7 Habits of Highly Successful Presenters

This article was originally published in Medium on June 12, 2017 by Lindsay Portnoy

When was the last time you gave a pitch, taught a class, led a professional development, or facilitated a training? Did you use Powerpoint slides, Prezi, or one of the 36 other platforms for presenting information? Was it successful? How do you know?

Last week one of my co-founders and I attended a conference where Powerpoint was the template of choice, but the approach to presenting varied wildly. While networking and skill building was of the utmost importance, my educator brain clung tightly to seven habits of those who were most successful in engaging the audience, able to create a sense of urgency across discrete fields, and charismatically commanded attention throughout their presentations.

With each new presenter a novel takeaway emerged building an important list of do’s and don’ts for being a highly successful presenter. Without further ado, the seven habits of highly successful presenters:

1: Know your audience

A great presenter knows their domain so well that they they can reduce jargon and speak to any crowd. So too does a stellar presenter who takes it a step beyond by learning about the audience they are speaking to so they can tailor their message for the greatest impact.

Imagine citing a reference that is far too old/young/niche for your audience to grasp or using technical language such as schemas or mirror neurons which ensures a pithy presentation to a group of cognitive psychologists but leaves a group of mechanical engineers lost in the dust. Likewise, discussing “stress analysis” may have a different meaning depending on the audience.

Understanding simple things like the range of educational backgrounds, the size of the group, the experience levels, and even better, the problems faced by members of your audience will ensure your message is on point and well received by every person in your audience.

2: Know and use your space

A good presenter visits the space before they present. A stellar presenter does too, but they also ask about the space while preparing their talk to make the best use of the stage, the mic, and the room.

Questions to ask to ensure a successful presentation include: How large is the room? How is the seating arranged? Are there large round tables with a dozen audience members at each or are they sitting in an auditorium? Is there a podium or a standing mic? How can I move and engage the most amount of people during this talk? Simple questions like these can ensure you can better reach each audience member.

We’ll talk about engagement in #5 but knowing the layout of your space before giving your talk ensures that you are prepared to engage your entire audience, and can plan those interactions ahead of time.

3: A picture tells a thousand words

Cognitive load refers to the amount of effort your brain requires to process information. Successful presentations limit the cognitive load by using single words or better yet, engaging graphics, that supplement the speaker’s talking points.

To do this successfully your talk should be written before the presentation is created. If you need powerpoint to help script your talk that’s fine, but talking points should be replaced with images that trigger your memory so you’re not reading notes from a screen or worse yet saying something distinct from the graphics the audience sees.

4: Tone and motion sets the stage for engagement

Practice truly does make better (notice I didn’t say perfect, I’ll save that for another day). This one requires some serious reflection. Depending on the presentation you’re giving you’re likely to prepare your talk ahead of time. Instead of running through it in your head or even out loud, consider recording yourself to hear how you sound.

Are there certain words or ideas that you are saying more or less loudly? Does the inflection in your voice change as you speak? Are these changes intentional and do they correlate to key concepts that you wish to highlight?

Emphasizing important concepts with your voice and your body makes your presentation more engaging and helps the audience focus in on salient items with your gentle guidance.

5: Make room for interaction

In 7th grade Algebra it was not looked upon kindly to be called upon by the teacher. The same holds true in professional spaces today. But that’s not to say that there’s no room for engaging with your audience.

Asking your audience to identify with different issues, concerns, or thoughts by raising their hand is a quick way to help you speak more directly to those in attendance (see # 1). It will also make your audience feel like they are part of a conversation and not empty vessels upon which you are disseminating your brilliance.

If you’re feeling particularly confident, consider asking questions during your talk that require audience participation, knowing that the responses may vary and you will have to think on your feet to connect their responses to the flow of your talk. But know that increasing audience participation also increases engagement so consider it for your next talk.

6: Connect honestly

Everyone fails. A lot. What everyone does not know is how often even the most successful people have failed. Engaging audiences is about being authentic and honest. You don’t have to share the most embarrassing story of your failures but sharing about your highs and lows makes people tune in and want to learn more.

If the audience can see themselves in your shoes whether through a story of emotional triumph, a hard won success, or a failure laden with insights, they are likely to take a great deal away from your presentation and likely seek you out again in the future.

Among the myriad speakers at the recent convention there is one that stands apart as the most engaging, inspiring, and thought-provoking speaker who spoke (with visual aids, see #3) about the failures and what was learned from each. I could connect, I was curious, I engaged. So too did the audience who did not miss a beat laughing at the jokes and waited with baited breath for each new morsel of knowledge.

It wasn’t simply the silliness of this scientist who was using a washing machine as a cheap centrifuge but the earnestness about how it did and did not work out and later how building a successful team required him to go outside his comfort zone and ask for help in places he might have otherwise never ventured. Simple. Straight-forward. Honest.

7: Lead with a question, leave with one too

It’s common in presentations to lead with an outline or bullet points of the topics you wish to share in chronological order. This is important as it centers your audience and prepares them for the flow of your talk. But it’s a missed opportunity to really pull them in and engage them at the beginning and again at the end to check in and encourage them to continue thinking beyond your time together.

In the first 30 seconds of your talk ask a question. Not a what-would-be-your-last-meal kind of question, unless your audience is filled with professional chefs looking for inspiration, but a question that gets right to a problem that your audience is trying to fix.

In a room full of teachers I might ask: which student has been your most difficult to reach? Why? Starting with a question tailored to the audience (see #1) brings them in and gets them connecting the content to their own experiences. After a talk about how growth and development influence a child’s ability to engage with different grown ups I might end with a question such as: what information about how children develop might have been helpful in meeting that student you thought of at the beginning of our talk? How might you have changed your approach if you had this information sooner?

