 My name is Alton Glass, and I'm here with my co-presenter and partner in education and storytelling, Dr. Keepa Wilson. Hello, welcome everybody, it's such a pleasure to be here with each of you, I'm so excited to be presenting with Alton today. So the topic of our presentation is called Storytelling and Action, the GRX immersive laugh away. And I'm just living by myself, my background is film and television, my director, producer, and I fell in love with virtual reality about five years ago, and I just really love what virtual reality did for my imagination, and it really really showed me that coming from 2D film into VR, that the imagination is frameless, and it taught me how to tap into my childhood and my imagination in the end, and to think outside the box, and that the possibility is for endless, and from there I really realized just how powerful this could potentially be for education, and I was inspired by the rise of Internet learning labs to take this on, and take the immersive content we were doing, and to move it into the educational space. And then connecting with Dr. P. Matt Wilson. I've been a teacher at the elementary, middle, and high school level, now I'm a university professor in the Charter College of Education, really focused on teacher education, so I've had the wonderful opportunity to work with Alton in developing the Verizon app that really pushes forth this whole notion of steaming entrepreneurship and really taking virtual reality and storytelling to the next level. So a little bit about who we are, G.I.R.X Immersive Labs, we're a collective of both storytellers, revolutionary educators, and innovative technologies converging together to reimagine worlds in entertainment, education, and technology, and we are a creative technology studio and research and design lab with a dedicated focus on reimagining how we leverage emerging technologies, virtual reality storytelling, and most importantly, as Dr. P. Matt Wilson said, steaming entrepreneurship, and our mission is to bring new rounds with virtual reality storytellers, and to really, really leverage that into our deep narrative analysis which is understanding how powerful our own stories can be, how we can leverage our stories into these technologies to make them even more powerful and impactful. Our areas of play are immersive content creation primarily, as I said, my background is traditional film and television, so storytelling is part of everything we do. So we focus on virtual reality production mixed reality, augmented reality, a lot of creative production in general, IP development, which is really important, and game development and just all around intellectual property development. So just taking the ideas and bringing them to life. And of course, experiential learning and developing experiential learning platforms is a key area of focus right now as we merge education and storytelling together with technology. And I'm going to show you just a sample of how we bring together projects at the intersection of immersive storytelling and education as well. So we did a project recently with Time magazine, it's now called Time Studios, called The March, which is a recreation of the 1960s in March on Washington with Dr. King, where he gave his iconic I Have a Dream speech. And with that, we created immersive exhibit to really, really tap into how you can re-imagine historical narratives, which was the 1963 March on Washington from Johnson Freedom. And this was done in collaboration with Validate, the executive producer, and who also narrated this to really, really bring another element to inspire you with her voice and her passion for immersive storytelling and education. So I'm going to play a short video that shows you just what that project took as we brought to life. We're creating the next two to three March on Washington and leveraging some of the tools today to design a 3D rendition of Dr. King. The relationship between Time and Dr. King runs really deep. He was Time's man of the year and he's been on the cover many times and, you know, we're speaking to the relationship that historically has existed between the two. So the March is an immersive installation, like stepping into a Time magazine cover of the 1960 March on Washington and experience up close and personal Dr. King in virtual reality like we've never seen before. We thought, imagine being able to stand in front of Martin Luther King while he delivers this speech. Now is the time. We're being in close proximity to history. That's where we began our journey. Right now there is nothing like this in VR. The pinnacle of the challenges is the creation of Dr. King. To have it feel like you are truly looking into another human being's soul is very, very difficult. But I really wanted to try to push that boundary and make a big jump in the industry towards realism with virtual humans. To create a new blend of technology that allows us to do something that is as real as our digital humans for feature films in real time as well for things like VR. And I think it's going to touch a lot of people out there in the country. And that's the intention. And Mohl Hill, Mississippi from every mountain side. At this point, there's very sophisticated ways of creating a photorealistic 3D environment. The process of getting digital humans that match the level of quality of that environment into a VR experience is still very difficult. So when we first started talking about this project and