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Less Physics Mo Problems

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Why am I writing this personal entry? Well, it is not an attempt to gain any sympathy. It attempts to show what is possible if a clear intention and goal serve the learner's needs.  In May of 2022 just near the end of another fantastic school year, I do not remember what happened. But, I was unable to finish the school year and was unable to teach the following year.  Why? On May 21st, 2022, I fell down a flight of 16 stairs (luckily carpeted) from the 2nd to 1st story of our home.  I was found at the bottom of the stairs. I was found foaming at the mouth. This would lead to a 2-month hospital stay which included an induced coma because my seizures would not stop, several rounds of lumbar punctures, and relearning basic physical movements like something as simple as being able to roll in the hospital bed. Simply put, when I was admitted to the hospital, I was diagnosed as being “critically ill.” Please take a moment and read those words: critically ill. They are not terms...
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Tour Creator Unleashed

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We help out 7th Passion Project Expo this week. We had a lot of interesting projects but there was a first that I thought was pretty cool.

For the past 3 years, I have had a few students build VR spaces to present their projects using CoSpaces. This year though, I had a student decide to use Google’s brand new Tour Creator to create VR experience. Now, Tour Creator may have been created initially with the idea of using landscape images to create a “tour”, but Emily Taylor did something a bit different. She used images and text to create an informative experience exploring theories around interdimensional beings.

Her experience is embedded below, but what’s even cooler is if you go to the link:

https://poly.google.com/view/a3LxyoasCTj

You can export it to the Expeditions App and view it in VR on your own or guide a tour.





In this tour, the hotspots are not specifically tied to their location on the background. But I could image this being done with great effect on something like an anatomy diagram where each hotspot corresponded to a specific part of the body being discussed. Or, an image could be created of some sort of cycle as a background and hotspots could be designed for each stage in the process. Even a student art galley could be used as the background and hotspots could be used to highlight each piece creating a virtual gallery space. I see lots of possibilities for creation of learning experiences by students. I’ll be excited to dig deeper into the possibilities. Just wanted to share out this one because it really pushed my thinking of the possible.

Here is another space that was created by another one of my physics students, Meagan Mullins.

 https://poly.google.com/view/cY8_nTXbU6i

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