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VIRTUAL REALITY EXPERIENCES FOR STUDENTS ALMOST A REALITY

Announcement posted by melbourne girls grammar 31 Mar 2016

The Centre for Educational Enterprise (CEE) declared 2016 "The Year of Virtual Reality". The year began with staff members getting involved in a number of virtual reality (V.R.) initiatives, including a boot camp run by Merkava as part of the Melbourne Pause Festival. Now we want to share those experiences with the wider Melbourne community, in particular student groups.

CEE (http://cee.mggs.vic.edu.au) in South Yarra, Australia is a global educational community hub, dedicated to innovation and leadership in education practices. We have partnered with Merkava Technologies (http://merkava.com.au/). Together we share the belief that children are our future and that their uninhibited and creative ideas for the world of V.R. are worth considering! 

"Our business is to convince companies to adopt innovative and disruptive technologies. It is not an easy sell. With CEE it was the other way around. CEE drove us to push the boundaries  to help create a Virtual Reality concept for education that integrates cutting-edge technology with actual educational outcomes. Their knowledge and passion for both education and technology is in a class all of its own. Merkava Technologies is proud to be partnering with such a leading and innovative organisation." - Ben Hayley, CEO Merkava Technologies

Our plan at CEE, is to build a dedicated V.R. lab in South Yarra where students can experience this extraordinary technology. Within the lab, students will have the opportunity to build their own V.R. environments by learning 360 photography and Unity. We are excited to see what V.R. ideas and uses they come up with. CEE is a not for profit organisation that will extend all of its offerings to students from any school, whether they are national or international visitors to Melbourne. The more money we raise the further we can extend the experience.

The total cost of the V.R. lab will be $42,825. The lab will include HTCVive units, 360 Camera technology, state-of-the-art safety features and tracking systems to enable full roaming within the immersive space, high spec. P.C.’s, Oculus Rifts and Google Cardboards.

Our Kickstarter campaign is now live and we are looking for support to build this exciting V.R. hub in Melbourne. The campaign page can be viewed at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/166043939/virtual-reality-for-education