was very, very impressed by that. The other app that continues to be one of our on-ramps for new people, especially adults, is Solitary Confinement. It's just amazing. Yeah, the 6x9? Yeah, 6x9, yeah.
[00:20:18.726] Kent Bye: Yeah, that's a great experience that I think that just the way that they design the audio and everything and also I've been talking to the director there that was like using the second-person perspective so to say you are going to experience this so instead of giving a first-person testimony of somebody saying oh well when I was in solitary confinement this is what I went through they turn it into like a now you're in this room, notice the cracks and this is what you're going to then go through. So anything that has the audio that's connecting them closer to that environment and taking inspiration from these guided audio tours to be able to like transport people into these other worlds.
[00:20:56.454] Darryl Starr: The audio was killer in that. So one of the things about that app that I found that was really useful was these people that don't really think that VR is for them. So you're able to say like, no, no, no, once you try this, the actual experience starts after you take the goggles off. So that's when the conversation begins, right? Because those narratives are real. And that simulative experience was driven by those narratives and how you're participating with that. And that's fascinating. I mean, that's like a key to grand literature to me. So, yeah.
[00:21:29.679] Kent Bye: So it sounds like you're using that as an experience that people can have as a baseline. And then when they come out of it, then what kind of conversations? What do you start to talk about then?
[00:21:38.669] Darryl Starr: Well, you know, I guess in our community, jails are very, very close to real thing, you know. So people are like, wow, you know, I wonder if that's real for my uncle or something like that, you know, and things like that. They will reflect on it. But even bigger than that, I think that they're able to empathize with, you know, what those people actually felt like, you know. Now, it only goes so far. I think that things like that, experiences like that are also useful when you're saying, this is what kind of career I'd like to experience, right? So you can hear what other people are feeling, what they're thinking when they're doing their job, and you're helping them do it, or you're some kind of way driving that experience or driving your perspective on that experience. I think that's really awesome for kids figuring out what they want to pursue in their career dreams or academic dreams.
[00:22:25.963] Kent Bye: What are some of the biggest open questions that are driving your work forward?
[00:22:30.308] Darryl Starr: Well, here's the big ask, right? So I think one of the things is that we're like this stone that people haven't found out about and it's kind of a shame because so much is happening. I mean, we've had to like pretty much pry these devices out and raise money to buy these devices and things like that. But the impact is that some of our students and family are going out and purchasing these devices. because they want their kids to pursue what they're already looking like they're good at. And then we're seeing, like you say, how do we measure success? The kids are automatically jumping into, you know, their mathematics education because now they have a reason. You see, I didn't really get into mathematics heavy, and I am heavy, heavy into it. I'm so super interested in the latest discoveries in mathematics now. But I got into it because I wanted to make video games. When I found out that I had to know this math and even upper math, I just tore it up. And I loved it as I went along. So kids are the same way. We tear Sonic apart. We disassemble Sonic. We look at all the mathematics of Sonic. And we go on to Doom, you know, and blah, blah, blah.
[00:23:30.077] Kent Bye: Right? Yeah, it's amazing how much of that trigonometry courses and all the other sort of things that you may not think that you actually used. I mean, a lot of people. We're doing topology now. So you're going all the way into topology.
[00:23:46.418] Darryl Starr: It's a rough road right now, but it's so fascinating.
[00:23:50.220] Kent Bye: Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I've personally been getting very interested into mathematics just because of this idea of the Pythagorean idea that base reality may be made up of mathematics. And so I've personally been thinking about VR as less about virtual reality. Because whenever I talk to people about virtual reality, they immediately think about, OK, well, this is fake or not real. tell them well this could actually be like some level of symbolic or archetypal reality such that you can go into this place and start to have interactions with these mathematical constructs that actually could teach us some deep fundamental concepts for how the universe is constructed and to me if you go back all the way back to 1965 and Ivan Sutherland when he wrote that Yeah, the ancients. Yeah, the ultimate display. He writes in there like he wants to step into the mathematical wonderland. It was like a part of the inspiration for Ivan Sutherland to be able to step into these mathematical wonderland worlds. And I think that when I go to SIGGRAPH, I just see all the latest math and everything. And to me, it's just like you can go into VR and just be inspired by the elegance of how the universe is constructed by all these different equations.