If you clicked on this article you may be a teacher, a marketer, a business owner, or hold any number of careers that require you to give presentations. If you’re feeling the pain of an imperfect pitch, hopefully you’ll start your next talk with a question in an effort to ignite the synapses in your audience’s brains, allowing them to connect with your content in a deep and meaningful way.

To recap:

1: Know your audience: What is the range of education, experience, age, and content area represented within your audience? This will help you reduce jargon and create a clear message

2: Know and use your space: What is the size of the room, where is the mic, how are audience members seated? This will ensure you maximize your reach of audience members.

3: A picture tells a thousand words: Less text = more listening. Write first then find images that serve as cues while you speak.

4: Tone and motion set the stage for engagement: Be mindful of your vocal inflection as it guides your audience

5: Make room for interaction: Ask for a show of hands or for a specific response to a pressing question to increase engagement and connect.

6: Connect honestly: Relevant personal stories provide a narrative frame that is both engaging and memorable.

7: Lead with a question, leave with one too: Pull people in with a question that is relevant and then leave with a question that encourages them to think about what you just shared in a new way that is relevant to their needs.

Presenting is like teaching. The more you present and the more reflective and open you are to change, the better you become. What’s important is that you know your story and can tell it in a compelling way that is approachable, engaging, and tailored to fit your audience.

Which of these habits do you already possess? Which ones do you need to work on? Which habits have I missed? Share your thoughts below:

Metrics that Matter: How to use VR to transform classroom learning

This article was originally published in Medium on April 24, 2017

Imagine a school where students work with city planners to develop a new playground during first period, build a working lawn mower to care for the grounds in second period, create life-sized sculptures to exhibit in their space during third period, and by fourth period they’re synthesizing biodiesel to fuel the lawn mowers that care for their grounds.

Does this sound like a dream school? It may be reality sooner than you think. With the proliferation of games for learning, virtual reality has the potential to transport children to places out of reach for most students. Students can visit a lab where peptides are synthesized to make palliative treatments for cancer patients, an underwater dive to see the giant sea turtles in the Galapagos, or even visit one of Jupiter’s moons.

There are at least four ways VR can change learning and each will be even more profound when paired with tools to help teachers observe, document, and provide feedback while continuing to engage and enlighten students. The creation of these tools requires an understanding of how student learning becomes more complex over time, how to measure what matters, how to align those metrics to the many ways in which students demonstrate their knowledge, and most importantly to identify what tools teachers see as valuable to improve and inform their instruction.

How Students Learn

Researchers have shown time and again that learning is dictated by content, not individual ability, rendering the term learning style defunct. Students learn through a variety of modes including visual, auditory, kinesthetic and over seventy more!

Would you prefer a cardiothoracic surgeon who fashions herself strictly a visual learner and reads widely about open-heart surgeries, or perhaps you’d prefer the person who has listened thoroughly, read widely, and logged thousands of hours in lab perfecting her technique?

Just as experts hone their craft using a variety of modalities, students acquire knowledge in a multitude of ways. A student can demonstrate learning kinesthetically by creating a physical model or verbally by defending their position in a debate. Depending on the domain it may be more relevant to have a student write a response to an opinion piece or to create a piece of music. Herein lies yet another way that virtual environments can activate the senses, engage multiple modalities, and bring depth and breadth to classroom learning.

Measuring Learning to Improve Instruction

Measuring learning serves one purpose: to inform teaching and learning. It is not the teacher’s goal to stamp a letter on each child’s head and place them back on the assembly line for next year’s teacher. The science behind the best methods of formative assessment relies upon cognitive taxonomies. These taxonomies map learning as a progression from simple to complex demonstrations of knowledge and are used by educators to delineate student learning.

Webb’s is the most widely used taxonomy for demonstrating knowledge across a variety of domains across four successive levels of knowing: acquisition, application, analysis, and augmentation of knowledge. As students move from one level to the next, they are tasked with showing their knowledge in increasingly complex ways. For example, the acquisition level (DOK 1) requires simple recall of knowledge such as naming the three branches of government, whereas the augmentation level (DOK 4) pushes the student to apply acquired knowledge in a novel or distinct way such as analyzing the ways in which the United States government was created based on ancient Greece.

In virtual reality environments we can scaffold a student’s demonstration of knowledge by providing tools to increase engagement while providing metrics to show growth along a learning progression. These environments show student’s actions and interactions with content making their knowledge visible and ripe for the qualitatively rich metrics that measure growth and development.

Pairing Measurement with Authentic Learning in VR Environments

Let’s break down each level of learning in Webb’s taxonomy and see how VR has the potential to improve learning and provide meaningful feedback on that learning to inform instruction. Taken point by point here’s why:

1: Acquisition and the Ability to Touch

In physical reality students can sort items in an array, identify the atoms of a molecules, or simply select a book off the shelf that will help them finish their book report. These human experiences embedded in virtual reality will allow users to touch items in a virtual world in an effort to demonstrating knowledge acquisition (DOK 1).

Exploring in a virtual world may find students sort the same array or identify those same molecules, but they can also seek out definitions to secure basic content knowledge by selecting items in a virtual world even with the most rudimentary of VR viewers. Titans of Space is one experience where students take a tour of the planets in our solar system and learn basic facts about things like the rings of Saturn and nearby stars. A student’s selection of items can be provided to teachers as feedback to show just which components they were most engaged in learning about and serves as a launching point from which to extend learning to deeper levels of inquiry like DOK 2.

2: Application and the Capacity to Manipulate

The application level or DOK 2 requires students to process information through actions such as summarizing or predicting where learners manipulate simple knowledge to demonstrate how they have reorganized content into meaningful knowledge. In a physical space this often looks like the summary of a story, the creation of a diorama, or performing a piece based on a reading.

