Many of us are experimenting with homeschooling at the moment, whether we want to or not. Julie hopes to help listeners by offering a glimpse into the Smithson home, and how she's educating her two daughters while schools are closed.
When we deepen our level of presence in XR, it translates to how we lead better, manage better, and learn better. This pays dividends in our connection and wellbeing in the "real world," too! That’s what today’s guest, author and XR designer Caitlin Krause, specializes in. Caitlin authored "The Importance of Presence" chapter in The Global Resource Guide to XR Collaboration, and joins Julie to discuss the importance of presence in XR environments. Julie: Hello, my name is Julie Smithson, and I am your XR for Learning podcast host. I look forward to bringing you insight into changing the way that we learn and teach using XR technologies to explore, enhance and individualize learning for everyone. Caitlin Krause is my next guest, and she is a globally recognized learning and leadership expert, author, and keynote speaker. In her 2019 book -- "Mindful by Design" -- through her consulting, she helps individual leaders and teams leverage mindfulness, storytelling, and design principles to connect more deeply with their communities. Caitlin's organization, MindWise, focuses on creating experiences that increase awareness, emotional intelligence, and creative collaboration opportunities. Thank you so much for joining me today, Caitlin. I really look forward to our conversation. Caitlin: Thanks so much, Julie. It's great to be here. Julie: We're going to talk about something so important today that is maybe not on everybody's mind, but it certainly is on ours. I'm just going to pass it over to you to do a bit of introduction, to let us know what you're doing in this space and how you're making an impact. ...
For a lot of us, we think learning ends when our working life begins. But not only is that untrue; being able to learn new skills for our careers is only going to become more important. Dominic Deane drops in to talk about how GEMBA is helping with that. Julie: Hello, my name is Julie Smithson and I am your host for the XR for Learning podcast. Today on my show is Dominic Deane from the Leadership Network. Dominic has been building immersive technology companies since his second year of university, founding Chronicles VR, a premium virtual reality studio, and taking on consultancy work with some of UK's largest cultural institutions, including the British Museum, English Heritage and the BBC. Joining the Leadership Network in 2017, Dominic has led the creation and positioning of GEMBA, the Leadership Network new virtual reality offering since joining the Leadership Network. Dominic created a new division responsible for the Virtual Reality Learning Platform for Business Transformation, creating and delivering GEMBA to Fortune 2000 customers around the world. Welcome, Dominic. Dominic: Oh, thank you very much Julie. Pleasure to meet you. Thank you so much for putting me on. Julie: Thanks so much. Why don't you give me a little bit of an overview of the Leadership Network, the parent company who has produced GEMBA, and how you're making GEMBA part of the learning strategy for many of these companies that you deal with? Dominic: Sure. So the Leadership Network's been around for the better part of a decade now. And primarily we've been delivering in-person training to top executives at Fortune 2000 companies. Ultimately, what that looks like is 3-day immersive learning on a kind ...
Learning complex STEM concepts like physics or chemistry off a chalkboard is no easy task, because it removes a key factor from the equation - presence. Inspirit VR’s Aditya Vishwanath explains how giving that presence back ignites a learner’s innate curiosity. Julie: Hello, my name is Julie Smithson, and I am your XR for Learning podcast host. I look forward to bringing you insight into changing the way that we learn and teach using XR technologies to explore, enhance, and individualize learning for everyone. Today my guest is Aditya Vishwanath. Aditya is a PhD candidate in Learning Sciences and Technology Design and a Knight-Hennessy Scholar at Stanford University. He's the co-founder of Inspirit, a company that develops virtual reality learning content. And his research focuses on developing technologies that support universal access to immersive learning content. Welcome to the show. Aditya: Thank you. I'm so excited to be doing this. Julie: That's great. And we've had a couple of conversations about education, and the courses that need to be implemented into classes, and that sort of thing. Why don't you tell me a little bit about Inspirit, where you started from, and where you guys are today? Aditya: Inspirit was actually a research project that I started out with a friend and now co-founder of mine -- her name is Amrita -- and the two of us were both researchers in a lab at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. And we really stumbled upon this opportunity to explore and study what it would take to bring immersive VR to a ...
