Author: wbarry

The Virtual Theatre Proposal

Intro/Purpose

 

The virtual reality theatre  is where you can practice your upcoming  production in a virtual environment. In the virtual reality theatre you will be able to wear the costumes needed for certain scenes at a moments notice, have the ability to interact with other actors in both the virtual and the physical environment, and you can check what your lines are by pulling a virtual script from the side of your waist and when you put it back it disappears as if it was never there.

The director will also have the ability to stop the play and remove the virtual audience in order to work with the actors. Once they’ve conveyed what they wanted, the director can bring back the virtual audience.Lastly, one of the greatest benefits of this experience is the ability to practice at home. The need for this product is relevant because of all the opportunities it opens for others. If one was in a play you could act out the actual scene with outfits on and everything so that one could get the full affect. This would not only help the actors roll for practicing but could then help directors figure out who is best fit for the scene. Also this technology could be used for younger children to help them have a more significant imagination.

 

Learning Outcomes

 

The  academic/ learning outcomes of this simulation would be oral communication skills, leadership, self-confidence, concentration, dedication, responsibility, stress related skills management and Technical proficiency. The employability learning objective correlates to skills that are created through the the work of one’s own use of competence. These skills include fundamental cognitive skills such as reading and writing, thinking skills  like problem solving or  planning/organization, interpersonal skills, team work, work ethic attitude and disposition, and  self evaluation for future references. The app will combine these learning objectives to make it more educational and knowledge- based which could applied with content based skills to be applied in the work field environment. The educational features the game will contain  will be public speaking opportunities, learning how to approach situations from different perspectives, and most importantly career field work preparedness. The app will assess how well individuals have accomplished the outcomes by having an open group discussion among the actors/ directors as well based off of performance. In the classroom, teachers will be able to assess the performance based off of an evaluation sheet with 5 major category elements. The elements would be body language, use of time efficiently, design, acting, and audience. For example, in the play Romeo and Juliet while performing a scene Romeo could be presenting himself in a manner not related to the scene therefore telling the director or teacher what needs to be worked on or adjusted. This could be beneficial in education and the classroom by english professors using this to get students to interact with the play in a virtual environment while at the same time learning the background and history.  To get an inside look into the outcomes of how this will affect the theatre world, the group will be interviewing the head of the theatre department at Stevenson University, Ryan Clark. The interview will gain knowledge on how the incorporation of the simulation will change theatre to come.

 

User Experience/ User Interface

 

Currently, there are other apps that put people inside a simulation to allow them to practice speeches and other sorts of presentations. The VirtualSpeech app is designed to put people inside a set of their choice and let them practice whatever they’re doing in that environment. However our product functions differently to this, it is specifically tailored to actors/actresses with tools and functions to help them work on their acting. The other apps are not designed for this exact function and we are targeting theatre specifically with our app. We have different practice tools and settings for them to practice in. A virtual director which can help give tips and pointers and various other functions an actor can use to practice with. We will be using the HTC Vive for our app. This is a top of the line VR headset and equipped with some of the highest quality features available to the public. It has very high resolution and processing speeds along with improved tracking from its counterparts. It uses motion sensors set up around the user to track movements and the built-in headset helps to amplify the effects. The product is equipped with controllers to use any sort of in-game features there are tons of possibilities.

 

Implementation Strategy

 

The Virtual Theater (TVT), a potential barrier is expenses. The HTC Vive cost 799 dollars before taxes. To accommodate all actors and actresses the number of devices will run on the higher end of a budget for potential buyers and longer time periods for actors and actresses to complete a scene if HTC Vive will be shared. However, to reach customers TVT best focal point is to be advertised to any university with a theater department. Many actors and actress gravitate to these places to pursue their passion in the arts. Advertising will be convention, flyers around the university allow students who are not in the theater department gain awareness of the new product which can increase membership, curiosity trial are for people who want to test if this device is for them or not. Many people like to stick to traditional ways of things this curiosity trail will gain self-awareness of whether they like this new product, and social media, social media is a huge role for teenagers which is why many companies put their advertisements on social media and make company accounts. Instagram will be a focal point because it primarily targets images. Next would be twitter, snapchat and a secondary target would be Facebook for our secondary audience which is the professors. Viewers will be allowed to see behind the scenes look and live performance of people who use the TVT, TVT will also be advertised in conventions to allow users to have a one on one interaction with the device.

