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LIMESCOOP revealed- virtual binoculars in Katwijk
Finally, the LIMESCOOP is up!
Step back in time and see Romans walking past the old Fort of Brittenburg. The virtual binoculars are located at the end of the Limes, on the Buitensluis in Katwijk. In public space, freely accessible to everyone!

Quite some time ago we came into contact with architect and client Fons Verheijen. The Limes, the old border of the Roman Empire, has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2021. Although many tourists travel along the old Limes, the conclusion of this route in Katwijk was marked only with “a small silly sign”, according to Fons. That’s just not acceptable, right? Together we developed the concept for the Limescoop.
Archaeologically everything had to be correct. We therefore followed the book Brittenburg by Tom Buijtendorp. Archeology student Aiace Pisaroni devoted his graduation research to this project and Xinas BV made a beautiful 3D model. The Virtual Reality Learning Lab trainees Daan Hobbel, Stijn van Sprang, Stephan Houwaart, Guido van Duijvenvoorde and Enrique Alonso Barreiro developed the interactive 3D world, including a lot of optimization to make everything run smoothly.

We found 100% FAT who could further develop their FATscope and can’t imagine a better partner. What a challenge to make binoculars that can stand outside in storms and heat, that run entirely on a battery + solar panel, work pleasantly, and also look beautiful.
The Limescoop was opened on Friday 16 June 2023 by mayor of Katwijk Cornelis Visser, alderman Jacco Knape and Limes program manager Jelmer Prins. And now we can keep track that the viewer has already been used by many hundreds of visitors! Article in Leidsch Dagblad






Quick 3D scan
https://skfb.ly/oIzWL
The Infinite AI Gallery
An infinite amount of AI generated images deserves an ‘Infinite AI gallery’.
That’s the idea behind this project Stijn van Sprang & Robin de Lange created. When you walk through this 3D world, new parts of the museum are generated in real-time, allowing you to explore it endlessly.
Stijn was an intern at the VR Learning Lab and is now a part-time developer. Stijn put in all the hard design & coding work for this project. Robin had the role of creative director.
Check out the preview below:
Want to learn more?
Do you want to add the Infinite AI Gallery to your event? Or are you just interested in learning more about it? Feel free to contact us.
Designing with Artificial Intelligence in Education
Fundamental research in Artificial Intelligence has caused a tidal wave of new AI tools for writing text, creating images, and generating music and videos in a fraction of the time it usually takes. Software for generating 3D objects and (parts of) virtual worlds is also on the way. At times, this feels alienating but also very exciting!
The arrival of this new wave of AI tools has far-reaching implications for how we, as a society, are productive, what our digital world will look like, and how we shape our education. Together, this gives us sufficient reason to incorporate Artificial Intelligence into our strategy. We have started a research line, offer workshops for teachers, and are working on the first AI lessons for students.

Background
Increasing human productivity
In his lectures, Robin often contrasts AI with lesser-known ideas about ‘Augmenting Human Intellect’, where students also read work by Doug Engelbart. The emphasis here is much more on how people solve problems with computers and less on autonomous software. How AI tools are now being used is also partly in line with these ideas. Tech analyst Benedict Evans described it nicely: “AI is like giving every company an infinite number of interns“.
Will AI take over your job? Probably not so directly. But fewer people may be needed for the same work, as professionals learn to effectively use AI tools to increase their productivity. In the end, it may not be so much a competition between humans and computers, but between humans + the tools they use. Or, as American computer scientist Licklider called it in 1960, the ‘man-computer symbiosis’
This applies to writers and policymakers who ask ChatGPT to create an outline for something or to come up with counterarguments. But also for designers who use AI for inspiration, to generate parts of their graphic work, or to create videos from text and a single image.
The future of the digital world
Artificial Intelligence will have significant consequences for what our digital world will look like.
Due to the increase in productivity, prices for creative work will drop dramatically. The advent of the web previously led to a considerable reduction in publication costs, resulting in a massive increase in information. It is expected that new AI tools will lead to a similar increase, with automatically written blogs, generated explanatory videos, fully animated fan fiction, and eventually AI-generated game worlds.
Part of VR Learning Lab’s mission is to train the digital creators of the future. Our tech teachers teach young people programming, game design, video editing, and responsible internet use. In a short time, it has become clear that AI tools have become an essential source in the development of the digital world. Pupils and students must be introduced wisely and given every opportunity to use this tool effectively.
AI for education
Most of the focus on AI in education is currently on ChatGPT and other language models. Understandably so, as almost all teachers deal with this. For every take-home exam and assignment that students have to complete, they can use OpenAI, which puts a large part of the educational institutions’ testing model in trouble.
Check out an application letter generated by a tech teacher during a team day here. A somewhat strange structure, but it would have certainly made it through the first selection.
We will place more emphasis on AI for creative work, for programs that train future designers. What tools should they know? How do you provide good education with these tools? And how do you assess work in which the student has used AI tools in the process?
This maker education is also a good place for innovation in schools. Together with students, you explore the possibilities of new technology and bring it into the school. This creates opportunities to involve other teachers in these developments and adapt to a changing technological landscape.
What’s our plan?
We see enough reason to broaden our focus and include AI in our work. But what exactly will we do? We outline it below.
Design research
Together with interns and students, we experiment with dozens of AI tools. We come up with interesting content that we can create with them and combine them with other software. We make short videos and complete escape rooms and VR experiences.
We share our experiments through various channels and often also how we made them. We share a lot on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube . We also share the best experiments via LinkedIn, our blog, and the newsletter.
BOOTCAMP: Design with AI
We have set up a new bootcamp for teachers of digital maker subjects. For this, we collaborate with Bijscholingvmbo, which allows the training to be followed with up to 50% subsidy. If you’re interested in a tailor-made bootcamp in English, please contact us.
AI workshops for students and pupils
On March 16, 2023, we are providing the first workshop for students through PLNT Skills. Tech teacher Marijn uses their Cognitive Artificial Intelligence education to develop valuable teaching materials. Soon, we will offer the first workshops for primary and secondary education.
Audiovisual performance
Robin, Stijn, and interns Merel and Sabrina are working on an interactive audiovisual performance where AI and 3D images are combined in a unique way. The goal is to offer a unique experience of the future of our digital world. For study days, conferences, or other events.

