Native American ERG | Technology & Learning Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, & AI
all right let's go ahead and get started welcome everybody I'm to to today's webinar entitled technology and learning virtual reality argumented reality and artificial intelligence in Native American communities and education um this webinar will be hosted by national University's newest um a Native American employee Resource Group um and our presenter today will be the founder and leader of the Native American ERG Dr Michelle Marvel um Dr Michelle Marvel is an associate professor in Stanford college education department of global Innovation socially emotional learning and educational technology Michelle has a PhD in Psychology with a specialization in educational psychology for her doctoral dissertation Michelle completed motivating distance learning and online gaming worlds and quantitative study of personal traits and motivation and virtual game environments with implications for distant education um to lay some ground rules before we do get started um please feel free to answer any questions you do have in the chat U we will be monitoring and responding to those questions through the Q&A session of the following the presentation um and if you are interested in learning more about or joining the Native American ERG um please feel free to visit our SharePoint site what I will be dropping down in the chat thank you all for joining today let's welcome Michelle and I'm passing it over to you to get started thank you sha you're welcome okay well we begin today with a story and this story is from the chakon nation of Oklahoma where according to Legend there were two small birds that escaped the great fla and one of these birds was the Woodpecker and the bird became very special to the chaa people and it is revered for its ility to tap out messages with its beak in the tree and these messages are believed to bring the news and the tribal newspaper of the chapton nation is named the bisonic in honor of the news bearing bird and I tell you this story today because one I just enjoyed the legend and two I'm bringing you the news of what is happening in technology and learning in Native American education and communities much of which is going to involve the integration of Technology education and storytelling halito or hello and I'm Dr Marvel and I'm a tribal member of the Chown nation of Oklahoma and as shaen mentioned I'm an associate professor in the department of global Innovation social emotional learning and educational technology in the Sanford College of Education at National University so I work in online higher education since 2008 and I also have a background in counseling and my research interests are motivation personality online learning and Technology like virtual reality augmented reality and video Gam games so I help students from all over the world work on their doctoral dissertations and we have got some really cool and interesting doctoral projects that are happening in the Sanford College of Education for instance we've had students use the augmented reality in order to teach computer hardware Concepts to remote learners for their dot tool projects and you can find in new dissertations from the Sanford College of Education available in proquest now I created the Native American employee Resource Group at National University to create a virtual community to share resources pertaining to Native American culture history and education and this group is open to all employees who are interested in learning and sharing and collaborating on these topics and any Inu employees who are interested in joining this or any other ERG can find the ERG information on that SharePoint SharePoint page and you can sign up through workday now to understand the news that's going to be presented in the short 30 minute webinar today it is first necessary to become familiar with some of the terms so let's just go over some definitions and just a brief history of the technologies that we're going to be discussing augmented reality refers to technology that adds virtual elements to the real world and so we may think of augmented reality and virtual reality as something that is new and modern however the foundation of these Technologies was developed in the 1960s a 3D simulator was created in 196 62 by morgin Pilot and it included sound smell and other haptic stimuli in 1965 Ian Ian Southerland known as some by the as the inventor of computer Graphics published an article titled the ultimate display and that was an interesting article I read it and in this article Southerland described a future in which the environment that we could perceive with our senses was overlaid and enhanced with an interactive computer display so wrote there is no reason why the objects that are displayed by a computer have to follow the ordinary rules of the physical reality with which we are familiar so it's very interesting thinking you know for the 1960s in 1968 Sutherland created the first 3D headset and it was so large that it was suspended from the ceiling and it would generate a wireframe rendering of the room whenever the user just turned their head this work and the technological advances thereafter paved the way to the augmented reality and the virtual reality applications that we have today we actually do not need a headset to participate in augmented reality so if you've ever caught a Pokemon on the popular Pokémon Go video game or if you've worked on your Fitness by running from a virtual zombie in the Zombies Run app then you have used augmented reality to engage with your physical world now virtual reality can be defined as a space that makes people feel like they be standing in the real world if you've ever put on a headset to play one of the popular VR games like the ever expanding virtual world of No Man's Sky then you are