In virtual worlds these same skills can be demonstrated but with greater detail and with the capacity to document anf therefore better capture and honor each movement. For example, a student who uses the tilt brush to retell a story with drawings or creates their own diorama in VR using CoSpaces leaves an image forever secured in space, which can be toured by other students and the teacher. What’s more it provides useful feedback about how the student applied information (DOK 2) from discrete facts (DOK 1) while generating feedback to the teacher to move beyond application (DOK 2) and into the realm of higher order thinking and problem solving apparent in DOK 3.

3: Analysis and the Tools to Create

The third level of Webb’s taxonomy is Analysis, which speaks to the student’s ability to go beyond the surface of understanding and processing information towards evaluating perspectives, investigating alternative sources of information, and solving problems. In a classroom this often looks like drawing conclusions from observations in science, questioning primary and secondary sources in history, or using different theorems to solve an equation in math.

Virtual spaces provide student’s with a template to create materials that support their ideas. Consider a high school trigonometry class where students learn about sine, cosine, and tangent. They’ve mastered DOK 1 and 2 by identifying and recalling each term but in DOK 3 they need to demonstrate their ability to solve problems using these functions. A student could demonstrate this knowledge by solving problems in a virtual world where the height of trees dictates where they should be placed in a community garden or in proximity to a school building. This is similar to the real work of architects embracing VR who are working to create more authentic representations of their projects, bridging the virtual and physical world while setting the stage for knowledge to move from analysis (DOK 3) to augmentation (DOK 4).

4: Augmentation of Knowledge and the Potential to Change

Augmentation (DOK 4) encompasses the cognitive abilities of each of the levels that come before. A student must be able to solve a problem using sine in DOK 3 which also includes their ability to define sine (DOK 2) and recognize it as a function in trigonometry (DOK 1). The final level of augmentation (DOK 4) requires students to have embraced levels one through three while adding on the cognitive complexity of formulating strategies to solve new problems, restructuring of data, or generating novel hypotheses. DOK 4 requires students to synthesize their knowledge in a way that allows them to solve problems that don’t always have easy solutions.

In a physical setting students may read primary and secondary sources in a history class around causes of the American Civil War ranging from issues of slavery, the state’s rights and even Lincoln’s election. After reading multiple sources, discussing, and debating, students propose a well-reasoned explanation for the war citing sources and providing evidence to support their assertion. In virtual worlds this exercise can take place through the exploration of multiple immersive learning experiences like My Brother’s Keeper or Urban Warfare with the added bonus of activating embodied cognition, cultivating empathy, and providing additional layers of understanding from traditional texts.

Documenting Growth While Empowering Educators

Students learn best when they have a knowledgeable guide, access to requisite tools for acquiring knowledge, and when their teachers are given the autonomy to observe, document, and collect feedback to inform their teaching. By understanding the range of cognitive skills students demonstrate while learning, VR experiences can provide that feedback in real time during each immersive experience to fuel repeated engagement and qualitatively rich information to guide instruction. To do this well we must continue to ask important questions about the user’s experience as we develop immersive learning experiences. For instance, how will environments allow students to move, manipulate, and create representations of their learning? And how will developers provide teachers with a template to connect immersive experiences in virtual worlds to the synthesis of knowledge in the physical world through reading, writing, and presenting student work?

Teachers are master storytellers who craft engaging lessons and tailor assessments that drive future instruction each and every day. If VR developers want to harness the power of their technology to boost learning and provide meaningful feedback they will need to work closely with professional educators. Together we can create tools to best support student growth and learning by considering: What are the most intuitive ways to build interactions within an immersive experience? How will you measure these interactions? Which level of cognition is enacted in each action? What is the best way to deliver formative assessment to teachers to best inform their instruction? Where will you provide scaffolds to deepen learning or support struggling students during these experiences?

The important takeaway is that these tools have not yet been created so the field is ripe for innovation in developing metrics that matter most to teachers to fuel learning. Together we can create immersive experiences that are rich in formative assessments to support teachers while captivating students to ensure that they continue to learn, grow, and keep coming back for more.

Ethics in Virtual Reality: Do the same rules apply?

This article was originally published in Medium on April 10, 2017 by Lindsay Portnoy

When Cassidy Lexcen’s daughter was born with a critically damaged heart and missing a lung, she never thought that the key to her daughter’s survival would be found in a piece of cardboard and a smart phone. Doctors in Minnesota where Lexcen’s twin girls were born were unable to help their daughter Teegan, but Dr. Redmond Burke at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami had a plan. Using Google cardboard and 3D modeling software, Burke was able to recreate and then take a virtual tour of the child’s heart and lung so that in surgery there were no surprises. Thanks to Burke’s innovative use of virtual reality Teegan continues to thrive.

The pervasiveness of virtual reality is abundant in gaming, education, and even business. Now this new technology is helping doctors prepare for trauma surgeries, helping patients overcome fears, and even aiding in the treatment of PTSD. The real world embodiment of virtual reality allows for simulations that have meaningful and deep impact on people from all walks of life and is creating collaborations in ways that are unique and deeply beneficial. Virtual reality simulations are helping hospitals work with contractors to build an ideal space for their patients and aiding in pain therapy for patients suffering from chronic pain.

There are clearly many benefits of virtual technology as a tool for teaching, learning, and gaming, yet there are also significant roadblocks to using VR technology. Besides the technical requirements of embarking on a VR journey, there’s the issue of access and equity. Then there are the questions about the ways in which people will interact within virtual environments which all begs the question: How can developers ensure virtual environments are created in a responsible way that is inclusive and respectful of all users?