diving in, we were looking at a number of things that what we would call first. The special task we had on hand for Dr. King was creating not only a realistic digital human in VR, but also historically accurate to a specific time. And that time is 1963 on the day of the March. The process of creating Dr. King requires a bunch of different teams, a lot of disciplines. And it starts with capturing our stand ins and our facial bridges to MLK, scanning them through a wide variety of different facial technologies. Three, two, one, scan. Chris's face shape and structure is similar to Dr. King, so it gives us a jumping off point to sculpt Dr. King without having to start from scratch. On top of that, we use a huge amount of reference photography as well as reference video so that the modeling team has something to match too. That's the first part. The second part is to cast a performer that can give the speech verbatim and use him as the drying force behind our digital Dr. King performance. Thank you. So for educators who are interested in virtual reality, it's been around for quite some time. But now as a result of some of the newer, faster technologies and chips and so forth, we're now in a space where we can actually use virtual reality in a way that makes it a little bit easier to get into the hands of everyone. You know, you have companies like Facebook and HTC Vive who are now making, and there are other companies who are now making these technologies usable to be able to bring them into the classroom to be a very powerful computing system for the generations now to learn from. And this is just a brief timeline as you see the progression of it. But what I think is most important is when you look at the evolution of storytelling and you look at how students learn, whether they're watching videos or they're picking up a camera. I think it's very important to see how things have evolved, and myself being a storyteller, you know, I came up when we were learning 35-minute film and that moved into digital. And now you have young people who are now using cell phones to tell their stories. And not only that, they're creating their own enterprises, their own businesses that are becoming social media influencers. And I think that it's very important to understand how to make sure that you can adapt to the changing times and educate the next generation on how to use these tools to adapt to the changing times and embracing the technologies transition. So like as a result of COVID, now we can see that, you know, a lot of new businesses are going to be born as a result of COVID. And a lot of companies and a lot of schools are saying ways that they can now be more proactive in being prepared for these shifting times where education is going to be a very, very big leap for us to continue to collaborate and communicate. So we want to make sure that, you know, we don't get left behind with technology. So one thing we like to talk about, especially when you think about youth and education, is meeting the youth where they are. And this is just sort of showing you the convergence of technology and entertainment where a lot of young people are already inside of these platforms, such as, you know, the boom of YouTube, Netflix, of course, Facebook, Instagram, all of these different technologies and platforms such as, you know, the iPhone, Google, are where young people are accessing their content. And to be able to leverage tools now like virtual reality that are being deployed within all of these systems is a great way to reach them, to give them some interactive ways to learn through the use of technology and immersive technologies. And we already love about these new technologies and how they're being made is you have a lot of young people who love to play games, right? So what they don't know is whether you're a storyteller, you're a filmmaker, a digital creator, or a developer, or even a hardware engineer or a software engineer, you have a convergence of all of these different disciplines that you traditionally were siloed back in the days, right? Where now all of these young people, these industries are coming together. So now you have STEM, which is now, of course, STEAM, where you able to bridge all of these different disciplines that are coming together, and virtual reality, or the immersive economy as a whole, is a great place to introduce these different disciplines and these career fields, which is great. And then you can see all of these different platforms, especially with game development, which is a very big one because you know the kids are playing in the fortnights and the Pokemon goes. And so this gives us an opportunity to create more immersive technology programs and to get their hands on some of the entry-level technologies to start being able to get an entry point into immersive storytelling and leveraging the virtual reality tools. So here I'll show you a program that we have that takes young students in high school and bridges them into West LA College, where we have an immersive media program. And then we also have a program with Verizon Innovative Learning where we're teaching students, we're teaching the students early on about these immersive technologies by doing that virtual reality career day experience where they can meet STEM professionals in virtual reality and hang out with them. Join me as we get ready to take these students on a ride they've never had before. This program is about being able to take