A touch of VR

On the morning of December 4^th, a bus full of 48 students and 4 staff members headed for Chitwan. The 3^rd semester students of SXC B.Sc. CSIT 2015 batch had a 5-day social camp from December 4^th to December 8^th. I along with 47 other friends reached our hotel at around 7PM where we had dinner. The first day wasn’t really fun because it took all day to get to Chitwan and we were already tired by the time we reached there. After dinner, most of us went to our room and slept.

The second way, after we had breakfast, we hopped inside the bus and travelled for around 1.5 hours to get to Rastriya Ni, Ma. Vi, a remote school in the outskirts of Chitwan City.

We had been divided into several groups. After we reached the school, we started our assigned jobs. One group started painting a room (which was for the Computer Lab we were gonna install the next day), other group started teaching in different classes and the Digital Literacy Group (the one I was in) went to a room to start a presentation. The presentation was to teach the teachers and the students of Rastriya Ni. Ma. Vi to operate Microsoft office package. Our group started the presentation after we had setup the projector. The teachers and students arrived and Biren (one of my pals) started the presentation on Microsoft Word. He explained the audience on using MS Word. Only a few teachers (2 to be precise) had operated a computer before, the others were still new to computer. So when Biren was conducting the MS presentation, only a few teachers and students were actually paying attention. The presentation lasted for about 20 minutes. The MS Excel was scheduled to be presented after MS Word presentation but the audience looked bored already. So one of the guys had a brilliant plan to showcase the VRs we had bought along for the presentation. The VR headsets were given to us courtesy of GDG Kathmandu.

Ajit went up the stage and started explaining what a VR headset is. Now, I am not body language expert but when he said “You feel like you’re actually in the video”, the audience gave “I don’t believe you” glance. Some of them bought it but most of them didn’t. Then Prayush took out 5 VR headsets from his bag. Then we called up some of the teachers to experience the firsthand experience on the headset first. They put it on slowly as the VR headset was too heavy. I didn’t know what they were looking at because not only had I seen the video, I hadn’t even used a VR headset before. Almost all the teachers who used the VR headset had a smile on their faces. Most of them went back and shared their experience to other teachers and the students. This hyped the VR even more. After all the teachers had seen it, we started calling out the students who were really curious and excited to use the VR headset. I put on the headset too and it felt amazing. It was an underwater scene where you could see some fishes dancing under the ocean. The video probably ran for about 1-2 minutes. We asked the students to form 5 queues for 5 different headsets. Then the students started flowing in. My job was simply to play the video in the VR set and help the students wear it and experience it. I think this went on for almost an hour. The students who watched called more students from other classes and our presentation room was packed. Some students couldn’t just have had one shot at it so they returned back. All in all, I think all the students had a very good and exciting time.