likely familiar with the immersive world of virtual reality by putting on a virtual reality headset the individual feels like they are just transported into a space that is different than the one that they are physically in and they can interact with the digital objects in that space now mixed reality could be defined as technology that combines both the VR and the AR elements an extended reality or XR applies to Aug reality virtual reality or mixed reality extended reality could be described as just an overarching term for technology that extends beyond the physical world now in 1950 Alan Turing was working to distinguish intelligence between humans and machines with the touring test and in 1958 Rosen Frank Rosen blab was studying neural network algorithms and these early studies and many more led to the modern artificial intelligence or AI applications that we have today now artificial intelligence can include many different Technologies but I like this simple definition from Park and Quan 2024 which refers to AI as intelligent machines now according to IBM technology 2023 we currently have narrow AI capabilities and that means that the artificial intelligence has to be trained with computer input reactive machine AI like AI machines that play chess they analyze data statistically in order to make predictions limited memory AI including generative AI chat Bots like chat GPT use past and present data that they have received in order to create responses both still rely on information from people to function and and I think that's the the key point there there are many different applications for artificial intelligence that are already available and many more applications are on the horizon so Google is using artificial intelligence to build immersive 3D augmented reality maps that are going to help people navigate their world better according to Daniel 2024 Early Access to these Maps launched in February for example map users can ask the AI to help them find nearby activities that fit the current web and then ask it to help them select a restaurant nearby that they might enjoy so now that we've defined these Technologies let's move on to our discussion of technology and learning in Native American communities so what would a visit to a historic site be like if you could actually see the buildings that once stood there perhaps you could explore what a dwelling looked like or observed to the people as they moved about their day maybe you could hear stories from the people who once lived lived there you could learn their language or perhaps skills like having they made the baskets or the other items that were just important to their way of living perhaps they made special biodegradable boats that could be woven out of nearby resources and floated across the sea if one just had the proper knowledge many of these projects that we're going to look at today are doing just that the kokia mountains Museum Society with grant funding from the National Endowment of the humanities has created an augmented reality app that allows visitors to see a virtual display of the past from their smartphone or tablet when they visit the site and the site is located in Southwestern Illinois cert Johnson 2014 studied augmented reality and K kokam Mount number 72 the author writes augmented reality is another addition to the mobile application medium for the digital historian it allows for the presentation of historical ideas within its contextual space without altering that space users are free to experience the space in their own ways and form their own ideas and their own interpretations so in short the viewers who are visit the site and use that augmented reality app they're able to really engage with the history rather than simply consuming it through just reading descriptions of it like you would if you're walking through a park and you read descript or a museum and you read descriptions on a plaque this way you can actually see it and engage it engage with it and I think the best way to see how this app works is to actually view the app or an introduction to the app from the site so at this time I'm going to attempt to to share that there's a short introduction video so let me see how this works just a moment and hopefully you are able to see that and I will go ahead and play it oops sorry what it were possible to travel through time Journey deep into the past discover secrets of the people long for God today that Journey wa Sho at the kokia MS world heritage site through state-of-the-art augmented reality technology see the world of the ancient Mississippian people and their great city of CIA vividly this Unforgettable adventure begins with the CIA AR tour act it's your passport to a time in place long before Christopher Columbus came to the new world about one 1,000 years ago the mississippians built their principal City here home to as many as 20,000 people be amazed if visit the central ceremonial precent explore towering Monks Mound the largest ancient earth work in the Western Hemisphere discovered the Majesty of the Grand Plaza place of ritual of page experience this ancient world in a powerful new way as augmented reality transports you to mysterious Monumental Cahokia the city of the sun okay and hopefully you were able to see that and I think it's a really just an interesting uh site and again you can learn more about that and I will include the link to this and all the other Links at the end of the presentation so you will have those if you want to learn more about them now LS 2020 notes that since covid-19 the world has learned that business can be attended through a computer or a smartphone and that groceries can be delivered to your door so businesses have moved online and the same is true for Education that's the need for in-person meeting and and activities has really diminished virtual reality allows users the