 

Long-term Vision

 

In order to keep the project focused and manageable, we will be limiting what actions and selections there will be in the prototype. In our prototype, we will only be using the play of Romeo and Juliet. This way, we can focus on putting forth a project with confidence of completion with the hopes of further development later on down the road. Yet that is just the limitations of within the virtual environment, we’ve also considered how it should be limited in the physical reality as well. We will work up to a virtual reality stage gear, in which a physical stage will be affixed with sensors and VR headsets. That will be apart of the next phase in development, but for now we will be using the standard five-by-five space that is required for most VR applications. By doing this we can focus our attention on the quality of the experience. Moving on towards the next phase development, there’ll be work. As mentioned before, we will work on implementing VR stage gear. We will also add more scripts, plays, costumes, and settings to the application. Five years from now there will be at least 15 plays to choose from, the application will be used within at least 150 school districts across the nation, and the application will have been translated into Spanish, French, German, and Japanese. The first six months will be focused on the prototype, while the other half will greatly focus on marketing while having maintenance for the application and introducing another play. The second and third year will be making more plays. By the second half of the third year there should be at least one language translated version in order to begin marketing to schools of different languages in possible locations such as Mexico and Canada as a start. In the fourth year of production, at least 10 school districts each in Canada and Mexico will be using the application and two more translated versions of the application will have been made. And within the US there will be at least 50 school districts that will use the product. The average play production should be three per year at a minimum, with bimonthly maintenance.

 

Notes:

Add how it’s being implemented into the stage (Nooks and crannies)

Make mention of how to spread to japan to spread further

 

Works Cited

 

Fool, The Motley. “Virtual Reality Is Too Expensive for Most People – but That’s about to Change.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 8 Sept. 2016, www.businessinsider.com/why-is-virtual-reality-so-expensive-2016-9.

 

Robson, Sarah. “What Is Theatre in Education and How It Supports Education.” Gibber, 19 Jan. 2018, www.wearegibber.com/blog/what-is-theatre-in-education/).

 

Kokkali, Areti A. Can Drama Courses Contribute to Developing Employability Skills? . 2 July 2012, https://dspace.lib.uom.gr/bitstream/2159/15109/3/KokkaliAretiMsc2012.pdf .

Story Board Link

https://www.storyboardthat.com/portal/storyboards/ryan53113/classroom-public/virtual-theatre

Google Slide

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ShrINZPwLB00xaEP6zhkGJiCTtaITiDnmDUjTKCo03U/edit?usp=sharing

William Barry’s Abstract, The Virtual Theatre

Good morning everyone, my name is William Barry. Now how many people in here are aspiring film or theatre majors? Well for those of that are, I bring you a revolutionary opportunity. I call it the Virtual Theatre, the Virtual Theatre is unique, in that you can practice your upcoming  production in a virtual environment. Imagine this, let’s say you are an actor in the upcoming Romeo and Juliet play, with the Virtual Theatre you can practice as if it was the night of the play in front of a virtual audience.

You’ll be able to wear the costumes needed for certain scenes at a moments notice, have the ability to interact with other actors in both the virtual and the physical environment, and you can check what your lines are by pulling a virtual script from the side of your waist and when you put it back it disappears as if it was never there.

The director will also have the ability to stop the play and remove the virtual audience in order to work with the actors. Once they’ve conveyed what they wanted, the director can bring back the virtual audience.

Lastly, one of the greatest benefits of this experience is the ability to practice at home. As it is with most virtual environments, the Virtual Theatre has a cloud. With this people can practice the production from home by themselves or with others.

In an article from the well known magazine Popular Mechanics, this blend of the virtual and physical world was achieved last year in 2017 by Disney. As David Grossman, the author of the article, describes “The potential uses for such a system are myriad” and its use in “Athletic training is also a possibility: a baseball player could practice pitching while surrounded with stats or practice ignoring distractions”(Grossman “You Can Now Play Real Catch in Virtual Reality”).

There have been no studies or tests conducted in this use of virtual reality before, making this a grand opportunity to test the effectiveness of the product in a cinematic/theatrical environment.