From VR experiment to implementation
The past year has brought one of the biggest challenges ever in education. To protect those who are vulnerable and to reduce the pressure on healthcare, we have all shown our most flexible side. The beginning of 2021 is not much different. In this blog, we look ahead. What role can Virtual Reality play in education after this crisis? And how do we contribute to a sustainable implementation of this and other technologies?
Online education is a huge challenge, for teachers as well as students. Every lecture, I miss that I am not in the same room as my students. What’s more, our workshops & masterclasses for education professionals are much more enjoyable in-person.

Digital education still has too many limitations, even though I often argue that new digital technology like VR offers possibilities that go beyond education in person.
Unfortunately, the field is not quite there yet. VR headsets are not readily available for everyone and teachers and students often do not have enough experience with the technology to use it effectively for education. Especially not when you suddenly have to switch to online education.
Moreover, you also want to combine digital education and in-person education here. Blended. This way, you can choose the educational platform that fits the best for the material. However, this is precisely what is not possible in these times.

From experiment to implementation
At the same time, let’s commit ourselves to emerge stronger from this crisis.
Let’s work to develop rich, asynchronous digital education that students can follow independently regardless of time and place. Combined with synchronous meetings focused on interaction and knowledge processing. Preferably in-person, but digital if necessary.
At the same time, we continue to experiment with new technology like Virtual Reality to further enrich education.
As this field matures with affordable hardware and a wider range of software, we can work towards sustainable deployment. Grants create room for innovation, but ultimately, the business side must also make sense; your innovation must solve a problem.
In the lecture (in Dutch) I recently gave to all i-coaches of vocational schools, I distinguished these three phases:

We look forward to contributing to exciting educational projects in the Netherlands and to bringing them to the next stage!
Research direction
We want to investigate how VR and other technologies can be responsibly and sustainably deployed in various domains. That is why we will be challenging the following questions in the coming period, together with our team, new interns, and students:
- Can the shortage of internships in educational programs such as nursing be solved with VR & other technology?
- Together with our intern Tess and educational organizations, we are investigating this urgent question for nursing programs.
- What can we learn from games?
- Together with our new intern Siem, we immerse ourselves in the creative world of game design and share our lessons.
- How do you design an ‘infospace’?
- How do you use a 3D environment to convey knowledge? How do you tell a story with it? Read the first blog post in this series here.
- How will Augmented Reality change the world?
- For a few years, I have been challenging the students of my Honors Class to think about how AR will become part of our world. With this, we explore many interesting opportunities and threats. We will further develop and share these findings through our blog!
We research the various applications of Virtual and Augmented Reality and other technologies and share the findings on this blog. Additionally, we put them into practice by designing our teaching materials based on our research and experiences. In this way, we are involved in all phases that must be completed to deploy VR sustainably.
Immersive Tech Week 2022
This week we are at the Immersive Tech Week, formerly known as the VR Days. This is the first time we have a booth: as our clients are mostly in education, it’s just a little less interesting for us than the NOT or the BETT.
This year, we had two projects we wanted to show and get extra input for. Intern Guido is doing user research for the Brittenburg project (linked page in Dutch) he is working on. Partner 100%FAT joined in and brought a predecessor of the ‘Limescoop’ (/liməˈskoːp/).
Interns Michelle en Stijn showed the (English version of) ‘AR(e) you Ready?’ (linked page in Dutch), our speculative game on the future with AR. Their main goal is to find inspiration for new future scenarios we can use in the game.