It’s Not all Bungee Jumps and Burj Khalifa

Immersive VR environments have the potential to impact our lives in exciting new ways, but it is important to acknowledge that there are both positive (free airfare to Burj Khalifa) and negative (cyber bullying) repercussions of this technology. As virtual experiences expand beyond a headset to include haptic suits your full body gets feedback from game play. And now those tiny mirror neurons capable of cultivating empathy paired with immersive virtual reality make empathy and affect not only virtual but real. Most experiences harness this power in a positive way, but the physical aspects of this medium also lend themselves to experiences where viewers may feel violated or unsafe especially in gaming or multi-player experiences.

The Guardian recently published a piece warning of the ethical issues raised in virtual reality where users, mostly women, have reported countless types of harassment. The ethical issues in virtual worlds continue to garner attention because as attorney Mark Methinitis points out, “At the point where people do get actual sensory feedback — like a Matrix-type plug in … something where it’s actually plugged into your brain — that’s where we sort of turn a corner and say that things in virtual reality are much more real than they were before.”

Citing an assault that occurred in a virtual environment, one company is taking action to ensure that players have a defensive strategy called a power gesture. The company QuiVr has created a pose that when taken in a virtual environments puts up a protective dome around the player allowing them to stay engaged in game play while fending off predatory behavior. This effort has been heralded around the VR world as a great step towards stopping harassment in its tracks.

Establishing Norms to Ensure Ethical Experiences

Others are following QuiVr’s suit in seeking ways to establish social norms so the protagonist in a virtual reality experience feels safe. At last year’s Game Developer Conference, Patrick Harris challenged game developers to seek solutions to harassment in virtual worlds, calling for a way to solve what he calls a “damaging experience.”

At this year’s GDC conference there were two sessions and four panelists discussing such ethical dilemmas including professionals such as Anita Sarkeesian. Sarkeesian gave an inspiring advocacy microtalk (@ 59 minutes in) around inclusivity and diversity in games. She shared ways in which game designers are learning to consider the role of female gamers in both representation and access and pushed designers to consider changing the way we think about stories and games. Sarkeesian goes on to implore that developers include marginalized people and important issues in these experience and in ways that truly demonstrate our knowledge of racist and sexist systems of oppression noting, “Games are changing for the better. Be a part of that change.”

In the coming years we will likely look back with rose colored glasses on the piece of cardboard that paired with a smartphone brought us into the virtual reality revolution. My hope is that together we will anticipate the would have, could have, should haves. Did we do all we could to ensure users felt safe and autonomous in VR experiences? Did we create environments to represent the diversity of the human experience? Did we challenge users to become contributors by engaging them in meaningful dialogue about their needs, experiences, successes, and failures? I am hopeful that the answer to these questions is yes, but the story of VR continues to unfold.

What questions about ethics in VR do you have and how can we work together as a community to solve them?

Eighteen

9/11/19: Today marks 18 years since the lives of so many of us changed forever. Those of us up close watched in horror as our community was broken, those of us far away watched remote feeling helpless. But each one of us changed on that day, and we did so together. 

It struck me today as I reflected on the profound impact that this day had on the trajectory of my entire life, that 18 is no ordinary number. In Judaism the number 18 is referred to as ‘chai’ or life. More of the ‘ish’ part of Jewish, I am deeply aware of the life that I was given on that day 18 years ago when everything changed forever.

Immediately following the attack our phone lines went dead. I was unable to get a call out and watched frantically from my rooftop as the black plumes rose towards the sky. It was eerily beautiful outside, not a cloud in the sky, a stark juxtaposition from the thousands of lives lost within a single morning.

Once we found our loved ones and were sure they were safe I remember heading to the armory on 23rd to join arms with the community in preparing food and tending to the first responders and families of those missing in any way we knew how. Not trained in trauma I could still lend a hand, give a hug, and prepare a warm meal for those hoping for news of a loved one, those exhausted from a day of digging in smoldering steel, or those walking in a daze trying to make meaning of it all. We worked together, the entire community. We lifted each other up with all of our being. On that day and the weeks that followed we were not 8+ million people in NYC, we were one. 

So much has changed since that day. No. So much has changed BECAUSE of that day. In business we call it a pivot. In life, an awakening. I left a corporate career to enter the classroom, joined a cohort of colleagues vested in improving the nature of education for all of our learners, and opened my eyes to the potential of lifelong learning.

This morning as I put my children on the bus for school, too young to understand the devastation on that day, I hugged them a little tighter. My husband, working from home to be nearer on a particularly trying day also gave me a tight squeeze. A reminder that we are still here. And there is still work to do. 

My big kid asked recently: mom, what’s the point in life? I answered: to find your own answer to that question.

Now I find myself on a train headed back to the shadow of those two towers, a compass each time I emerged from city trains to get my bearings. Today I calibrate my bearings and hope you too will share your calibration with me.

What is the purpose of this life? What is the purpose of your life? How can we refocus on answering better questions to support each of us, from K to gray, in seeking out our most meaningful life?

More importantly: how can I help?

One Stone: Where Purpose Meets Impact

If you ask any high school student to name their favorite part of the day you may hear: the sound of the final bell. Not so at OneStone, a school in Boise that is flipping the script on high school as we know it. Talking with Chad Carlson, the Director of Research and Design at One Stone it is clear that these folks know the recipe for successful learning, “here learning has become relevant to students. As agents of their own story, students focus on what is important to them while making meaning out of their learning each day.”

Read more here: https://www.gettingsmart.com/2019/07/one-stone-where-purpose-meets-impact/

Love in Virtual Reality: Can we connect on the deepest level without touching in the physical world?

