RE Log - Fall 2023

FALL 2023 Ransom Everglades LOG 23 of the person who made it – Ransom Everglades middle schoolers tasked with representing who they are in a new, nonlinear medium. That’s the first project in Pedro Silva’s Virtual Reality course, a middle school computer science elective running for the second time this year. If the phrase “Virtual Reality course” conjures images of an entire classroom of students outfitted with futuristic headsets, rest assured: this class is that. In any given class period, you might find them strapped into sleek, white Meta Quest 2s, testing and sharing experiences that they’ve created – or testing and sharing augmented reality projects, like the Merge Cube, that enhance the physical world through a phone screen. But the course is also much more than just an opportunity for students to play around with interesting tech. Silva has made it into a lab for experimental storytelling – a space where they can explore the potential of these technologies to represent the world, or the self, in new and meaningful ways. “How do you express yourself or tell your story in ways that you are not used to? How do you combine traditional media into new media? How can you make text interactive – or even a song interactive? Certain media are strong at conveying certain things. You’re not restricted to one in this class. Pick the story you want to tell, and pick the medium that fits,” Silva said. Silva’s philosophy is rooted in his background. Before he was a computer scientist, he was a creative writer with an MFA from the University of Central Florida. Like many writers with an interest in technology, he found himself gravitating toward the work of Janet H. Murray, a pioneering scholar in the field of digital humanities who runs an experimental storytelling lab at Georgia Tech. Soon enough, Silva joined Murray’s lab himself, working toward a PhD in new media and contributing to projects at the vanguard of digital expression, including a new form of interactive video that can take the story in different directions based on the input of the viewer. When Silva joined the RE community, he took on an unprecedented task: bringing the digital humanities to the middle school – and along with it, some of the wild energy of Murray’s lab. Students spend some time in the headset, but they spend the majority of their time making things for the headset using digital tools, like a Pirates of the Caribbean -esque theme park ride that brings the user through 3D dioramas based on books they’ve read in other courses. For Silva, the stakes are high. Our students live profoundly digital lives already. VR keeps evolving, and Silva thinks some form of it will come to dominate daily experience. “I think virtual reality is going to be the social media of 15 years from now,” he said. “I feel like my mission as a computer scientist is to try to pull them a little bit back from technology [to understand] how it’s a wonderful solution to a lot of problems, but also the cause of many others.” In 15 years, creating worlds in VR may not be as novel as it is in 2023. But for now, it brings students into a wide-open possibility space. “The medium is evolving. It’s an awesome, Wild West, experimental place out there,” Silva said. What habits of mind will serve students as they march into the 21st century’s chaotic and uncharted middle? That’s the question these courses have been designed to answer as they bring students into “new intellectual spaces,” with the support and guidance of educators whose enthusiasm matches their expertise. “I think that when we couple interests with skills, we get to achieve what we know our kids need,” Rodriguez reflected. “It’s about what they get to achieve.” Drs. Kristine Stump and Heather Marshall co-teach the Biology and Ecology of Sharks elective