See O Too is an augmented reality application that visually and immersively teaches the fundamentals of Climate Science.
Four things have happened that caused me to shelve this project for now:
- I received some very helpful feedback from educators who tried the app, questioning whether VR is the best way to teach this material
- I taught a formal class (in a different subject) for the first time and started to learn about how to present material and the importance of refining and trying again when something isn't landing with students
- I remembered all the feedback I've given entrepreneurs about starting with a minimum viable product and realized that an MVP of this material and my approach to presenting it should be made with coat hangers, cardboard, and some slides/videos.
- Also, Microsoft has officially focused the HoloLens 100% on the enterprise space
If I return to this project I will take a completely new approach:
- I will develop a one hour in-person class in the fundamentals of Climate Science using some of the same approaches that I tried in See O Too.
- I will use physical models that I can pass arround the class to see how students react to some of the explanations that I tried in the app.
- I will also develop some interactive exercises to engage the class more deeply with the material.
- I will deliver this class to audiences of various ages and refine the material, exercises, and approach based on their response and feedback.
- When I feel I have the material and the presentation in great shape I will translate the presentation, physical models, and interactive exercises into a design for a software-based experience, potentially using VR if it makes sense.
- Using the in-person class material and the app design, I will recruit a project team. The team will include at least a modeler, animator, and sound and music expert and hopefully additional developers. I will also solicit funding before starting development.
The core See O Too experience is a self-paced, narrated, visual exploration with simple interactivity. It is intended for museums, classrooms, or festivals and can be used with no prior exposure to AR or VR. It currently runs on the Microsoft HoloLens. The HoloLens allows the user to directly explore the room-sized 3D visualizations by moving through them and looking around them.
The content and terminology is designed for middle school science students through adults and the experience can be completed in about 10 minutes.
You can download a video of a capture through the HoloLens of the current crude prototype from this page.
See O Too is an open source project (MIT license) developed in Unity3D and hosted on GitHub.
It's being developed on a volunteer basis and is currently without external funding or partnerships.
We are seeking interested collaborators, particularly artists, animators, or developers with Unity3D expertise.
- Journalistic approach
- Scientific reality, not advocacy
- Open content methodology
- References published on GitHub
- Design decisions documented on GitHub
- Extreme clarity about directly measured data versus projections and areas of active research
- Data example: Current atmospheric CO2 concentration
- Active research example: Greenland ice sheet melt rate
- Gasses and the Atmosphere
- This is the chapter currently being prototyped
- Warming and Melting
- Effects and Mitigation
This is a new project, started in May 2018. The first milestone is to get a basic version of Chapter 1 up and running to test with a variety of users to see if AR is an understandable, usable, and compelling way to communicate this material.
- Overview presentation about the project
- See the changelog for current status of the code and roadmap.
- Preliminary storyboard/script for Chapter 1 (out of date)
TBD
- Thanks to the people I met at the 2018 Eyeo Festival and the Code+Climate Summit who bravely tried out the very first prototypes and gave me great feedback, ideas, and encouragement.
- Thanks to the people at the Eastside VR Meetup who tried the prototype and gave feedback, especially the K-12 educators who were critical but honest!
- Thanks to @cschormann for the excellent help with re-recording and engineering the narration and for his great advice and recommendations about how to get set up to properly record and engineer voice-overs!
- Thanks to all of my TELOS students for teaching me about teaching!