This article was originally published in The Digital Culturist on June 29, 2017 by Lindsay Portnoy

The 2014 romantic sci-film Her asked it first on the big screen: what does it look like to fall in love in virtual reality? Is it possible that we could connect with someone on the deepest level without even touching them in the physical world?

Theodore: Do you talk to someone else while we’re talking?
Samantha: Yes.
Theodore: Are you talking with someone else right now? People, OS, whatever…
Samantha: Yeah.
Theodore: How many others?
Samantha: 8,316.
Theodore: Are you in love with anybody else?
Samantha: Why do you ask that?
Theodore: I do not know. Are you?
Samantha: I’ve been thinking about how to talk to you about this.
Theodore: How many others?
Samantha: 641.

— Her. Spike Jonze. Warner Bros Pictures, 2013.

With its ability to take people to faraway places, create a sense of empathy for those you may never meet, change dangerous behaviors, and serve as a teaching tool in applied fields such as medicine, art, and even science, the question remains: Can virtual reality be used to forge the ultimate bridge between two people?

There’s a science to falling in love, evidenced in the dopamine induced fireworks of a first kiss to the release of vasopressin when we feel attached to a committed partner. But how does the science work when people are no longer meeting in the physical world? Can people find and fall in love in an age of virtual reality? And can it really lead to sustained relationships? Biological anthropologist Helen Fisher tells us that there are 3 stages of love: lust, attraction, and attachment. If you can make it past the first two stages you have good odds of landing in stage 3 and finding yourself as part of a pair. Understanding each of these stages will help us to better understand how virtual spaces can foster love and long-lasting relationships.

Stage 1: Lust

The first stage towards love is lust. According to Judith Orloff, “Lust is an altered state of consciousness programmed by the primal urge to procreate.” This stage is a visceral response to the physicality of your partner. Lust affects your brain in the same way cocaine does as it has the ability to increase dopamine as a response to the pleasure found in a new love.

If lust is the first stage of love, it’s no wonder that dating apps like Tinder have galvanized the dating scene, making over 10 billion matches worldwide. What is more surprising is how these digital tools are going beyond the first stage, resulting in longer, more meaningful relationships. Perhaps virtual worlds will harness the power of lust to engage users and cultivate attraction similar to digital technologies where users are motivated by love but addicted to lust.

While digital tools are increasing access to dating and sex, virtual reality with its use of haptic technologies will significantly surpass digital dating in cultivating lust. VR offers heightened sensation through more immersive environments with no shortage of tools to engage in sexual behavior. Virtual environments are already being used as a means for more short-lived, lustful connections with others.

Still from Second Life (Alicia Chenaux/Flickr)

In virtual environments experiences are shared by digital avatars that are based on the creator’s desired projection. When the projection is not an accurate representation of reality a physical meeting in person may be quite upsetting. For example, the creator may have a slender beautiful young avatar, when the reality is quite different. Whether the love built upon a virtual image can transfer to the real world depends on various factors and may ultimately reinforce the creator’s shame or fear of being different from the image they are trying to project.

The science of love based in the real world speaks in all five senses. While avatars may need to be relatively accurate representations of ourselves to foster true love, the ability to connect using multiple senses is of great concern. Sex in virtual reality is already here, but it appears that we skipped over some of the more essential elements that work to create the emotion of love, for example the pheromones that contribute to the feeling, and rushed straight into it’s physical, or more accurately virtually augmented, manifestation.

Some researchers are afraid that virtual reality will usher in an age of greater isolation and disconnection, while others argue that VR is a tool that will supplement in-person interactions while deepening existing physical relationships. If in-person interactions can be supplemented, there may also be a possibility to utilize the embodied environments of virtual reality to deepen those connections and move towards attraction with the ultimate goal of love.

Stage 2: Attraction

Once the feelings of erotic lust have subsided, you’re squarely in the stage of attraction. In this stage, the idea of seeing your person is still all consuming and moves from erotic to romantic passion. Romance in a time of virtual reality may mean that people move more quickly from lust to attraction with constant access to technology delimited by time and through more sustained and intense interactions.

Researchers like Arthur Aron believe that falling in love is as simple as asking a question. In fact, he devised a set of 36 questions which, followed by a four minute sustained gaze into your partner’s eyes, is likely to move you to stage three: attachment. While digital worlds provide the canvas for asking those questions, virtual environments add the physical element to elevate the relationship to the next step by using multisensory and interactive experiences to create real attraction.

Based on our ability to connect with other real people in a virtual space without physical limitation, you can consider the move from lust to attraction to be an enhanced experience. For example, imagine a date where you can talk about The Picture of Dorian Gray while walking along the Cliffs of Moher, or discuss A Moveable Feast as you wander along the grounds of the Eiffel Tower without paying for airfare or even dinner. By creating limitless spaces and experiences for people to utilize romantically, virtual reality becomes a low-stakes approach to fostering attraction.

The social aspects of VR create countless opportunities to turn lust into attraction through meaningful interaction and connection, especially for those who consider themselves introverts. Companies like VRChat allow users to “create, publish, and explore virtual worlds with other people from around the world” creating a perfect platform for a virtual first date. Other companies like Altspace VR allow users to create their own spaces, taking it a step further by hosting events where people can meet and talk in settings aligned to users unique interests. If it’s true that the eyes are the window to the soul then virtual environments may have the advantage over traditional digital worlds.

Stage 3: Attachment

Still from Second Life (Alicia Chenaux/Flickr)

Moving from attraction to attachment requires true bonding. It suggests the desire to be with another person for reasons beyond the physical. With nearly one third of all recent marriages beginning online, it’s easy to see the great potential of virtual reality for building lasting relationships. The ability to engage users through multiple senses, communicate from the safety of your own space, and the capacity to hear, see, and maybe even feel your partner in a virtual space are some of the many reasons why virtual reality may be the future of dating and love.