opportunity to visit places without having to be physically present in those places and this means that any type of world can be constructed in that virtual space the VR world is experienced through the 3D headset with audio as we discussed earlier and this gives the individual the sense that they are there so creating VR worlds that are based upon real physical locations allows people to visit the locations that may not be other wi accessible to them wind wolfes preserve is a 93,000 acre Nature Reserve near Bakersfield California and Cassie Robinson 2017 note that VR tours have allowed individuals the ability to view Rock paintings and baskets that are estimated to be about 2,000 years old and they're in extremely fragile cave systems inside now the authors note that virtual reality offers opportunities for those who might not be physically able to climb the terrain to those caves the ability to view them and other archaeological sites across the world may also be inaccessible due to some terrain or the cost of travel and so VR may offer a solution to these barriers now Cassidy Al 2019 developed a VR prototype for the Plato site and they tested it among a sample of archaeologists students the general public and Native American participants and what they found was is that the archaeologist appreciated the ability of the VR model to allow them to visualize the changes in the cave over time and they could separate the rock painting into the layers and this is not possible in the real world environment it looks like we have something here in the chat I'm just going to check that oh it's it's very near you oh that's great um so that's not really possible for them to see these layers in in the real world so they could actually visualize it better in VR now um Native American respondents appreciated the fact that the VR sites the VR virtual reality allow the sites to be preserved and undisturbed so some of the quotes from The participants were I like that you could get close to and look at the painting without going there so that's not impacting the site and another respondent said to hold and to look at the baskets from the ancestors was just mind-blowing so they really appreciated that fact that the VR allowed the people to visit these sites again without disturbing it now Kelly and Russell 2023 note that much of the modern much of the modern virtual reality technology has been focused on creating worlds that have not or could not exist in the real world so there's a greater need for more VR tours to VR tours of real world places in order to promote learning so Kelly and Russell 2023 are actually developing a virtual reality language learning project in conjunction with the northern Arapaho language and culture commission and the authors report that this project will document the spoken language the stories and the songs of the Wind River Indian Reservation as well as some other sites in Wyoming and Colorado the Kelly and Russell article is really an interesting article to read because it actually details some of the difficulties that may be experienced if you're creating a VR replication of a real world Place uh so they had some issues with drone filming and their study was impacted by covid-19 and so on so if if you want to read that that article can also be found in the references now imagine for a moment that you are visiting a lake and maybe you just decide to go hiking along a trail perhaps you wonder about the people who lived there long ago and how they survived without all of the modern amenities that we have today or maybe you're just enjoying the walk and you're curious about your surroundings and you decide to learn more about the area by taking out your phone and scanning the location with an app and that app uses your geolocation to tell you about the history of that area and as you continue your walk it provides you with the interactive stories of the people that might have lived there it teaches you words that they might have spoken or skills that they might have known that were're important to their culture and way of life what would you think about your walk then would it somehow be enriched could you learn something new well beyond the metaverse with our worlds indigenous stories are all around you that was the title of the 2023 event at the University of San Diego's qualcom Institute where our worlds was featured and our worlds is a San Diego based tech company that has created an extended reality platform to provide education on Native American Heritage and culture and this is a mobile app that launched in November of 2022 and according to rohad and Roka 2023 the app uses Visual and auditory storytelling instead of textbooks skills such as the creation of traditional biodegradable woven boats are also featured in our worlds and according to our worlds 2023 the goals of the app are the exploration and development of stem within all communities another another quote from our worlds 2023 states that our worlds hopes that this technology will be one of the ways that communities and contributors from all backgrounds will tell their stories and take control of their historical narratives in the most modern way possible now there's a really good YouTube video from PBS about the app in which they show what the app looks like and they also show the boats so if you'd like to watch it again I will include that link on the Links Page at the end of the presentation and unfortunately the app does not seem to be available on Android yet so it's just available on Apple now encouraging the study of science technology engineering and Mathematics for stem is another area in which Native American communities and researchers are exploring the use of augmented reality and virtual reality with funding from the National Science Foundation the Oklahoma State University has partnered with the patami H and chikasa