[00:24:58.855] Darryl Starr: Oh no, the mathematics of Halloween. Truly terrifying. No, but yeah, I'm inspired by the same things You know like Isaac Newton having like this background where we just thought he came up with flexions and all that But now we know that he was this alchemist and we see that the books He was reading was just looks just like calculus just doesn't have this other symbols So one of the things we're doing there is like we have the kids like do these activities where they create their own glyphs that equate to language Because one of the things we're not just about we're not just about stem We're about STEAM, yes, yes, there's STEAM. But we're also about literature, we're about the arts, you know, and stuff like that. So, I mean, what would STEAM be without, you know, literature?
[00:25:39.108] Kent Bye: Yeah, to me, that's what's so fascinating about VR is that because it is a new communication medium, you do have this ability to pull in all of these different domains. And it basically is just a melting pot to be able to learn about just about everything. And then everybody, coming from their own experience, has something to say or to teach you about VR. So to me, it's just this incredible cross-disciplinary platform to be able to learn about all sorts of different subjects. It sounds like that you're starting to take advantage of that.
[00:26:04.633] Darryl Starr: Right, we like to emphasize something that the Oculus Chief Scientist, please say his name again. Michael Abrash. Yes, Abrash. How could I learn so much from Abrash over the years? But yes, something that Abrash said was that there was over 27 scientists that went into the current generation of VR and really like to push that home with the kids and their families that VR and studying VR, being immersed in this kind of technology exposes you to this vast range and this very innovative space that's going on right now. I imagine there's over 40 sciences now going into the new stages of VR.
[00:26:36.355] Kent Bye: So, yeah. Yeah. So what do you want to personally experience in VR?
[00:26:42.398] Darryl Starr: Well, you know, Dungeons and Dragons, Star Trek, Star Wars. Yes. You know, I actually, personally, I still develop games and applications experiences, and I am doing them in virtual reality. I'm trying to make some blend of TV, so what you're seeing in TV and what you're seeing in games like that. I love to make some transmedia experience. And you know what makes it great? I find these super talented people everywhere, like throughout the ages. When I first started, I'm still connected to those guys, and those guys are connecting to the kids that are making games right now. I really want you guys to see more of these kids' works. I can't wait. Hopefully, great resources like Voices to VR and Road to VR can feature their work.
[00:27:25.029] Kent Bye: Great. And finally, what do you think is kind of the ultimate potential of virtual reality and what it might be able to enable?
[00:27:32.823] Darryl Starr: That I was not ready for. I did not prepare for that. Okay, well, what is it going to do? Well, I think it's going to break down costs. I think it's going to break down these invisible walls we have, or these sort of walls we have in our society about culture. You know, we have a lot in front of us. I don't really have a good answer for this, but I think it is ultimately going to make the world a better place. But we have to really get in there and carve our space for it. And I do mean everybody, because diversity is not just a racial thing. It's an American thing. It's a global thing. So we really have to embrace that moving forward.
[00:28:11.225] Kent Bye: Great. Is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say?
[00:28:15.228] Darryl Starr: No, I'll just encourage everybody who hasn't already jumped into VR, if you're just jumping in, go back into the catalog of Voices to VR. It is the ultimate library, as you will often hear. Awesome. Well, thank you so much.