 

Virtual Education

Thanks to Virtual Reality (VR), we can travel to places thought to be impossible before. We can surf on a blood vessel delivering oxygen throughout the human body, travel to faraway galaxies in a matter of seconds, and go back in time to experience from a first person point of view what it was like to fight for the Union during the American Civil War. These are but a few examples of how VR can be incorporated into our current educational curriculum. The use of VR in the classroom should be needed, not entirely in the sense of entertainment but rather in the benefits that can be procured. This VR experience is best to use in a high school setting where students are mature enough to use VR while also giving them a better understanding of the curriculum that they are studying in class.

 

In Ernest Cline’s novel, Ready Player One, the main protagonist Wade Watts shares with the reader some of his experiences in the virtual classroom. Wade mentions how he “traveled through the human heart and watched it pump from the inside” (Cline 48) in biology class. How interesting is that? Before, a biology teacher would most likely show a chart to the class our a movie that uses animations. That’s all well and good, but in VR you could view the same animation but have the ability to move the camera as you like in the 360 degree environment. Another benefit that can be found in Wade’s experience is what any educational system dreams of, no fights. The way the virtual school was created in Ready Player One, fighting was never a concern because the simulation didn’t allow for it. However, it’s true that people can still say just about whatever they want and get away with it but there’s one button to solve that problem. Being poor, Wade gets made fun of by many people for his appearance in the virtual environment; it costs money to have the trendy clothes in the virtual world. As such, Wade has learned to use a very resourceful tool when being bullied vocally: a mute button. If someone’s making fun of the way he looks, he usually makes a snarky comeback and mutes the other person before they can reply and it shows when someone mutes another. Now the better response would have been to mute the bully in the first place but Wade was somewhat tired of the remarks coming from the same bully that day and decided to show it. As explained here bullies and fights are a thing of the past thanks to VR.

 

Moving back to the classroom, one of the biggest benefits to VR is that it grabs your attention. As Wade describes a classroom, “It was a lot easier for online teachers to hold their students attention, because here in the OASIS, classrooms where like holodecks” (Cline 47) you could experience everything. Wade also mentions a big budget saver for schools thanks to the virtual environment. With the OASIS, “Teachers could take their students on a virtual field trip every day, without ever leaving the school grounds” (Cline 47).  It’s no wonder that the OASIS is valued so much, the entire novel revolves around this virtual paradise where you can be whatever you want and not be judged or restricted by others. However, given that this is a virtual paradise why would someone leave it. Indeed there are some downfalls to VR, in a sense like an addiction. There are stories that can be found online describing streamers, gamers, and other people so immersed into the environment that they forget to eat, sleep, and do everyday tasks. These are extreme examples, the virtual environment can be controlled so that this doesn’t happen. By using a timer on the headsets worn to view the virtual environment, the VR session can be limited to however long the teacher wishes for it to be.

 

As Chris Milk describes VR “It’s not a video game peripheral. It connects humans to other humans in a profound way that I’ve never seen before in any other form of media”(Milk “Empathy Machine”). The way that Milk uses VR helps to share the stories of people who are less fortunate. He brought a video that was filmed in a Syrian refugee camp located in Jordan to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The video was shown “to a group of people whose decisions affect the lives of millions of people. And these are people who might not otherwise be sitting in a tent in a refugee camp in Jordan”(Milk “Empathy Machine”). To summarize the response that was received by these people; “they were affected by it”(Milk “Empathy Machine”). With VR, those people are there with the refugees rather than watching a documentary about them. They experience what the refugees feel, and they come to have a better understanding of the situation as a result.

 

Coming back to an educational perspective, VR has great potential. Students have a tendency to do well in certain classes because of interest. As I’ve seen going through school, many students who weren’t interested in history received low grades in comparison to students who were interested. With high schoolers, it’s of great importance to help them succeed. Some chose to go straight into the workforce, others will go to college, and then there are those who drop out of high school due to this lack of interest or being unprepared for the future. With VR, we can better prepare those who are struggling and bring more interest to the classroom. VR has limitless possibilities, but the only thing that limits them are the choices that we make.