Nations as well as several other organizations to create create an after school program that incorporates VR AR and 3D printing one of the goals of this program was to develop activities for science technology engineering and math so this is another really interesting to program interesting program to look at if you're interested in that now we've looked at several different applications for AR and VR now what about artificial intelligence artificial intelligence can be used to help create Virtual Worlds and augmented reality elements AI can draw objects and environments for these applications that are based upon user input into the AI systems rer Al 2021 notes that the combination of AI with SAR or extended reality is quite powerful and it's useful for everything from Automobiles and Robotics to video games and smartphones but what if AI could be used to help you manage a health condition or nutrition what if you could just use it to help you decide what to eat eat for dinner well that kind of technology is already possible and it is happening in Native American communities for example Amazon's Alexa has been used as a nutrition coach to help Native American diabetic patients learn nutritional values and how to manage their blood sugar levels and we've already talked about some of the language learning applications for AR and VR but what about AI well consider for a moment just how much daily communication has has changed just since the creation of texting sentences have been shortened grammar has changed and how much text based communication tells a story well storytelling is of great importance in Native American culture and with the loss of stories and the changes and communication also comes the loss or concerns of the loss of language learning and preserving languages is another application for artificial intelligence and the flare initiative is an exciting new artificial intelligence project flare stands for first language's AI reality flare focuses on speech recognition for language learning and it is being developed specifically for the indigenous languages of North America according to MAA 20124 90% of all languages in America are endangered of being lost the Project's leader Michael runningwolf notes that languages are important to community Heritage and culture and if you have not heard of this project project then I highly encourage you to visit the flare initiative page and to view the TED Talks video about why first languages AI tend be a reality from Michael Running Wolf in this video Running Wolf also talks about his idea of run language in a box an artificial an offline artificial intelligence learning tool that and he talks a bit a bit more about the flare project and its purpose so as well as the CH challenges that languages are being affected by so I have included these l also on this slide now as we move into the future it will be interesting to see how these projects and many others like them work to preserve Native American culture and how they can be used for education for instance one of the goals of the flare initiative is to create a system that will eventually be used to help thousands of languages across the world as VR AR and AI Technologies continue to evolve we are likely to see these systems become more widely used in daily life as it pertains to education the postsecondary national policy Institute of 2023 reports that only 16.8% of Native Americans that are 25 or older held a bachelor's degree which is below the national average of 35.7% kri 2023 studied the barriers to Native American enrollment and found that difficulty in navigating financial aid and scholarships as well as the need for cultural support service Services were barriers to enrollment for Native American students so through exploring how this technology is being used in Native American communities universities and educators are better equipped to understand and provide learning opportunities for Native American students in summary there are many different applications for VR AR and Mr that are already being used in Native American communities and education these Technologies can be used to explore environments to learn about history culture skills and languages while preserving historical sites they also allow for the blending of Storytelling and learning which is a traditional form of Education that extends beyond the written course materials and engages the learner with the subject matter particularly when paired with the auditory and visual displays that V and AR provide I look forward to watching the development of these projects that I've mentioned today and the future research projects here at na University and we do have some very exciting VR projects that are happening here there was a news release in April 2023 about Inus pioneering virtual reality campus and Dr Gloria mcneel has already shared some wonderful work with virtual reality and nursing and I've included the articles about Inus VR campus and Dr M Neil's work here on and on the Links Page uh these are some really exciting initiatives about educational technology and learning so I wanted to be sure to mention them so you can can read more about them if you'd like to now if you're interested in learning more about topics pertaining to Native Americans I will also mention that the sodian national museum of the American Indian has several resources for students and Educators available through the native knowledge 360 program and that includes materials and professional development and here are the references for this presentation now just click through those and here's the Links Page as promised and I will put these into the chat and just a moment and thank you for attending this webinar and for listening to this story of what is happening in the world of technology and learning in Native American education and communities
2024-04-21 20:58