career day and encapsulate it into a virtual reality experience. These young men are able to get up close and personal with role models and entrepreneurs working in areas of STEM and see that they can do this themselves. Students were able to see how technology is used in careers and entrepreneurship. The kids really got to see that you can actually create a business out of virtual reality and you can have creative opportunities to make VR from scratch. We hope that through that they'll have a plan to be able to succeed and enter the pipeline into STEM and access to resources and money and careers. I'm pretty excited to see what ideas they bring to the industry. Our partnership with Verizon Innovative Learning is one of our core missions as we continue to build and level the playing field because technology is a great equalizer. Thank you. So I just want to talk a little bit briefly about immersive tech readiness. All right. And that's the process of preventing individuals and organizations to adopt and employ immersive technologies such as VR, AR, MR or what they call XR, cross-reality or extended reality as a means for increased engagement or collaboration. And as you can see again, COVID-19 has definitely rapidly accelerated the use of a lot of these technologies. As you can see here, we get an opportunity to come into the engaged platform to be able to communicate and stick to our presentations. And with students, one of the things I really enjoy the work with Verizon on is we're able to build an application that had cross-platform capabilities so that whether you were in VR, whether you were on a desktop or you've been down to the lowest kind of denominator of a Chromebook, students still have the ability to engage with each other through an immersive experience. Can you imagine? So when we think about really educating our youth of tomorrow, right? We have to think about technology needs your voice. The biggest thing that I've always hear as an educator is that students often fail in educational landscape. They have no voice. So one of the things that GRX Immersive Labs were very intentional on really empowering students to design their future, right? It's the foundation because we know that the future is now. We know that it is very important to understand how we create a level playing field for future generations, particularly in the tech field. Look, we all know the statistics are very dismal as it relates to underserved communities actually participating in STEM. And so one of the hallmarks of GRX Immersive Labs is to really think about how can we increase underserved and minoritized communities to really be a part of this virtual reality space and really empower them in their own educational goals. So we do that by really looking into what's your DNA? And when we talk about the concept of DNA, we're really thinking about it from the standpoint of deep narrative analysis, right? We understand that everyone has their own unique story that they are bringing to a classroom, to the world. And so it's very important at GRX Immersive Labs that we begin to create programs that actually bring out students' DNA. And so let's stay deeper into what is this deep narrative analysis all about? Well, one of the things that GRX Immersive Labs were really intentional about revolutionizing education and what does that mean? That really means we want to create experiences that showcase technology as an equalizer, right? We know that if we are able to empower students to become their best selves, really begin to develop a steam identity very early on in the educational process, they have an opportunity to change their communities, change their families and eventually change the world. Because we believe that imagination is frameless. We want to really encourage everything that we design out and I and the rest of the GRX team, we are very conscious that anything we design wanted to be an opportunity where students have an opportunity to think outside of the box. They get an opportunity to really explore steam entrepreneurship, the critical thinking skills, doing collaborative activities with each other, particularly in the Verizon Music Education module that we're currently designing and working on. One of the things that we thought we really wanted to empower students to go in and really begin their own learning and really take ownership of their learning. We want to position the teacher to become more of a facilitator of knowledge and because kids are coming into classroom spaces with a wealth of information. And so we feel that every product that we design, we want to make sure that that ingenuity and that genius is to the forefront of every virtual reality experience and to do that, we know that we have to have self-guided experiences, right? You don't need to ask permission to be great. We want you to create. We want you to explore and we want you to expand your horizons and really make the learning experience crafted to what you want it to be. With that, create, build, prototype. Talk to us, Elton. Yeah, so rapidly prototyping, I think it's never too early for young students to start to build their portfolios, start to create, you know, so that they're learning and they're doing, learning and they're doing. And that's one of the philosophies that really helped me in working with Kimi Wilson and our team is getting their hands on the tools and being able to get them to insert themselves into everything they do so