As with most technology, the early adopters are often gamers. So it is not surprising to see that two gamers who met in Utherverse, a VR game where users interact through avatar, have found love. And with the advent of new tools like vTime, virtual reality users are able to connect and engage in alternate planes to reinforce their romance in the virtual world and even extend it to the physical world. In their recent Valentine’s Day ad, vTime asks: “Away from the love of your life this #Valentines Day? Why not meet up in one of our romantic destinations for a #VR date!”

With the capacity to engage users around the globe in meaningful debates and exciting experiences from the seat of your couch, it is easy to predict that virtual reality is bound to be a precursor to wedding bells. And those wedding bells too may be getting a makeover as experiences are captured in virtual reality to be relished and shared for years to come. Well-known company YouVisit has created 360-degree experiences for countless events and now they’re adding weddings to their repertoire. What better way to document your love than with a virtual experience that forever captures the real world celebration in an always accessible virtual format?

Real Love in a Virtual World?

Love in the virtual age has advantages to traditional ways of pairing off including: access to a much wider dating pool, the ability to stop and think before saying something to a potential love interest, nurturing a relationship over a longer period of time, and providing an often needed pause before deciding whether to meet in the physical world. Paired with the statistic that people are simply waiting until later in their lives before seeking out committed relationships, love in virtual reality can be a primer or a buffer for creating more sustained long-term relationships.

In the not so distant past, people may have met in person but fell in love through single senses alone. The written word carried relationships from battlefields to bedrooms. With the advent of instant messenger and online dating droves of people used their eyes and ears to fall in love. So it is not a stretch to suggest that the multi-sensory medium of virtual reality could cultivate real sustained relationship. But what about the rest of our bodies?

Simply seeing someone on a screen and hearing their voice doesn’t seem to suffice. Don’t we need pheromones to sniff out our perfect mate or the strong impact of touch to fuel our desire to become intimate with a potential partner? Companies like eHarmony believe that virtual reality will go full-sensory by 2040, making the smell of your dates perfume and the touch of their palm in yours a reality. In fact, virtual reality may be the technology that bridges the gap of the senses bringing the real to the virtual to cultivate love.

With more questions than answers, we can only wait and see where the tech revolution turns next. But one thing is for certain, virtual reality will not only usher in continued lust, attraction, and attachment in virtual environments, it may soon be the best tool for falling in love in the first place.

Developing the Whole Child One Collaboration at a Time

Barrington Rhode Island is not your ordinary town. Located less than a dozen miles from Providence, Barrington has been named one of the best places to live in the U.S. as a result of several factors including housing costs and student success rates. Barrington schools are also home to some of the most forward-thinking educators in our country. Several years back Northeastern’s NExT initiative inspired the Barrington district to make the leap towards experiential learning and the results have been staggering. Middle school robotics teacher Rebecca Henderson and digital literacy teacher Mark Davis are two of the innovative educators who readily embraced this challenge. Their efforts demonstrate the power of teacher collaborations to create interdisciplinary instruction that is multimodal in nature and includes the important aspects of self-, peer- and teacher reflection.

As part of a deeper learning initiative at Barrington Schools, Henderson and Davis had been given time to plan together and think about how teaching the whole child includes both deep content knowledge and social and emotional skills that are enhanced through opportunities to use the 4 C’s of collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and creativity in the classroom. As they discussed how these skills were being taught in their classrooms they were curious to see if their students could take a difficult task they learned in class and teach it to peers in the other teacher’s class. Henderson and Davis understood that often the most difficult part of learning is understanding something well enough to teach it to others, and that is where their journey began.

Read more here:

Portnoy, L. (2018, November). Developing the whole child, one collaboration at a time. Getting Smart. Retrieved from https://www.gettingsmart.com/2018/11/developing-the-whole-child-one-collaboration-at-a-time/

Powering Up with Games

This article originally published in Medium on September 22, 2017 by Lindsay Portnoy

From hide-and-seek to tic-tac-toe, playing games is how we learn important skills about ourselves, others, and the world around us. The word “game” comes from the Old English gamen, meaning amusement or fun. By definition, a game is simply a structured form of play that excites the senses and captivates players. Research backs the benefit of games across a wide range of developed cognitive skills from building reasoning, strengthening working memory and improving fluid intelligence, and has led to an explosion in the educational gaming industry and a plethora of super fun (and informative) games now at our fingertips. But how can we harness game play to complement learning at school and at home?

Analog or Digital: Not Either… Or… But Both!

As opposed to didactic instruction, a well-developed game can instinctively convey lessons while offering a spectrum of entry points for teachers, parents, and players. Games played in classrooms run the gamut from analog to digital, each with important skills and exciting content to engage learners. Gone are the days when Uno and Scrabble were the only options. Today schools have countless games to choose from that align to curriculum while also getting children excited about learning.

Pairing analog with digital games ensures that today’s digital natives are engaged in a host of multi-sensory learning experiences. While analog games are great tactile tools to get kids excited about learning, digital games add a level of interaction by creating unique experiences, more complicated story lines, facilitate teacher assessment, and offer different types of player collaborations, such as global villages of student teams.

School children can take a virtual field trip with Google Expeditions to Burj Khalifa to learn about architecture and city planning, while gaining valuable skills such as math and science. At the same time, the expedition also challenges kids to think deeper about how buildings have changed over time? Additionally, new research suggests that immersive learning via games also creates a sense of empathy and may build pathways to being more engaged citizens. The ability for digital technology to create empathy in its viewers is ever present in Clouds Over Sidra, the virtual reality film narrated by Sidra, a 12-year-old girl living in a Jordanian Refugee camp. This immersive experience debuted at the World Economic Forum and is now being used by the United Nations to elicit empathy in its viewers.