We enjoyed experiencing the latest XR hardware, such as Pimax headsets, the Quest Pro and the SenseGlove.
Pimax is developing an interesting all-in-one system that can function as a console, mobile phone and VR headset. We will keep our eyes on it! The Passthrough functionality of the Quest Pro impressed us with its seamlessness. We are purchasing it and we are planning on creating many AR prototypes with it in the future.
The team, including our interns, learned more about the field through visiting the tradeshow, trying out experiences at the Playground and through joining talks and roundtables at the conference.


The amount of attention on more philosophical discussions in the program was noteworthy. Netwerk Mediawijsheid, Rathenau Institute and the city of Rotterdam organized various workshops and presentations covering the future of the metaverse (if you want to use that term). Experts and others interested in this subject discussed how children can explore virtual worlds in a media literate and safe way, how they can learn through immersive media and how we can ensure that the metaverse is designed in a way that respects public values?
I was talking to a visiting employee of Stanford who was impressed by this. To him, it really emphasized how different Europe is from the US. We might not be the fastest to move, but by thinking things through we’re aiming for a future where our values are represented, which might bring us much further.

Although this is very anecdotal evidence, I guess we’re doing something right. We’re proud to contribute to this approach, especially with our speculative game ‘AR(e) you Ready’?
It seems like a very good move to relocate the event to Rotterdam, with lots of initiatives from the city and Hogeschool Rotterdam. I think you will see us here next year as well!

Looking Back – Our Future with Augmented Reality

We believe it’s important that we all think more about a future where we wear smart glasses daily. Because by looking ahead, we can influence what the future will look like.
In our research, we develop stimulating prototypes together with students and interns from, among others, Leiden University. This is also called speculative design. For the Week of Media Literacy, we developed the game ‘ARe you ready?’ in which more than 17.000 young people thought about our future with this technology. (link to game & link to research report)
On Tuesday, February 15 at 15:30, we are organizing a free online event about ‘Our Future with Augmented Reality’. We present a program full of speculative design from various creators. And together with all visitors, we will think about how we can make a positive impact!
On the program:
- Panel with students from the Honours Class ‘Getting smarter with VR & AR’ about their prototypes and ideas
- Provocative AR projects by artist Sander Veenhof
- Daan Hobbel, Sanna Bashir, and Nadine Roos about the game + research ARe you Ready?
- Gabriele Romagnoli explains how designers shape the future of AR with ShapesXR
- Robin de Lange: education as an ideal place for speculative design. How can you get started yourself?
- Discussion: how can we have a positive impact on the future of Augmented Reality?
- Creative entertainment during the entrance, break, and at the end of the meeting
This event is made possible by the VR Learning Lab, PLNT Leiden & the Honours Academy of Leiden University.
You can watch it here:
Thousands of Children Look Forward to Augmented Reality
You wake up in the year 2027. Right after getting up, you put on your Augmented Reality (AR) glasses. These smart glasses help you throughout the day. They remind you of what you need to do, make lessons more enjoyable, and translate what your new classmate says. Can you visualize this future? Thousands of students have thought about these and other questions. In this article, we share the results.
Update 2022: during the Week of Media Literacy in 2022, there were 8,014 individual players who answered all the questions. The questions remained the same. You can view the results here (note: the report is in Dutch). There are little differences compared with the results from 2021. What did stand out was that fewer students from grades 5 and 6 think that learning foreign languages is necessary if Augmented Reality glasses can be used to interpret other languages for us. We have also created a new English version.
ARe you ready?
Students have shared their opinions while playing the game ARe you ready?, created by our talented interns Daan Hobbel and Sanna Bashir. The game was developed as a ThemeMission for MediaMasters, an annual national competition held during the Week of Media Literacy in November.
Nearly 80,000 players had experienced a day in the life of a child from 2027, in which smart AR glasses play a significant role. With this new medium, you can see things in the real world that aren’t actually there; a virtual layer on top of the real world.

