On June 19, a few of us from Douglas College (Nina Blanes, Kymberley Bontinen, Sandra Polushin, Steven Bishop, Mikki Herbold and I) took a trip out to UBC to visit their Emerging Media Lab. And what a trip it was!
Greeted by three of the EML’s student staff (Sabrina Ge, Juyeong Stella Oh, and Kevin Yang), we entered the virtual reality and augmented reality worlds created by this pioneering collaboration of students, faculty, and staff comprising the Emerging Media Lab.
Three separate stations were set up including an undersea voyage through VR glasses, an AR walk through the brain viewing the HoloBrain project, and a VR look at building 3D shapes. Totally fascinating stuff, mining the enthusiasm and intelligence of students who work with faculty and staff to develop learning objects for real-world educational challenges.
Next, we took a walk to UBC Studios, affiliated with UBC EML. There we viewed the main film studio, the lightboard studio, and a bookable, one-button studio that enables faculty and staff to record their lectures or communication piece by inserting a flash drive into a dock and pressing one button.
Wow! What a wonderful, motivating experience. Our minds were blown (but in a totally inspiring way). Now we’re busy contemplating how we can integrate into Douglas College some of what we learned.
So, thank you, Emerging Media Lab team, especially Saeed Dyanatkar, EML Lead and Executive Producer. We were so pleased to have attended your Festival of Learning workshop, which started this whole trip.