Wednesday, March 8 | 4 – 6 PM in Humanities 210
Alan Craig, “VR, AR, and the Brain”

Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) are gaining traction in their use in education.  VR and AR offer unique affordances that are beneficial to teaching and learning.  This presentation will look at how we learn, and how VR and AR can be valuable in the learning process in topic areas ranging from Archaeology to Zoology.  This talk will address our bodies’ role in how we learn and how VR and AR provides information in ways that are different from other media.  Examples will be shown from a variety of topic areas, and utilizing a variety of technological platforms, ranging from high end systems to low cost, classroom friendly devices.

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Alan B. Craig, PhD, is a consultant to the National Science Foundation’s Extreme Science and Engineering Discover Environment (XSEDE).  His focus with XSEDE is to explore the application of high performance computing (HPC) in the humanities, arts, and social science and to engage with scholars around the nation who have interest in using HPC resources in support of their scholarship.  Prior to his role at XSEDE he was a research scientist at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and the Associate Director for Human-Computer Interaction at the Institute for Computing in Humanities, Arts, and Social Science.  He has been developing and studying virtual reality and augmented reality, and particularly their applications in education since the early 1990s.  He has authored three books, including: Understanding Virtual Reality; Developing Virtual Reality Applications; and Understanding Augmented Reality, and holds three patents.