they can understand, you know, early on what problems can they learn and solve, not only technologically, but also within their community, right? What story is going to bring to life so that they can share and increase their cultural competency for each other and other peers in that classroom, right? And I think most importantly is making sure that they're creating and building and prototyping because not only that, like I said, technology, we know, is outpacing so many different areas and different fields and we want them to be able to gain those new skills, those skills that will help them adapt and evolve and create those transferable skills so that they can constantly be growing as they continue to create. And one of my favorites is making sure that they understand that it's OK to want to go out there and build your career and to get a job, but we also want to make sure that they understand how to be investable versus just employable. And knowing that their DNA is a part of them understanding how they can take control of their destiny. And I think it's a twofold part where educators are now becoming storytellers because they're laying the foundation for these young people to understand that the most important story they all can tell is the story they tell themselves first. And key members, would you like to add anything to that? And I just really love the fact that one of the things that we're really conscious about at GRX, we want students to be investable and employable. And we know that the futures of tomorrow really are going to be housed in entrepreneurship. And so we just want to prepare our students to maximize that opportunity. And why is immersive education important because it's emerging industry? Right. So if you look back, it took maybe a hundred years or you can see now for the traditional Hollywood system to be built. But as you can see, when they started to build that industry, they started to tap into the U.S.C.'s, the NYU's, you know, and then you had a large amount of young filmmakers out there who went out there to create their own lanes and their own pathway. And now you're starting to see this new ecosystem being built with all of these large tech companies. You got the Facebooks who acquired Oculus for two billion dollars from a young man who was really the development team in his garage and it did a Kickstarter to raise money for one of the first early VR headsets. So we never get these students to understand that they can go out and they can build these types of opportunities for themselves. I think it's very, very important because this industry is growing. And we have the very, very beginning, you know, a precipice of great opportunity for them to take the industry to build and create the language and the grammar for what this new immersive economy can be. So not only are they learning at the same time, they're preparing themselves for an ecosystem that they're going to continue to build. And with that, we know what's going to be needed. It's going to be hardware needed, software is going to be needed. And all these new platforms are going to need developers and creators, which is most important. Anybody want to add to that? So the opportunity, creative, entrepreneurship and one of the things that we have in GRX immersive labs is even if you don't want to start a business, learn to think like one. Because we want our students to be able to problems on. We want our students to be able to take the opinions and the advice from co-creators and co-collaborators that they work with. And so every educational model that we design, because a part of storytelling is also making sure that you listen to other voices and make sure that other voices are heard. And so creating an atmosphere and creating a space. These are amazing tools that really help students become creative entrepreneurs and really bust down the doors of virtual reality. And I have to say my favorite ones is when I talk to kids when we go to different schools and they'll ask you about a job or business. And they'll say, how much money do they make, right? And you tell the kid, oh, this particular career makes six figures. Their eyes light up. And you think the kids don't necessarily really care about that. The kids like to earn and they like to learn and earn as well. And I think it's really important that it's never too too early to teach them about what these opportunities present when you go on certain career fields and certain tracks. And even understanding, you know, as educators, where are the investments, where are the acquisitions so you know where these industries are going and how to prepare these students to be prepared for that. That immersive economy or what some would consider this this next fourth industrial new industrial revolution with all of these new technologies that will impact how we live and how we learn. And I think that's very, very important because especially when you start to think about how VR has now started to impact so many different various industries. And then with the next wave of that, implementing things like artificial intelligence and machine learning, these are things that kids can learn about now that they're already using in their hands when they're playing video games and they're trying out these new apps. Being able to get them to understand how to unpack those things, takes them down a road of discovery that allows them, like you might have talked about earlier, of unpacking new