By presenting these questions to the students during the game, we were able to encourage them to think along and come up with their own opinions about Augmented Reality. Having an opinion allows you to support it and prevents experiencing the future passively. This makes sure that not only Meta, Apple, and Snapchat can determine what role AR will play in society, but also citizens.
80,000 plays, 17,000 participants
The game was played more than 80,000 times by the end of November 2021. We collected 17,037 complete answer sets. Of these, we used 5,385 in our analysis. This dataset consists of answers from players aged between 9 and 13, who came to our site via the MediaMasters game. This was measured with cookies, which were necessary to count points for the MediaMasters game. This way, we can be sure that these were all unique players. Players outside this age limit or who played the game through another route were excluded.
Results
The questions that were asked in between the game’s levels can be divided into two categories:
- The potential of Augmented Reality
- The societal consequences of this technology.
We will discuss the results per category.
The potential of Augmented Reality
Augmented Reality already has useful and entertaining applications today. For example, checking if a piece of furniture fits in your living room before buying it from the Swedish furniture giant, or using AR to overlay a virtual information layer on the real world. Think of animations and texts that help a novice car mechanic replace brake pads or virtual buttons on a real anatomical model that can be clicked for additional information about an organ.
In the game, players can experience such applications as well as futuristic ones. Are they open to the idea of using smart glasses in this way?


AR as an assistent
In the game, the AR glasses provide nutritional advice. Do children from grades 7 and 8 appreciate this? Most do (73%), although 32% of them would make the healthy choice anyway, regardless of the glasses’ advice (Figure 1). A large portion of children (61%) also find it helpful if the smart glasses help them remember daily.


AR in Education
A smart pair of glasses as a dietitian and personal assistant. Would it also be an interesting addition to education? In the game, children look into the life of a primary school child. The lessons the child receives make use of AR. Only 7% of the children did not like the idea of having lessons with AR glasses (Figure 3). 58% of the children are convinced that this form of teaching is also beneficial for learning (also Figure 3).
There are many opportunities for AR glasses in education.

Orange: Do you think it would be fun to implement smart glasses at school? A: Yes, I would like to use smart glasses everyday; B: I think it would be fun to use them sometimes; C No)
We think that smart glasses not only influence how we learn, but also what we need to learn. Robin’s graduation research in 2014 was already about this topic.
In the game, a character speaks Japanese to the player. The AR glasses pick this up and automatically start Dutch subtitles. Is it useful to learn other languages if the smart glasses can translate everything for you? We wanted to further elaborate on this discussion for the participants with this question. 11% of the children think that AR makes learning foreign languages unnecessary. But the majority (62%) would rather not depend on the glasses and still find it useful to learn other languages (Figure 4).


AR for navigatie
A more obvious example is navigating with your smart glasses. Virtual arrows projected in the real world help you find your way. In this way, it becomes very difficult to go in the wrong direction. 93% of the children think that we will use smart glasses for navigation later (Figure 5).


The social consequences of Augmented Reality
The emergence of a new computer interface has a huge impact on society and our lives. Enough to get excited about, but also to worry about. That’s why we asked the children if they are concerned about the ethics and safety of AR glasses.
Exclusion
One of the problems that can arise is a kind of social gap between people who have smart glasses and people who cannot (temporarily) be in our new, enriched AR world. We highlighted a similar situation in the game. Is it bad if there are other children who do not have smart glasses and therefore feel excluded? Most children (87%) think this is (a bit) unfair (Figure 6).


Distraction
The virtual layer projected by an AR glass can be distracting from information in the real world. In fact, things can be hidden by projecting over them. This can be dangerous in traffic. In an AR mini-game in ‘ARe you ready?’, the player is chased by virtual monsters. To stay ahead, many players run through red lights. The use of a smartphone can be dangerous in traffic.
We asked children if they think smart glasses should be banned on bicycles. 60% agreed. 28% want a special “traffic mode” so that the glasses do not pose a danger on the road and can be kept on. And 12% think we should decide for ourselves whether to keep them on or take them off (Figure 7).


Disruption of public order
Almost everyone has played or heard of Pokémon Go, an AR game that led to large gatherings of people in various locations. We believe that this could happen much more often in the future. Virtual artworks at secret locations and massive AR tournaments in the town square. Are you allowed to just organize this? Or should you apply for permits, like for regular events? 69% of the participating children said that rules should be in place and permission should be requested to organize such events (Figure 8).


