Final Prototype Reflections
Final Draft Test
For the final design prototype we created a first example of HoloQuest: Space, a software program that included many of the aspects of what the Space Foundation asked us to build. In the video below you will see many components of what the Space Foundation requested, including modifications for Science on a Sphere where the rings of Saturn and the orbits of the James Webb and Hubble Telescopes are included, life sized versions of the Ingenuity and Perseverance Rovers, information and exploded views of multiple space suits arranged by general time periods in space flight, and experiences that help students understand and visualize the scale of various space flight technologies inlcuding the James Webb Space Telescope and the Discovery Orbiter. Also in the experience are components of our original program request from the Space Foundation for an interactive game that we lovingly call Don't Die on Mars!, which currently includes three different environments, a Rover Garage where one can put together rovers, a Rover Survey Lab where one can drive a rover on the surface of Mars, and an Aquaponic Greenhouse where one can interact with fishtanks and growing plants. On YouTube the video has timestamps for each unique feature set.
Monday Presentation at Space Foundation
On Monday April 4th, 2022, the student interns and two of our upcoming student interns for the 2022/2023 school year presented to space educators from across the world. Over the course of the hour long presentation students walked attendees through their experience and then were invited to present as part of a panel to the audience. Also in attendance in the audience were representatives from the U.S. Space Force, the Director of STEM for the Department of Defense, a representative from the U.S. Navy Strategic Systems Programs (who donated the headsets we created the experience for), a representative from Unity, and various other notable attendees, including one of the directors of One Giant Leap Australia.
Thursday Presentation at the Space Symposium
On Thursday April 7th, 2022, the students interns had an opportunity to present their work as co-exhibitors with the Space Foundation at the 37th Annual Space Symposium. They presented to industry professionals, government/military personnel, and higher education organizations. Over the course of the day they also had the opportunity to interact with aerospace companies at other exhibition booths. While presenting at the booth was definitely the highlight of the day for many of the students, equally exciting was the opportunity they had at the very end of the day to hear from and interact with commercial astronauts Dr. Chris Boshuizen, Audrey Powers, and Dylan Taylor at the Commercial Astronauts panel from Blue Origin. The students, the first group of high school students ever allowed to attend a session at the Space Symposium, were even taken to the front row and got the chance for quick pics with the astronauts!
Feedback
Official Response from HoloLens!
The official HoloLens Twitter account responded to our work with positive statements and appreciation for sharing our work with them ! Over the course of my career in education it has been relatively rare to get a response on student work by the people at the pinacle of the field the kids are learning about. To hear that our work is "unbelievable" or "amazing" and to get an official response lends some level of credibility and validation for the work we are doing.
Official Response from Alex Kipman - Inventor of the HoLoLens and Technical Fellow - Mixed Reality and AI
When I first saw Alex Kipman's 2016 TED Talk where the HoloLens was introduced to the world, I was captivated and knew that we needed to get kids developing for experiences in the metaverse before the term metaverse became a rallying cry for futurists everywhere. This is the second student project in our program to receive a positive reaction from Mr. Kipman!
This is Thomas talking with the students, and his response to their work is exactly the kind of feedback we want to hear from the professionals who make the software we use to build experiences!
Unity Staff Weighs In!
For the week of the Space Symposium, Thomas Winkley, Technical Marketing Advocate - Education at Unity, the company that makes the game engine we use to make our experiences, said the following after spending time chatting with the kids and walking through what they built:
Hey Everybody,
I wanted to take a minute to say thank you for the amazing event this week.
Seeing the work that Sean's students did, and the incredible way in which they handled questions, technical issues, strange interactions and other things was incredible. I said this to Sean, but I wanted to reiterate, I've seen worse tech demos at conferences built by funded companies.
What they built is absolutely incredible.
Reflection
How did you pause to notice your own reactions (emotions, actions, insights, impact)?