 

Extra Credit: Freankenstein

When I attended the Franken Read event, I was only able to stay for the first session but I learned quite a bit. I actually didn’t know the origins of Frankenstein, I always thought that it was a popular folklore made up long ago. I also originally thought that the monster died to flames after being chased out of the village that he terrorized, and that the doctor was chased out as well but lived. Contrary to what I thought the monster lived; in fact he had a family! That was the biggest surprise to me. Another surprise regarding the story’s origin was that a woman was the author and she came up with the idea over a scary story contest with her friends. I found that to be mind boggling. What I also didn’t know was that the story revolved around Romanticism, which isn’t exactly what it sounds like. As I’ve come to find out, Romanticism isn’t exactly about love; rather it’s about inspiration, subjectivity, and the focus on oneself. This is just a little of what I learned while attending the first session, it’s a shame that I couldn’t attend more of them, but I’ll look into the story a bit more on my own time.

Xermos

This is Xermos, my avatar. I originally wanted to design my character based off a video game hero named Reinhardt; a 7ft tall, hammer wielding, German crusader. But given only the default choices for an avatar I decided to go with something that was a bit unusual. This avatar comes across as crude and somewhat selfish but the reality is that he fights for what he believes is right. His ability is superhuman, which gives him superhuman strength, speed, agility, and stamina.

The Product of Technological Education

William Barry

10/11/18

ENG-151

The worry of the current generation is how to aid the successor. With that the best way to do it is through teaching. In order to teach the next generation the correct steps that they did not take themselves, there is an emphasis on education and the ability to sustain knowledge. Some of these methods involve the integration of technology into the classroom and there are many positives and negatives to the argument of technology and how it affects the ability to process information from electronic texts versus physical books. However, these arguments over whether or not to allow technology to either deter us from learning less or excel our capability to process, will not be a compelling argument compared to how someone explains how they use technology to comprehend and succeed. In a modern society of continuous technological advancement, it is essential that schools also integrate technology into their teaching practices in order to better prepare the students for aspiring careers.

 

The integration of technology into education is essential for progression. In favor of the technological argument we have “The Deep Space of Digital Reading” written by Paul La Farge. Beginning with La Farge’s point, he conveys the advances that reading from the internet provides the average Joe. In his words, digital technology “has the potential to expand and augment the very contemplative space that we have prized in ourselves ever since we learned to read”, instead of crippling it with nonsense and banter (La Farge “The Deep Space of Digital Reading”). His ability to steal his thesis is one that does not get casted aside so easily, La Farge uses historical examples and studies on the topic that support his claim for technological engagement. Critics as La Farge points out, argue that the internet causes ones mind to wander. But as La Farge points out, our minds have been wandering long before the internet was idea within the minds of few men. An example of such wandering that has taken place is commonly seen in children; they don’t want to sit still and read when told to. Instead they would rather play with their friends, day dreaming of the fun they could be have, and even scheming how they can sneak away to have fun. Over time we are capable of controlling how much we wander while storing information, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that, yes people’s minds have and still wander to this day but it’s not something that needs attention brought to. Teachers can use technology to teach students how to control the endless wandering. They can make lessons more interactive by using programs such as quizlet or kahoot which can be readily accessed by students. These types of lessons require students to focus on the specific task for a period of time in order to complete.

 

Along with wandering, our ability to store great amounts of information has always been an issue, as La Farge mentions around the time that books came into existence for a house hold the average reader “had only a few books—the Bible, an almanac, maybe a work of devotional literature—and he read them over and over, so that they were deeply impressed on his consciousness” (La Farge “The Deep Space of Digital Reading”). As he mentions that’s three or four prints that people were able to afford and these books were passed down through family lineage and were irreplaceable for many who did not have the means to afford other long and expensive titles. As such, one can imagine how exciting it is to be able to read some other form of text instead of their scriptures that were ingrained into their memories. Daily news, local writers, and details regarding neighboring towns or countries were of great interest. And these people “read each item only once before racing on to the next” (La Farge “The Deep Space of Digital Reading”). This issue of endless information provided to the daily reader is still the same issue that people faced many centuries before now, in sense it’s not worth bringing up the fact that there is such a vast amount of information available to an individual, when such information that overwhelmed a person in the form of a grand library held just as much of an impact. The only difference between the two was that there wasn’t a little voice that could come out of a box narrating War And Peace as you laid by a candle lit light. What schools can do to quell the information overload is to teach what’s the difference between reliable information and unreliable information. There can be classes that have the sole purpose of teaching how to find and cite credible sources and how to properly use creative commons. It would encourage the practice of citations when creating power points for a meeting or quoting previous studies conducted upon what is currently being researched for a company or non-profit organization.