Privacy violation
Many companies collect our data without our conscious consent. This data collection can go a step further with the help of an AR headset, as it can see much more and track things other than just online activity. An obvious example is personalized advertisements. The smart glasses could use information about you, such as conversations and images, to project specific ads in the real world; this also happens in the game.
38% of players aged 9 to 13 believed that no information about them should be used to personalize advertisements. 39% thought it was acceptable, but only if they had given permission themselves. 23% had no problems with sharing information (Figure 9).


Are we becoming too dependent on our smart glasses? Technology like an AR headset can easily enrich the real world, making people possibly unwilling or unable to live without it. About 90% of the children find it concerning that we may become too dependent on this technology in the future (Figure 10).


Mission accomplished
We conclude that most children see benefits in using smart glasses, but certainly do not want to become dependent on them.
Let’s nuance the results a bit. This is not scientific research. The answers may have been influenced by how AR was portrayed during the game. And it could be that the youngsters who chose to play this game are overly enthusiastic about new media. Fortunately, our goal was not to conduct an academic study. Our mission was to get children thinking, and we certainly succeeded!
Learn more
- Play the game ARe you ready? yourself.
- Want to know more about research where participants play a game to think about an alternative reality or a future scenario? Read the paper Games as Speculative Design: Allowing Players to Consider Alternate Presents and Plausible Features by Coulton, Burnett, and Gradinar (2016).
- Read (about) Robin’s graduation research (2013), which is about how Augmented Reality not only influences how we learn, but also what we need to learn through the interplay of our cognition and the computing power of computers.
Coding in CoSpaces on smartphone
One problem we had with CoSpaces Edu is that you cannot add code on your smartphone. This is somewhat disappointing as our pool of teachers all have their sets of Android smarthphones with Cardboard-based VR headsets. They mainly use those to let students view the projects they’ve created in Virtual Reality. But it’s also handy to have a few extra devices whenever the school doesn’t have enough laptops/tablets/Chromebooks available.

We organize more and more coding workshops and we needed new sets of smartphones. By coincident, we’ve run into a smartphone model that does allow you to add CoBlocks! The Motorola G9 Play that is. It’s also quite an affordable smartphone at around 150 euros, with a large screen and a 5000 mAh battery.

The large screen size combined with a pretty low resolution is probably why you can do coding with this device in the first place. My guess is that the CoSpaces Edu app looks at the pixel density of the device to determine whether it’s a tablet or a smartphone. The low pixel density of this screen lets CoSpaces think it’s actually a tablet.
We’ve just bought a batch of 8 devices and we’re quite happy with them. I wanted to share this, as I guess more teachers are looking for a solution for this. Hopefully the developers at CoSpaces Edu don’t change the way this is handled.
Want to learn more?
Check out the VR Learning HUB!
“We see ourselves as enablers” – Interview with Bruces Pales, CEO of 360 Cities.

On the 21st of July, the first in a series of online interviews with experts in the field of VR, AR, 360°, and other innovative digital technologies took place for VR Learning HUB members and other interested individuals. We had the amazing opportunity to talk to Bruces Pales, CEO of the platform 360 Cities. The platform, which was founded in 2008, has been curating and licensing high quality, fully 360° interactive panoramic photos and videos.
[Read more…] about “We see ourselves as enablers” – Interview with Bruces Pales, CEO of 360 Cities.VR for online events? – 5 tips
During the last few weeks, more and more people have come to us with the question: “can we use Virtual Reality to improve our online event / meeting / education?”
For us it is quite interesting to see how this question has suddenly become so relevant. Most organisations have the remote working conditions under control and are looking to expand and improve them while the Covid-19 restrictions continue. For example for special school events, teambuilding days or creative meetings. These are all situations in which being physically present has an significant advantage.
In this blog we provide five tips on how to implement Virtual Reality in your online event or remote education.

Looking back at year 1 of Augmented Reality & Human-Computer Collaboration
Last November 29th, we organized an event together with Smart 071 and the Honours Academy of Leiden University all about the applications of AR (Augmented Reality) in the workplace.
Students and professionals looked together for meaningful and feasible applications of AR in the participating organizations. This event was part of a new course given by Robin at the Leiden Honors Academy. The Augmented Reality & Human-Computer Collaboration discusses how Augmented Reality will influence our society and the future of work.
This blog post looks back at:
- our event about AR and the future of work
- the prototypes built by the students as their final projects
We’ll also tell you how you can participate as a professional or student next edition!
[Read more…] about Looking back at year 1 of Augmented Reality & Human-Computer CollaborationVR Learning HUB launches April 30th
#PROUD. We’re very happy to announce that registration for the VR Learning HUB is now open. The platform launches April 30th.