opportunities for themselves and learning as they're doing the things that they love. And here is just sort of a landscape of companies that have started as a result of the immersive economy growing year after year, all of these jobs. And most importantly, what's amazing is look at all of these. A lot of these are startups. So, you know, when you look at one, you got to imagine at least, you know, three to five jobs are being created. And as that as you continue to go up, you know, you look at the larger companies, the Facebooks, the summaries, you know, the LGs, you know, you're talking about thousands and thousands of employees or what we consider entrepreneurs and also entrepreneurs supporting each other. So this is a very large landscape of opportunity for the next generation as they get their hands on these immersive technologies when you're teaching them and to even educate them on the landscape as well. Because if you surprise a lot of these companies and these tools they use, you know, they love sort of sort of like Fortnite, you know, you tell kids about Fortnite and then they start to unpack the company that created Fortnite called Epic Games. And then you start to teach them about how they made Fortnite. They made Fortnite for the game engine called Unreal Engine. And now Unreal Engine has educational workshops where teachers can teach through Fortnite. So, you know, that really, really gets them going. And then we have, you know, virtual reality experiences, all many other experiences that will allow them to learn and not be just consumers, but also producers. And again, like we said, meeting kids where they are. This is the playground for them. When you look at places like the eSports landscape, right? You have companies like Amazon who acquire Twitch. You know, and then you have Apple. They're buying motion capture companies now. The things that you see in your phone where, you know, the kids are doing like, what is it? Snapchat. When you teach a kid about Snapchat, what's really behind the mechanics of Snapchat is, you know, facial recognition technology that allows them, or all of the other technologies rather, that allows them to be able to create these emojis that move to their face. They really get excited about understanding what's underneath the hood. And then you have Atlantic Labs. You know, they did Pokemon Go. This company was originally the company that developed Google Maps. So when you teach kids and you say, you know, you know, those little cameras that you roll around and you see those bows around different neighborhoods. Those are 360 cameras that are capturing the entire landscape and putting it up in the cloud for you to be able to go on Google Maps and see certain neighborhoods and communities. So those are opportunities for them to learn how to hit new trades, skills and opportunities for themselves. And of course, you can't forget PlayStation, you know, the VR console. And a lot of these young people are using computers or something. So in video, you know, they make it about the chips. So there's so many different things that they use on a day to day basis. They can be unpacked and take them on a road of discovery opportunity. And then what you end up seeing is, again, it falls right back to STEM, where these things that they're learning by doing are things like 3D mapping, navigation, 3D capture, 3D content capture, eye-tracking, audio, you know, there's so many different areas that you would just never really think about until you start to really dive deeper into what you can teach and what they can learn. And again, you know, the beautiful thing about the convergence of technology now and storytelling is that storytellers and technologists are coming together. So now, even though you might not be the type of student who may want to code, they're making programming languages that allow you to still be able to exercise your talent as an artist to be able to still be able to create. And that's one thing I love about bringing them all together so that now no one's left out of creating in this new technological landscape. And I'm going to play one more last video just to show you how we're able to bring in some of the young students from college and get them prepared early as they move their way into college, preparing themselves for leveraging technology. Today was an activation day and I thought it couldn't have gone any better. Everybody was having fun. It was nothing but smiles. I think the students' response to the VR workshop was really nice to see. They were excited about it. It isn't our traditional pathway. It's new for us. My students were really impressed with each other's work, which I thought was awesome. You know, we teach them traditional filmmaking. So how to set up shots from that vantage point. And I think the wrapping your head around the 360 camera and that new world and those new possibilities, that's the piece that I feel like the students have been coming up to me and talking to me about was just this new world created by this 360 camera. So I thought it was really impressive, which Eric's did. I think it's a wonderful opportunity for people who are just on the traditional film track because immersive media kind of offers you kind of a side door into the industry and you can find a lot of opportunities that you might not get otherwise just because you're doing something that's a little bit more niche. When I attended Hollywood CPR in West LA College, it gave