Dissecting Virtual Frogs with VictoryXRs Steve Grubbs

Published: Aug. 2, 2019, 9 a.m.

b'These days,\\nmore and more students can \\u2014 and do \\u2014 opt out of animal dissection\\nin science classes, and not just because formaldehyde smells awful.\\nAs fewer kids are morally comfortable with chopping up an amphibian\\nin the name of their education, an alternative will be needed.\\nVictoryXR\\u2019s Steve Grubbs offers a solution through VR, and chats with\\nAlan about how XR can be used to enhance education in other ways,\\ntoo.\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\nAlan: Today\\u2019s guest is Steve\\nGrubbs, founder and CEO of VictoryVR, one of the world leaders in\\nvirtual reality educational product development. To date, they have\\ncreated over 240 unique VR experiences, spanning over 50 different\\nlearning units, with educational partners like Carolina Biological\\nand Oxford University. They have been able to develop brand new\\neducational encounters for VR users around the globe. Steve is also a\\nmember of YPO and was recently featured in an article entitled\\nVirtual Reality Is Transporting Students to the Next Frontier in\\nScience Education. You can learn more about Steve\\u2019s company at\\nVictoryXR.com. Steve, welcome to the show.\\n\\n\\n\\nSteve: Alan, thanks for having\\nme. I appreciate it. We\\u2019ve been working in XR Technologies \\u2014 first\\nvirtual reality, and then augmented reality \\u2014 since 2016. I first\\ntried to headset on near the end of 2015 and it struck me that this\\ntype of technology would change the world. And so, we struck out and\\ndecided that our field would be education. And so we dug in and\\nfigured out how to do it, because at that point it was very difficult\\nto find people; you couldn\\u2019t just hire people off the street who knew\\nhow to create virtual reality technology. We set to work figuring it\\nout. In September of 2016, I attended a group meeting with some folks\\nin Dallas, and then by January of 2017, we had our first major\\nproduct in a school. I felt pretty good that we were able to move\\nquickly on that first experience.\\n\\n\\n\\nAlan: That\\u2019s incredible. Let me\\nask you a quick question. What was the first experience that you\\ntried that inspired you to start VictoryVR?\\n\\n\\n\\nSteve: Well, it was a MetaVRse\\nproduct that I downloaded to my phone some time, in Google Cardboard.\\nI am pretty sure I went to the iPhone store and tried a roller\\ncoaster \\u2014 and this had been a few years now. And then I tried The\\nNew York Times 360 News reporting on my phone and they both were\\ngreat, amazing, cool, and so I said, this is something I want to be a\\npart of.\\n\\n\\n\\nAlan: For those people that\\ndon\\u2019t know you and VictoryVR, maybe just give us a 10,000-foot view\\nof your mission and why you\\u2019re doing what you\\u2019re doing, and where you\\nsee the company going. Describe your company, the products, and the\\nplatform that\\u2019s being used.\\n\\n\\n\\nSteve: We believe that we can\\nchange education in a positive way around the world. If you think\\nabout it, for decades \\u2014 I used to serve in the Iowa legislature, and\\nI was chairman of the Education Committee, and we spent a lot of time\\naddressing, how do we improve education? And there were a lot of\\nthings we did on the input side, but at the end of the day, what we\\nall know is that if students love to learn, they love what they\\u2019re\\nlearning \\u2014 like all of us \\u2014 then there\\u2019s no work in it; you just\\nlove to do it, and you immerse yourself in it. We believe that XR\\nTechnologies \\u2014 VR and AR \\u2014 are the solution to having students love\\nwhat they\\u2019re learning. So we\\u2019re creating as much content as possible,\\naligned to standards, so that teachers can integrate it into their\\nlesson plans, or parents can just simply pull it off the shelf and\\nuse it. I have a background in technology. I started my first tech\\ncompany in 1997, building web sites. I bought a book called \\u201cWeb\\nSites for Dummies,\\u201d read i'