In this blog post, you’ll read about:
- the 20% early bird discount we’re currently offering;
- our first online event;
- and why we’ve been working on the VR Learning HUB for more than four years.
The value of VR… in VR
Experience the educational value of VR… in VR!
A few years back two of our interns worked on a 360 experience that explains why Virtual Reality can be interesting for schools. Before, it was only available in our app, but we just uploaded it to YouTube.
Have a look, we love to hear what you think.
[Read more…] about The value of VR… in VRLearning through designing VR experiences
Can you challenge your students to create a VR experience to reach your learning goals?
That’s a question we often ask during our courses for teachers. Why?
- Students can learn so many things from the choices they have to make when designing their experience
- It’s often hard to find polished VR learning material that matches your learning goals and student background precisely
- Creating VR experiences has become so much easier over time. With CoSpaces being our favorite example
- You make your students co-owner of any technical problems.
- Your students practice important skills in our digital society
- And you help students to transcend the role of passive consumers of technology. We often have students whose first VR experience is one they made themselves. In school. How cool is that?
That’s why we pay extra attention on creating VR experiences in the VR Learning HUB. Using CoSpaces Edu, or any of the many virtual tour makers out there.
Interested in learning more?
Perhaps the VR Learning HUB is something for you!
Why I love my job
A while ago I asked my parents what I wanted to become when I was a kid. They couldn’t really think of anything, which matched my own memories. Apparently I never had any specific profession I dreamed of. No obsession with becoming a pro soccer player, movie star or pilot (probably saving me a lot of disappointments). Together we remembered that I did have a fascination for the large office buildings we passed during car or train rides. What happened behind the windows of all those giant anonymous towers; what were people doing there?
Virtual Reality on a tablet?
Does Virtual Reality work on a tablet?
Not ideally, no. But as this picture shows, you can get the two images required on a small tablet. At least on this is Samsung Tab A 8.0. Combine this with a foldable VR headset, like the VR Square Mini we use, and you’re there!
Augmented Reality Honours Class – Leiden University
Every year Robin teaches an Honours Class at Leiden University. The past years this course was Learning through Virtual Reality
In the fall of 2019 I will (almost certainly) start a new course ‘Augmented Reality & Human-Computer Collaboration‘, which has its focus on how AR will affect our society and influence the future of work.
[Read more…] about Augmented Reality Honours Class – Leiden University
Google: from finding answers to getting thing done
This summary of Google’s I/O 2019 event shows some of the impressive products Google is working on: new Augmented Reality functionalities, a smarter Google Assistant and cheaper Google Pixel phones.
What is really interesting about this event is the shift in the mission of the company:
“We’re moving from a company that helps you find answers to a company that helps you get things done”
This statement by CEO Sundar Pichai illustrates the developments in digital technology and the role digital products will have in our daily lives. The focus in articles on Artificial Intelligence is often on completely autonomous computer systems. The focus in this event however, is mostly on how smarter algorithms allow for more sophisticated computer interfaces for users.
[Read more…] about Google: from finding answers to getting thing done
Most famous GIFs in CoSpaces Edu
A while ago we made a virtual museum of a few of the most famous GIFs in CoSpaces Edu. Although this was mainly a fun afternoon project, we often show it to illustrate the possibilities for students to make virtual exhibitions for their school projects. Definitely more exciting than another Powerpoint 🙂
Why Nintendo’s new VR set shows Virtual Reality is mature
Recently, and after much speculation, Nintendo announced their VR set for the very successful Switch. An important moment in the history of VR, I would say.
Why? Not per se because of how many of these VR add-on sets are going to be sold. Definitely not because of the hardware specifications. Nor because of the games. Sure, Nintendo has the ability to create great games with limited processing resources. And we’re probably going to see some very creative uses of this whole set of cardboard extensions of your Switch. But that’s not what makes this device of importance.
[Read more…] about Why Nintendo’s new VR set shows Virtual Reality is mature
Research in learning how to program @ PERL Kickoff 2019
Today Marleen & Robin (that’s me) visited the kick-off of the PERL group at Leiden University. An interesting afternoon! As probably everybody who attended this event, we think it’s important for students to learn the digital skills they need to create new things. That’s why we organize courses for teachers and students in Processing and CoSpaces Edu an co-organize the CoSpaces Competition!
The day consisted of several talks focusing on research that helps to teach programming skills a little better. In this post I’ll share some insights.
[Read more…] about Research in learning how to program @ PERL Kickoff 2019
Introduction: Chris, Kevin, Nadine, Nino and Simone
All of a sudden we were with ten at our Lab meeting, including all interns, freelancers and students. Time for an update.