 

Now both sides make valid points arguing for and against technological integration and usage, however the best merit comes from personal preferences. As I have come to understand, if given the choice to read an article online or on paper I’ll go with paper because I already can be easily distracted by my environment but with the internet you can use it to play games, watch videos, and talk to people over social media. While this is true for reading the opposite is true for when I need to write. When doing a paper or article for school, I find it that having the articles separated on one side of the screen ordered in pro-articles on the left sided tabs and con-articles on the right side tabs helps with organization. Along with this I can have the paper that I’m typing up on the other half of the screen so that I can read an article on the right side, take the time to analyze and plan how to word my essay, and then type up what I’m thinking in order to review another day and revise it. As I do this, I would listen to some classic rock to cancel out noise around me. All of this has supported me as I’ve progressed through education. This may not work for everyone but it is more important than ever to be able to work like this in order to prepare oneself for any future career that may use technology.

 

Rhetorical Analysis

William Barry

9/25/18

ENG-151

 

The media we use is to help further develop our ability to read and comprehend. Paul La Farge is an American novelist, essayist and academic; he graduated from Yale University and has taught writing at Wesleyan University on and off since 2002. As of 2017, La Farge has published five novels, his most positive critically acclaimed being Haussmann. In La Farge’s article “The Deep Space of Digital Reading”, he presents the idea of how internet can be used to help further our ability to read.

 

La Farge’s article was published by a science magazine known as Nautilus. Nautilus is a magazine that reports “on a single monthly topic from multiple perspectives”(Nautilus). While the magazines primary audience is people who have an interest with science, La Farge’s audience are people that like to read; both electronically and on paper. The target audience are young to middle aged adults that enjoy reading. And with the way technology progresses, these readers are finding new ways to entertain their time physically and virtually.

 

The article’s main claim is about the resourcefulness that digital technology presents to the reading brain(The Deep Space of Digital Reading, La Farge). Digital technology “has the potential to expand and augment the very contemplative space that we have prized in ourselves ever since we learned to read” instead of crippling it(The Deep Space of Digital Reading, La Farge). La Farge supports this claim by providing historical examples and studies, some of the studies that he presents are also used in other articles concerned with the same topic of digital reading. One of these studies was conducted by a person known as Maryanne Wolf, author of Proust and the Squid and director of the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University. In the study Wolf found that the brain’s limbic system, the part of the brain that controls emotions, plays a role in a person as they learn to read and continue reading(The Deep Space of Digital Reading, Wolf). This is why some people can’t put down a good book or lose track of time as they read because they’ve immersed themselves into a novel.

 

Now, this article was published back in January of 2016. Since then there have been more studies done that would support or counter the articles claim. There’s also one other issue regarding the date of the article as well as it’s publication. As previously mentioned the article was published in 2016, but it was published in a science magazine that updates topics in its physical version weekly and its digital version hourly. This being the case, a person could say that there are more recent articles with more up to date studies and research conducted in comparison to La Farge’s.  However, it’s also important to mention where the article is listed under in it’s publication: Neuroscience. This is the science of the mind, and while studies are done on the mind often they are not usually conducted on the same topic. With this knowledge, one can make the claim that this article is a very reliable and up to date source.

 

Although it could be considered out of date, La Farge wrote the article in a way that informatively persuades the audience that digital reading is a good thing. He gives the readers details of how he reads as well as a thought provoking theory for the future of digital reading.

La Farge’s main goal of this article was to persuasively inform young to middle aged adults that hold an interest in reading the advantages of digital reading. He makes supports his claims with studies and historical examples that hold similar concern as the ones addressed in the article.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xbrn32numuaru5d/assignment.mp4?dl=0

 

Learning How to Read and Write

  Since the time of cavemen, tools have been essential to evolution. They are catalyst of progress and the foundations of ideas. Tools have been used to tell stories, confess love, spread beliefs and knowledge of the past. As civilization evolved so too did its practices and teachings towards others. Poems were made into plays, work on the farm became easier, and the ability to write became digital. I often find myself using numerous tools to further my education and thinking for a long time.