Immersive learning experiences such as games can be used across content areas and over a variety of age ranges to support content learning and deepen immersion in an array of domains.

In elementary school, social studies teachers can use digital games like Stack the States to help their 2nd graders master important geography skills such as capitals, flags, and the states locations. They can strengthen this knowledge by adding in The Scrambled States of America to bolster teaching about the states in the greater context of the USA including nicknames that almost always activate deeper conversations (“Ms. Blau, why is Kentucky called the Bluegrass State?”).

In high school, social studies may be taught using the hands-on World Peace Game to teach about global diplomacy and the interconnectedness of economic, social, and environmental impact on the world community. Similarly, a teacher may choose to use the digital game iCivics to teach about the structure of the executive, judicial, and legislative branch of government as well as what it takes to run an election at the local, state, and federal level. These are but a few of the countless tools teachers and parents can utilize at school and at home to scaffold learning and engagement across a host of content areas.

Family Games FTW!

Similar to games at school, games played at home can convey valuable content, such as learning about biodiversity, to skills, such as critical thinking. It is true, many post dinner evenings are spent crowded around a large screen while my youngest (Wario) and eldest (Luigi) try to beat out dear old dad (Yoshi) in a race through Moo Moo Meadows. While they aren’t necessarily learning quantum physics, they are learning how to communicate (get out of my way, Wario!) and to take turns (big brother sometimes lets the youngest win). But the real winner in most family game time is the deepening relationships in time spent together.

At home kids can play digital games like Club Penguin where they take on secret missions as part of the “Elite Penguin Force” and learn about problem solving while helping to solve in-game problems and build critical thinking skills by unlocking coded messages. Kids can even collaborate in their creations from various screens as they sit side by side playing in the same Minecraft world and together craft a diamond sword to defeat the Enderman.

A new generation of analog games are another way to bring the family together whether by building settlements in Settlers of Catan, Jr. or demonstrating our quick counting savvy to 100 with a stolen Zeus during Zeus on the Loose game play. Games like Super Tooth are a great way to engage the budding paleontologists in your home as they learn about creatures beyond the dreaded Velociraptor and discover the difference between carnivores and herbivores as well as the many events in the ecosystem that affected the livelihood of these giant creatures.

One isn’t a Lonely Number

When kids play solitary games it doesn’t mean their experiences are taking place in silos. Games like The Migrant Trail help kids 11 and up take perspective of refugees entering the United States and helps teach about important social problems that are relevant and timely and open the door to discussion at the dinner table. By opening the door to the experiences presented in games like The Migrant Trail, players are learning about complex issues that teachers and parents often struggle to take on while also gaining empathy and a deeper understanding for world events.

The Foos is another single player game that teaches kids as young as 5 how to code while helping friendly creatures solve problems. During game play kids learn important concepts from pattern recognition to conditional statements while gaining coding skills along the way towards their goal of rescuing puppies lost in space. By the end of a single playing session, children as young as five are building their own worlds, problem solving and strategizing for how to best create a new habitat for their lovable new friends, the Foos.

Net Gains

The way players move towards the goal of the game is referred to as ‘mechanics’ by game designers. Game mechanics offer countless opportunities to teach important knowledge from social norms, like turn taking in CandyLand and collaboration in the Game of Life, to problem solving and arithmetic in Settlers of Catan and Sleeping Queens. Depending on the game mechanic players acquire a variety of cognitive skills that are developed and honed during game play. For example, players must have a basic understanding of probability when ‘stomping’ at a creature in Dragonwood and should have a solid strategy before using super lures in Gubs. The mechanics enacted in these games reinforce valuable executive functioning skills of planning, monitoring, and attending to multiple tasks with a single goal which makes gaming a perfect companion to engaging with others in class, at home with the family, or even independently.

There’s a science to making games and one of the greatest assets of games for learning when done effectively is that they are complementary and not supplementary. Games can be partners for teachers in the classroom to aid in the multi-sensory approach to teaching content. Additionally, games offer parents a diverse array of options for engaging their kids in anything from storytelling to empathy building, architecture to coding.

While the future of education is always evolving, we know that kids are using digital devices to play and learn, and we have to meet them where they are. Teachers and parents need an arsenal of tools that engage and ignite the imagination. Game designers must partner with teachers, parents and children to develop the best possible gaming experiences to entertain children while engaging their minds. Together we will power up and play!

How design thinking can help teachers solve real problems and find their voice

During the last few weeks of summer as children cool off in lakes, pools, hydrants and beaches, some of our nation’s top teachers have been upping their game in preparation for this year’s students.

Teacher-led conferences are popping up nationwide, cultivating communities of practice where educators share their best practices, celebrate their work and prepare to innovate on instruction for the upcoming school year. What’s more, this models is scalable to schools nationwide, opening the floodgates for conversations around innovation and professional collaboration.

But these conferences are not like an edcamp or an unstructured unconference of the kind you may have heard of. This one focuses on getting educators to define some of their biggest challenges and then work together to figure out solutions in a workshop format that draws heavily from the world of design thinking.