[Read more…] about Introduction: Chris, Kevin, Nadine, Nino and Simone
Which VR headsets for your school?
Which VR headsets should we buy with our school? That’s a question people often email us about. We understand the question very well, as you need hardware to experience VR, right? However, we do think that the question often comes too early in the process. To make a good decision about which headset to go for, you first need to find out what you want to use it for.
Last update: December 2020.
We wrote a blog about the Oculus Go when it just came out. The angle of the post was how we usually don’t recommend the Oculus Go as the sole device for schools. A controversial statement, as it’s quite an amazing device. Affordable, very comfortable, and the remote offers quite a lot of interactive functionalities. Why wouldn’t we recommend it then? Because it’s quite a closed-off system. When choosing a VR headset, you also choose the app store where you can find applications, it’s an entire ecosystem.
The Dutch Side of the Moon in CoSpaces Edu
What if the Dutch create the first moon base? Well, it might look something like this.
We built this during on of our CoSpaces Edu teacher Bootcamps. Scroll down to play the game. Are you interested in how we created this? Join our free CoSpaces Edu Level 1 course and we’ll keep you posted with new tutorials and the Level 2 course we’re working on…
[Read more…] about The Dutch Side of the Moon in CoSpaces Edu
Open science
By: Robin de Lange
Inspired by the Open science movement, among which this Open Kitchen Science approach, I’ve decided to join this movement and find a fitting open approach for the research we do. In this article I explain the motivation behind this decision and give you some background on our research.
Comenius grant for AI + VR project with Tilburg University
The VR Learning Lab collaborated on a project initiated by dr. Marie Postma and her colleagues at Tilburg University. Last week it was announced that this project will receive a NRO Comenius Senior Fellow grant! Here you can find the news item post on the website of Tilburg University.
The challenge of the project is to create a few Virtual and Augmented Reality learning experiences that help students understanding challenging topics within the curriculum of the Cognitive Science & Artificial Intelligence tracks.
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Why we don’t recommend Oculus Go for schools
Updates are coming on the Oculus Go, the highly anticipated stand-alone VR headset. Many educators are excited as well about this device, as it has a few important upsides:
- At $199 it’s quite cheap
- There is no hassle with separate phones that you have to attach to a VR headset
- The remote control gives you interactive possibilities, although not nearly as much as an HTC Vive/Oculus Rift/Windows MR set.
The simplicity of this device really makes it attractive to schools. You can easily imagine a cart with 15 of these devices, including a charging system, which teachers can reserve for certain classes.
Update: this post has attracted quite some attention! We have included a Best Buy Guide for Schools.
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HUBspot virtual tour
We created a virtual tour for HUBspot Leiden, the center for innovation and entrepreneurship in our lovely city. We’re very glad to be part of this great place!
Collaboration in Virtual Reality
Wearing a VR headset is often seen as a rather individual experience. And indeed, the immersiveness of the experience tends to seclude you from your environment and the people surrounding you. However, there are also different, exciting forms of collaboration in Virtual Reality. Some of these can be very interesting for collaborative learning, or for solving complex problems together. In this article we’ll discuss a few interesting projects, some of which are focused on local collaboration.
Short Introduction: Kasper and IJsbrand
Virtual Reality in education gains more and more popularity and we are full of new plans. Therefore we are happy to welcome Kasper and IJsbrand in our team, who joined us recently. A short introduction.
First Kasper. He is a Media Technology student at the Hogeschool Leiden and is our new trainee. Kasper is supporting us with all sorts of educational activities and is developing his own VR app, in which he will show us what possibilities are already available for education. Curious? Be patience, he is still working on it…
IJsbrand is a journalist and copywriter. In our company he will write blogposts, is working on content marketing and is involved in creating our new online course. His goal is to help the VR Learning Lab to become better known abroad and to make the online course a succes.
Pacman 360 stop motion animation
It was already somewhat later in the evening when HUBspot colleagues Max and Tom were playing with clay, after a creative workshop. Robin joined them, together they created some figures. This evolved into an entire Pacman leven, after which someone suggested the idea to make a stop motion animation with 360 photos. A few hours later we had this:
New Cardboards are in!
Our new Google Cardboards are in! Still a very cool tool for a first introduction in VR. Participants of our workshops and masterclasses receive one of these to experiment further at home.
In de media: RTL Nieuws – NPO – Computers op School
Virtual Reality for education is gaining quite a lot of media attention as more educators are experimenting with this technology. During the past weeks Robin gave a few interviews in Dutch.
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Are the new Windows headsets Mixed Reality?