When I was first starting to read and write I had a knack for computer like programs. I liked to use video games to that showed a character that I liked from a tv show.

I often used a leap frog pad that would take batteries and had a pen, to use it you would put in a card like device in the port. It was like a Gameboy cartridge, the earlier versions, and it was brick like. Once in it could work without the book but unless you knew whet the book was like you were never without it. On top of that you would interact with the book using the pen or stylus that came with it. Moving away from leap frog a game that I really enjoyed were made by Jumpstart, a company that focuses on early educational material. There was one for preschool, one for a circus with the ringmaster as a dog that said, ‘Hey I want to join a circus because I feel like it and you’re coming with me’. There was also one for Disney where you could play as the mischievous triplets and scare uncle Donald when he passed in front of the car with a comically pile of clothes just waiting to be scattered by a sheer and abrupt honk of the car. One of the other things you did was use a slingshot to knock down paint buckets to spell words or do math, I still found it to be a lot of fun. There was also one for Dora, I always thought that it was kind of redundant how she would respond to every question at the end of an episode with “I liked that too”. Despite the why she communicated to the audience it was still able to teach me simple things like counting to ten in Spanish, saying thank you and you’re welcome, and how it’s wrong to steal.

 Another tool that everyone will use at some point, personally, I don’t like the pencil I prefer pens. Given that I have used a pencil in many different forms. Wood, mechanical, oversized, tiny midgets, flat, octagon and circular. There is a thing about the pencil which makes me dislike it, this being the surface of the lead to the paper. if you have ever gotten a gritty feeling when writing then you know what I’m talking about.

It’s like using your fingernails against a chalkboard to create that horrid ear wrenching sound that we all wish to never here. I found that noise several times when I wrote with a pencil and it sent what was like a shiver down my spine. A more accurate example would be like hit your elbow into a corner and the corner hits just in the spot between your muscle causing your arm to first go numb then go to pain and finally limb being that its numb. Aside from that the mechanical was a little better, you didn’t have to always go to the pencil sharpener to sharpen the pencil the led was ready to go at the push of an eraser. But they also had issues they broke too easily, they made the same horrid sound as the pencil from time to time and when you run out of lead as a five-year-old you started to search the floor for loose ones instead of paying attention in class. To a degree it was more fun to go on this scavenger hunt for then it was to sit still in a hard and uncomfortable chair. In the end I found that a pen was the best for writing. They were durable, smooth, ready to use, and they didn’t make the gritty noise like pencils did. There were also pens that could erase, which were useful.

Out of all the tools that have been mentioned so far, the one that I utilized the most was a teacher. I’m very grateful for my instructors; they were patient, willing, and determined to teach me despite my behavior.

The first teacher I ever had was in preschool, they taught me how to write, how to read, how to do some math, and what colors were. And as I stated before, they had a lot of patience. I tended to be difficult and troublesome. They had a certain presence to them that was warm and welcoming. It would be wrong of me to say that I liked every teacher that I met when learning to read and write, I thought that some teachers were just mean to me but as I’ve mentioned before, I was just difficult. However, my teachers were not just people employed in society; they were my parents and peers. My parents would read a story to me before bed, my favorite one was Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss. They would also have me read books to them every week and teach me what certain words meant and how they were used in a sentence. In school my friends and I would compete with one another when our weekly spelling test came around. The person with the best score would get a one Hershey kiss from everyone that took part in the competition. If there was a tie the next test would be the deciding factor that would also have its own winner for that week. So, someone could get two weeks winnings in only one week, many Hershey kisses where used throughout first to fifth grade of elementary school.

Tools take many forms. They can be pencils, people, plows, and animals. We’ve used them for hunting, teaching, preserving, and learning. Like the popular saying, ‘There’s no “I” in team’ there’s no progress without tools. The purpose of a tool is for communication, learning, surviving, and teaching. The creation of tools is man’s greatest asset.