me the confidence and the foundation to go out there and get real world practical experience. And that later helped me transition into the local 600 union and then ultimately into the director's get of America. And I've continued to keep that foundation with me not only as an individual, but I've also made sure that we continue to use that in GRX immersive labs and creating that safe space for creators and entrepreneurs and artists and technicians to keep to grow their craft. So we talked about the March earlier on and just one thing that's great about immersive tech is that even though when you create these virtual experiences and stories, it gives you an opportunity to make subjects refreshing and bring new insights and perspectives. So one thing I loved about the March was our challenge was how do you take the civil rights movement and certain aspects of civil rights movement, especially with Dr. King and bring something refreshing to it? Or and our challenge was what they call the nine word problem. You know, you in school, you learn about civil rights movement, you learn about it in nine words, which is Martin Luther King, Jr. Rosa Parks, I had a dream. And, you know, we do this from, you know, from the time here in kindergarten all the way to grade and we wanted to figure out if we want to take an experience like the March on Washington, how do we bring something refreshing to this experience? So we wanted to give us an opportunity to get deeper into nuances and stories and on some heroes that were a part of the March on Washington. So so opportunities like that, it's great curriculum. So so not only when you finish the VR experience, you learn about which history we took to create the March on Washington. When you come out, there's more information to really learn about how you can continue to be an advocate for change and to be able to move forward. And you learn about other people who contributed to the March outside of just the people that you learn about the mainstream media. So it gives you an opportunity to redefine narratives in a very, very powerful and meaningful way. And you know, people to have an opportunity to take on these new technologies and bring in their culture and their point of view, their perspective that you often may not see. Can you mind you want to close the side, bring us home? Well, the question that we really asked a lot of the time is, are you immersed already? Right? And we know that the immersive economy has a shortage of skills, content, a new family to meet the demand. So that is why the RX immersive labs is very cognizant that we are concerned about educating the next generation, because we know there are amazing content creators sitting in first grade, sitting in eighth grade, sitting in a little top grade, right? And so we want to equip them with the tools and the knowledge to really meet this immersive time. And so one of the things that is very important, even as outs to show the different companies that are leading the way, we are very, we're very aware that in order to prepare our students, we've got to think in a much bigger way, right? We've got to think about how are we designing educational models in virtual reality that really taps into that student that loves art, taps into that student that loves music, taps into that students that love to go behind the hood and really think about what the software is requiring you to do. And so those are all skill sets that are really going to push students and catapult them to be immersive ready. And as the world becomes our new desktop, what can students develop or create to help build the immersive economy? As a teacher, I had a lot of students who had a lot of family members who dealt with various medical issues, right? Whether it range from cancer, whether it range to HIV, they all had different techniques that they were actually utilizing to help their family member either eat well or just live a more quality of life. And I found that a lot of the system, the current traditional systems that we have in education didn't allow students to really think deeply. And so those are the very students that have some of the cures and they are the ones like Alton said earlier, they're engaged in the Facebooks, they're engaged in various technologies. And so tapping into their knowledge, we actually can find the cure for a lot of social and health issues that we currently face in our world. And as GRX Immersive Labs always says, there are riches in the niches, right? And so it's time to really go out and tap into those spaces where kids are bored in classrooms, where teachers are not really leveraging all the knowledge that exists, GRX Immersive Labs is poised to create virtual reality, content, artificial intelligence content that really reimagined education and really centers our students' knowledge. This part wraps it up on our presentation, Storytelling and Action, Immersive Storytelling and Education. So we just want to say thank you to X-Prize for a wonderful opportunity to present Storytelling and Action, the GRX Immersive Labs way. Again, my name is Alton Glass, CEO of GRX Immersive Labs. Just want to say thank you. And I'm Dr. Kimar Wilson, definitely thank you, thank you, thank you, X-Prize for this opportunity for GRX Immersive Labs to really show you an operational case, all the amazing work that we're doing around immersive education. But thank you so much. We look forward to interacting with you all virtually again.