Read more here:

Portnoy, L. (2018, August). How design thinking can help teachers solve real problems and find their voice. EdSurge. Retrieved from https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-08-22-how-design-thinking-can-help-teachers-solve-real-problems-and-find-their-voice

The Neural Technology of Empathy and the Virtual Technology that Will Harness It

This article was originally published in Medium on April 7, 2017 by Lindsay Portnoy

“Empathy is about standing in someone else’s shoes, feeling with his or her heart, seeing with his or her eyes. Not only is empathy hard to outsource and automate, but it makes the world a better place.” Daniel H. Pink

It is hard to believe that these words, written a mere three years ago, have been rendered obsolete by a simple piece of cardboard and a smart phone. While empathy is still defined as the ability to understand and perhaps share the feelings of an “other,” the idea of automating and outsourcing empathy as hard is now an antiquated notion. Herein lies the promise and peril of virtual reality as a tool to transport each of us into worlds beyond and lives unknown, conjuring feelings of fear and devastation along with those of excitement and hope.

My recent post examined the potential of virtual reality to engage and excite learners through what is called embodied cognition. By acknowledging that the mind and body together form the wholeness of our experiences we can leverage virtual reality to take children beyond the classroom walls to explore spaces not delimited by country lines or commercial airfare. These experiences are not only exhilarating but they provide learners with a greater context and a deeper sense of empathy for the lives and lessons we share. The secret to this sense of empathy is due in part to the technology that replicates real world environments but is owed primarily to our own neural technology.

From Mirror Neurons to Mental States

These impressive neurons firing simply upon seeing the actions of another are what some scientists believe is the underpinning of empathy.

Besides giving us a true insider’s view into worlds beyond the classroom, VR may also be the key to engaging one of the more exciting neurological discoveries in recent times, mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are specialized cells that fire each time you observe another person taking an action. The simplest example of how mirror neurons work is the yawn. A reflex whose quick contagion spreads from person to person at a dizzying speed was charmingly demonstrated by Dr. Seuss with help from a fellow named Van Vleck. But mirror neurons are also the reason why when your toddler falls and scrapes their knee you too feel the pain of the fall, why when watching the well-known Chinese Restaurant scene in Seinfeld your stomach rumbles along with theirs, and why you can suddenly taste the spoilt milk when watching your partner sniff at an expired milk carton.

Mirror neurons have been observed in primates and humans alike. Scientists such as V.S. Ramachandran have called them “the basics of civilization” due to their ability to activate feelings solely based on observing another person’s actions. These impressive neurons firing simply upon seeing the an actions of another are what some scientists believe is the underpinning of empathy.

Distinct from sympathy which is caring for the feelings of others, empathy moves beyond the surface and suggests the individual internalizes the feelings of another. This capacity to take on the affect of another was perhaps best articulated by Atticus Finch telling Scout that the only way to truly understand a person is to “climb into his skin and walk around in it” in To Kill a Mockingbird. And the humble mirror neuron is what is at work when we feel with precision the speed of a rollercoaster or the weightlessness of a bungee jump from the Kawarau Bridge by watching home videos of a more adventurous friend. The feeling of empathy, powered by mirror neurons, is VR experiences may allow us to feel so engaged. And some socially minded games developers are even using VR games for the specific purpose of creating more empathetic gamers and more engaged citizens.

When You Are the Other

A recent ad in Denmark urging Danes to step outside themselves, challenging them to stop seeing others as outsiders has gone viral. Similarly, the International Rescue Committee’s virtual reality experience of a Syrian refugee camp documents families who have lived away from their homes for nearly four years. These experiences bring the viewer into the lives of people living in distant lands, allowing viewers to step not only into different geographic locations but to experience what it is like to live in another’s shoes. Chris Milk, the widely acclaimed filmmaker of Clouds Over Sidra acknowledges the magnitude of virtual reality as an “empathy machine.” BeAnotherLab has embraced this potential with the creation of their embodied narratives experiment called “The Machine to Be Another”.

The power of virtual reality to transport people to a place outside their 2 dimensional screens is being harnessed in a host of positive and inspiring ways. Innovative companies like Ryot are using virtual reality to raise awareness and funding for important causes worldwide. Museums like the MoMa are engaging members in virtual reality experiences to tell stories and mobilize action. And social justice warriors are using 360 degree videos to create immersive experiences and plant the seeds of empathy and movement towards a more compassionate world.

University researchers too are demonstrating how the perceived boost in empathy when engaged in virtual reality a real effect of the medium. In one study, participants were immersed in a virtual reality experience in the body of an animal to determine if the medium influenced their perceptions of the presented message. When players were presented with either a video or virtual reality footage of the same situations, the group who had viewed the experience in a virtual reality viewer emerged with “greater perceptions of imminence of the environmental risk and involvement with nature”.

Towards Empathy and Equity in Virtual Environments

In the fall of 1927, Philo Taylor Farnsworth’s demonstrated the first successful electronic television and ushered in the golden era of multi-modal information. For the first time in history humans could hear and see events happening beyond their doorsteps and gather a sense of lives lived by those they may never meet. Today we have virtual reality, a technology that is poised to revolutionize the way we learn and interact with one another.

The promise of this medium is not without its faults. The capacity to awaken empathy through virtual experiences is a significant responsibility and in this wild west of a new technology it is our role to make meaning and establish norms that will ensure equity across this new medium. We must work together to ensure that these experiences are safe for all viewers, represent the diversity across our planet, and are inclusive of many different stories.

Every holiday season we watch as the major news outlets connect loved ones on the front lines to their spouses and children at home where tables are one place setting short this year. And as we watch we can’t help but feel the sting of missing a loved one and a tinge of grief for these strangers who are celebrating the season apart. Imagine if the same people, the same 5,000 miles apart, were now able to reach out and touch their loved ones deployed overseas through the use of a fully haptic virtual reality simulation. Stay with me a moment longer and imagine if this newfound tool for cultivating empathy means that just maybe we will no longer need to deploy forces overseas as our understanding and compassion for others has taught us that in the end, we’re really all the same.