[00:28:29.639] Kent Bye: Thank you, sir. So that was Daryl Starr. He's a lead instructor and curriculum developer at the David E. Glover Education and Technology Center. So I have a number of different takeaways about this interview is that first of all I just have to say how humbling it is to have my podcast and all the people that have participated on the podcast be this resource that's out there to have people like Daryl be able to learn from everybody else in the industry and to be able to teach it to other people as well. And it's really, I think, embodying this concept of each one teach one, where you take any information that you have, and you're able to kind of spread it out into these various communities. And as they have formed these different tribes, these different clusters of people, they have one person who is very proficient and more of an expert, along with two people who have some experience, but aren't completely new, and then somebody who is just completely new, that's just getting into it. And so you have these small teams being able to teach each other. But I think, you know, because Daryl is coming from a gaming background, he has the experience to be able to do the full pipeline and to be able to teach people. I think that at this point, for most after school programs, it actually does take quite a lot of expertise in order to get into that point to be able to do a full virtual reality experience. I think as time goes on, it's going to be easier and easier to go within VR and to be able to create an entire experience completely within VR. I think at this point, you still have to jump in and out and context switch. And maybe you're able to do some asset creation with some of these VR tools, but then you have to do some things that are just faster and easier to do on the 2D interface. And so I do see that in the future, we're going to be making it easier and easier to be able to create full experiences from within VR, but we're not quite there yet. But there's still a lot of really rich concepts and computational thinking that can be taught through designing video games. And I think that's the thing that I find so fascinating is that as they're able to create these immersive experiences, it creates this feedback loop by which it's inspiring them to continue to learn and to continue to create an experience that they can not only experience themselves, but also share it to other people that are going through different after-school programs there at the Glover Center throughout the course of the year. So they're having different hackathons, they have the VR Odyssey program in order to do storytelling, and they also have the Summer of Innovation, where it's a little bit more of a summer program that's a deep dive into some of these emerging technologies. And it was really interesting to hear the process of showing different experiences. And specifically. Fran Pichetta is a six by nine experience that was released by the guardian and it's about solitary confinement. And I think it's an amazing experience. You should definitely go check it out if you haven't seen it yet, but he said that the actual experience starts when the people take the goggles off and they've been able to have like more of a Yen archetypal journey. It's more of an inward journey that they have during the experience, but then when they come out of the experience, they have that experience that they can then talk about. And then. either be able to empathize with either their relatives or people they know who may have been through some of these experiences in jail, or they are able to imagine for themselves what some of those experiences might be like and to be able to actually talk about it within their community. And one of the other things that Daryl was saying is that you want to be able to actually give maybe a little bit more of an experience of what some various different careers actually feel like and what the actual tasks that you do in the course of a job. I think that that's a huge part as well, to actually inspire youth in terms of different career opportunities that are out there. And maybe as they see somebody doing something, they can get a sense of whether or not they're going to actually want to do that or not. But overall, I think that the gamification and trying to Create these interactive experiences and inquiring people to both have a vision of what they want to create and what it's going to be fun for them. And then allow them to be able to actually create these different experiences where they can learn all the different things in the back end from the math and the programming, all this computational thinking, all the asset production. everything that you need to do in order to create an immersive virtual reality or augmented reality experience. And so I think some of the work that is happening here at the Glover Center is super inspiring to me. And I hope that people are able to check them out and to be able to support them in whatever way that you can, either financially or if you have some extra technology that you're not using and that you think might be helpful for some of these students to allow them to start to dive in and to learn more about some of these technologies. So, that's all I have for today, and I just wanted to thank you for listening to the Voices of VR podcast. And if you enjoy the podcast, there's a couple things you can do. First of all, just spread the word and tell your friends, and consider becoming a member to the Patreon. Your support is what allows me to continue to travel to these places and to be able to interview people like Daryl, but also to provide this information for free out to the entire VR community for everybody to be able to have access to the information and knowledge that they need in order to learn how to create these immersive virtual reality experiences. So if you'd like to support this podcast, then please do consider becoming a member to the Patreon. You can donate today at patreon.com slash Voices of VR. Thanks for listening.
