{"id":62552,"date":"2019-07-17T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-17T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/foxtail\/2019\/07\/17\/qa-igniting-imaginations-and-putting-vr-in-the-hands-of-students-with-kai-frazier\/"},"modified":"2021-02-03T02:54:47","modified_gmt":"2021-02-03T02:54:47","slug":"qa-igniting-imaginations-and-putting-vr-in-the-hands-of-students-with-kai-frazier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/en\/internet-culture\/interviews\/qa-igniting-imaginations-and-putting-vr-in-the-hands-of-students-with-kai-frazier\/","title":{"rendered":"Q&A: Igniting imaginations and putting VR in the hands of students with Kai Frazier"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nWhen you were in school, you may have taken a trip to a museum or a local park, but you probably never got to see an active volcano or watch great whites hunt. As Virtual Reality grows, this could be the way your kids will learn \u2014 using headsets the way we use computers. <\/p>\n

When you were in school, you may have gone on a trip to the museum, but you probably never stood next to an erupting volcano, watching molten lava pouring down its sides. As Virtual Reality (VR) grows, learning by going into the educational experience could be the way children will learn \u2014 using VR headsets the way we use computers. <\/p>\n

This kind of technology holds huge potential in shaping young minds, but like with most technology, not all public schools<\/a> get the same access. For those who come from underserved communities, the high costs to technology could widen an already existing gap in learning, and future incomes. <\/p>\n

Kai Frazier, Founder of the education startup Curated x Kai, has seen this first-hand. As a history teacher who was once a homeless teen, she\u2019s seen how access to technology can change lives. Her experiences on both ends of the spectrum are one of the reasons why she founded Curated x Kai. <\/p>\n

As a teacher trying to make a difference, she began to experiment with VR and was inspired by the responses from her students. Now, she is hard at work building a company that stands for opening up opportunities for all children. <\/p>\n

We recently sat down with Frazier to talk about the challenges of launching a startup with no engineering experience, and the life-changing impact of VR in the classroom. <\/p>\n

\n

How did the idea to use VR to help address inequality come up?<\/strong>
\nI was teaching close to Washington D.C., and my school couldn\u2019t afford a field trip to the Martin Luther King Memorial or any of the free museums. Even though it was a short distance from their school, they couldn\u2019t go. Being a teacher, I know how those things correlate to classroom performance.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

As a teacher, it must have been difficult for you to see kids unable to tour museums and monuments, especially when most are free in D.C. Was it a similar situation similar when it came to accessing technology?<\/strong>
\nWhen I was teaching, it was really rough because I didn\u2019t have much. We had so few laptops, that we had a laptop cart to share between classrooms. You\u2019d sign up for a laptop for your class, and get a laptop cart once every other week. It got so bad that we went to a \u2018bring your own device\u2019 policy. So, if they had a cellphone, they could just use a cellphone because that\u2019s a tiny computer.<\/em><\/p>\n

And computers are considered essential in today\u2019s schools. We know that most kids like to play with computers, but what about VR? How do educational VR experiences impact kids, especially those from challenging backgrounds or kids that aren\u2019t the strongest students?<\/strong>
\nThe kids that are hardest to reach had such strong responses to Virtual Reality. It awakened something in them that the teachers didn\u2019t know was there. I have teachers in Georgia who work with emotionally-troubled children, and they say they\u2019ve never seen them behave so well. A lot of my students were doing bad in science, and now they\u2019re excited to watch science VR experiences.<\/em><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s back up a bit and talk about how it all started. How did you came up with the idea for Curated x Kai?<\/strong>
\nOn Christmas day, I went to the MLK Memorial with my camera. I took a few 360-videos, and my students loved it. From there, I would take a camera with me and film in other places. I would think, \u2018What could happen if I could show these kids everything from history museums, to the world, to colleges to jobs?\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

And is that when you decided to launch?<\/strong>
\nWhile chaperoning kids on a college tour to Silicon Valley, I was exposed to Bay Area insights that showed me I wasn\u2019t thinking big enough. That was October 2017, so by November 2017, I decided to launch my company.<\/p>\n

When I launched, I didn\u2019t think I was going to have a VR company. I have no technical background. My degrees are in history and secondary education. I sold my house. I sold my car. I sold everything I owned. I bootstrapped everything, and moved across the country here (to the San Francisco Bay Area).<\/em><\/p>\n

When you got to San Francisco, you tried to raise venture capital but you had a hard time. Can you tell us more about that?<\/strong>
\nNo matter what stage you\u2019re in, VCs (Venture Capitalists) want to know you\u2019re not going to be a large risk. There aren\u2019t many examples of people with my background creating an ed tech VR company, so it feels extremely risky to most.The stat is that there\u2019s a 0.2 percent chance for a black woman to get VC funding. I\u2019m sure that if I looked differently, it would have helped us to scale a lot faster.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

You\u2019re working out of the Kapor Center in Oakland right now. What has that experience been like for you?<\/strong>
\nThe Kapor Center is different because they are taking a chance on people who are doing good for the community. It\u2019s been an amazing experience being incubated at their facility.<\/em><\/p>\n

You\u2019re also collaborating with the Emerging Technologies team here at Mozilla. Can you tell us more about that?<\/strong>
\nI\u2019m used to a lot of false promises or lures of diversity initiatives. I was doing one program that catered to diverse content creators. When I got the contract, it said they were going to take my IP, my copyright, my patent…they would own it all. Mozilla was the first time I had a tech company treat me like a human being. They didn\u2019t really care too much about my background or what credentials I didn\u2019t have.<\/em><\/p>\n

And of course many early engineers didn\u2019t have traditional credentials. They were just people interested in building something new. As Curated x Kai developed, you choose Hubs, which is a Mozilla project, as a platform to host the virtual tours and museum galleries. Why Hubs when there are other, more high-resolution options on the market?<\/strong>
\nTools like Hubs allow me to get students interested in VR, so they want to keep going. It doesn\u2019t matter how high-res the tool is. Hubs enables me to create a pipeline so people can learn about VR in a very low-cost, low-stakes arena. It seems like many of the more expensive VR experiences haven\u2019t been tested in schools. They often don\u2019t work, because the WiFi can\u2019t handle it.<\/em><\/p>\n

That\u2019s an interesting point because for students to get the full benefits of VR, it has to work in schools first. Besides getting kids excited to learn, if you had one hope for educational VR, what would it be?<\/strong>
\nI hope all VR experiences, educational or other, will incorporate diverse voices and perspectives. There is a serious lack of inclusive design, and it shows, from the content to the hardware. The lack of inclusive design creates an unwelcoming experience and many are robbed from the excitement of VR. Without that excitement, audiences lack the motivation to come back to the experience and it hinders growth, and adaptation in new communities — including schools.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you were in school, you may have taken a trip to a museum or a local park, but you probably never got to see an active volcano or watch great whites hunt. As Virtual Reality grows, this could be the way your kids will learn \u2014 using headsets the way we use computers. When […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":144,"featured_media":12254,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[464320],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nQ&A: Igniting imaginations and putting VR in the hands of students with Kai Frazier<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/en\/internet-culture\/interviews\/qa-igniting-imaginations-and-putting-vr-in-the-hands-of-students-with-kai-frazier\/\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" 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