Verizon 5G EdTech

🧠   Innovation Challenge, 360 Immersive Project
🗓    Sept 2019 - Dec 2019

The Verizon Foundation, in partnership with NYC Media Lab, announced the ten winners of the Verizon 5G EdTech Challenge. In fall 2019, the Verizon Foundation’s 5G EdTech Challenge called on innovators, academics and non-profit business leaders nationwide to submit ideas for powerful, transformative education solutions. The finalist range from AR and VR experiences, to machine learning, AI and mixed reality, projects were chosen for their ability to solve for student engagement, teacher preparedness and special needs support. Parsons professor Anezka Sebek and Tammy Walters named one of t he 10 winners with their proposal Making Projects with Purpose in Immersive Media.

The project will connect middle school students from the Learning Community Charter School, Jersey City, and university students from The New School and Parsons School of Design, in the virtual reality classroom spaces in Rumii to collaborate and communicate in virtual reality on community awareness projects about sustainability, pollution, climate change, and species protection.

Making Projects with Purpose in Immersive Media, The New School – Middle school students and the Parsons School of Design harness the power of Verizon 5G to co-create projects to strengthen social and educational engagement by using various immersive AR and VR technologies including Doghead Simulation’s rumii, a social-virtual reality space that enable students to collaborate and communicate in one room from anywhere in the world.

VIA XREALITY CENTER | Sponsored By Verizon

🚀  Team

Ares Maia
Qiyao Lin
Olivia Yan
Fuad Soudah
Harry Castro
Kristriana Marcon

🖼 Tools

Figma
AutoCAD
Unity
InDesign
C#
Projector Hardware
Construction Materials and Equipment

👩🏻‍💻 Role

Immersive Experience Designer
Educational Design Collaborator

Oceanic Odyssey 

In our immersive project, we crafted an interactive depiction of the Hudson Bay River, presented as a semi-thriving underwater world grappling with pollution. With the use of retro-inspired 3D glasses, the audience is offered a choice: experience this world in its compromised, polluted state, or witness its potential health and beauty.

Projected within a sweeping 180-360 degree view under a spacious dome, our intent was to provide a compelling educational experience about the devastating impacts of human activities on our oceans. This project is an homage to the global awareness fostered by Earth Day.

In the initial phase of the project, our team concentrated on creating prototypes, brainstorming potential solutions, and pinpointing the key environmental issues we aimed to spotlight.

In this project, our process began with creating low-resolution prototype designs, sparking the initial ideas to life. We used color channel editing to finesse the visual aesthetic, translating the drawings from the students at LCCS into vibrant, animated elements. These designs weren't just our creations, but were borne out of active ideation and testing sessions with the students, establishing a truly collaborative effort. The practical aspect of the project involved figuring out the dome construction. We put our construction materials and equipment to use, transforming our 2D concepts into a 3D reality, thus embodying the innovative spirit of our project.