I always struggle to think about how I showed up in the end, because when I am fully present in the moment it can be hard to remember that moment once it has passed. Often I find that I can remember the general feeling of the experience, but I sometimes lose the specific brush strokes of the moments. I did pause throughout to take in the students presenting to people in uniform, to see them present to the staff from our partner organizations, and to help guide them through how to have a conversation with astronauts and professionals.
One of the best parts of the experience for me when I do big projects like this with kids is the quiet space at the end of the day when I have the chance to gather my thoughts and replay moments in my head. It is rare in my experience as a teacher to see a student realize that an entire future has been opened for them they didn't necessarily believe was theirs for the taking; it happens all the time, but it is usually incremental and years after kids have left I sometimes get an email or student that stops by and says, "Hey mister, you changed my life." It is far rarer to see it in real time through the smiles and the joyful tears and the sly handing of a business card to a professional. In this particular case I had told the kids in August that by the end of the year people around the world would care about what they created; for full transparency, it is the same speech I say every year, and every year there is some population of kids that listen, but it is usually small and we don't always finalize what we are building. This year, the group was larger, the number of kids across classes was bigger, and kids not even in my class played a role in the project.
For the interns, the impact was palpable in the moment, and in the quiet space in my classroom before having to return the bus I got to look around at the now empty seats and replay in my mind the steps over months it took to get to where we got, and while the pinnacle was great, the journey was awesome...in all the senses of that word.
How did you reflect on your role as a designer and human within the user context?
I am and can only be who I am. I show up and try my best to create experiences that empower the students in my care to find new facets of themselves and to impact the world in positive ways. Every time the journey changes me and I show up the next time slightly different and hopefully better. This prototype was years in the making, building on prototype after prototype that came before it. Bringing on interns, building with a purpose, adapting prototypes to new hardware, onboarding professional partners, implementing hardware from funders in ways that validated its donation, formally presenting to an authentic audience, making new communication protocols that mirror industry approaches, and all of the other elements that we pulled together for this project were based in whole or in part on learnings from prior projects and prototypes that were all aimed at creating empowering opportunities for youth.
As a youth that felt misunderstood, bored, and disempowered in the education system myself, I work as hard as I can every day (although there is more steam in the engine on some days than others!) to ensure that the students in my care have access to the most powerful opportunities that I can build for and with them. As both a designer and a human in the context of creating innovation in a system that has more and more been leaning into standardization, it is a frighteningly difficult space to consistently live and work in. I go home feeling defeated on most days and for the last handful of years I have been seriously weighing a change in career because it is so difficult to empathize constantly with students who feel harmed by the system; no matter how hard I work the changes are incremental and scores of students don't benefit from the changes I work for because the change takes so long. That is why moments like our final test of this project matter so much to me these days; it is in those moments that I can see why the work matters.
While our success only really mattered in a visceral way to a percentage of my students in this iteration, the foundation is now laid for many, many more students to benefit in the coming year and years. As a human that gives me hope that my role as designer matters enough to stay...for at least one more year.
Additional Events
While we might have completed the first round of the work after the Space Symposium, we moved directly into the next phase!
April 30, 2022:
TEDxYouth@Cherry Creek Talk
The Importance of Modern Technology
in Schools
TEDxYouth@Cherry Creek Talk
The Importance of Modern Technology
in Schools
On April 30th, one of our team members delivered a TEDxYouth talk at the TEDxYouth@Cherry Creek Legacy event in Denver, Colorado.
May 19, 2022:
Pueblo District 60 Computer Science Convention
Pueblo District 60 Computer Science Convention
On May 19th, three students boarded a bus to go down to East High School in Pueblo, Colorado and we showcased the students' work to younger students for about four hours.
"A space-themed hologram station run by Sean Wybrant, a teacher at Palmer High School in Colorado Springs, was one of the most popular stations."
- James Bartolo, The Pueblo Chieftain
To read more about the First Annual Computer Science Convention put together by Debbie Jackson and her team, click here or on the image to the left.