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CRKBO registrated institution
In the summer of 2017 we have improved our customer experience and documented what we think is important for the best care of our students. We created new Terms and Conditions and an official complaint procedure to make sure that we can deliver services of the highest quality.
This effort was rewarded, the Virtual Reality Learning Lab is now a ‘CRKBO registrated institution‘. This also means that we can deliver services in the Netherlands which are exempted from sales tax.
Registration Honours Class – Learning through Virtual Reality 2017
On October the 11th 2017, the new edition of the Honours Class Learning through Virtual Reality will start! The course is primarily meant for bachelor students who follow an honours track at Leiden University. However, the Honours Academy allows for a few master students each year, which can be specifically interesting for Media Technology students. Please notice however that honours classes are extracurricular and cannot be counted as an elective course. They will be mentioned on your diploma though.
Bachelor students from Leiden University can register for the course on this page, master students on this page. Are you a student from another university? Please contact us, perhaps we can arrange something.
Pitch Research Conference
Vives Magazine: Google Expeditions, virtual tour and more
After an enjoyable meeting with independent education journalist Carla Desain, an interview with Robin was published in education & ICT magazine Vives. Below, you can read the entire piece, focusing on a virtual tour in Google Expeditions, designing in VR and future research.
(Translation to English is pending)
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Innovation in education from primary school to university
In April, professionals from all across Dutch educational spectrum took part in our Masterclass “Virtual Reality in Education”. Over the span of four sessions, we discussed in what ways VR could provide innovations in education, followed by the participants figuring out for themselves how to utilize and create VR applications. Aside from teachers in primary-, secondary- and higher education, some of the participants revealed a background in business, allowing a wide variety of knowledge to be shared between different fields.
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Conference – Learning with VR
On June 7th, LiketoShare will organize the “Learning with VR” convention. There, Robin will provide a lecture on experimenting with Virtual Reality in higher education. What feasible ways are available to start an experiment? And how do you involve students with this process?
We expect it to be an educational day, with many intriguing visitors!
Virtual Reality @ Kennisnet Research Conference
Kennisnet is organizing their yearly Onderzoeksconferentie (“Research Conference”) on the 28th of June 2017. Here, Robin will present a pitch of his research on Virtual Reality in education.
A short article is already available on their website. Will we see you at the conference?
Virtual Reality in the classroom, but how?
A lot of teachers and educators we talk to turn out to be excited about the possibilities of Virtual Reality in the classroom. Seeing how impressive Virtual Reality experiences can be, we are not surprised by this. VR allows you to visit historical battles, active volcanos, constructions and archeological sites. With VR, you can study microorganisms, complex datasets or mathematical figures. For students of all ages, VR offers the ability to examine abstract educational material from a new and different perspective.
Additionally, the opportunity to create just about anything in Virtual Reality can be quite alluring. Ways to develop continue to improve, creating new possibilities every so often. During each workshop we organize, we discover new and exciting ways to apply VR.
Many schools and educators wish to start experimenting with Virtual Reality in their classrooms. The question is: where to start? In this post, we discuss a number of ways you can start using Virtual Reality in your classroom.
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First VR Learning Lab Meetup
We can look back on a very successful first VR Learning Lab Meetup! Even though the KNMI declared code orange because of an impressive storm, many found their way to HUBspot. There were drinks, snacks, many VR demonstrations and interesting presentations by four student groups.
Virtual Reality Meetup: Project presentations & Office Opening Drinks
On the 23rd of February we organize the first VR Learning Lab Meetup. You can experience a few of the Honours Class VR projects and have drinks and snacks.
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NRO Kennisrotonde – Virtual Reality & Augmented Reality
Commissioned by the Netherlands Initiative for Educational Research (NRO), we have performed an extensive literary study on the use of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality in primary education. The petitioner – the administration of a significant comprehensive school – provided the NRO Kennisrotonde with the following question:
What do we know about the use and effectiveness of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality when applied to primary education?
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SURF trendrapport 2016
Tonight SURF will officially release their ‘Trendrapport 2016’ at the preconference of the Onderwijsdagen. Robin was honored to be the author of the chapter on Virtual Reality, together with Lieke Rensink and Jan-Paul van Staalduinen. You can download the Dutch Trendrapport here, the English version will follow in the next few weeks.
Tomorrow, on the 8th of November, Robin will give a lecture on VR & education at the same Onderwijsdagen. On both days, the DinoZapp team will be present to show the Virtual Reality game they made in collaboration with Naturalis.
Virtual Reality project with Naturalis: DinoZapp
As part of the Virtual Reality for Science & Education course, the student team consisting of Gosse Mol, Roos Hoefnagel and Han Lie collaborated with Naturalis and created DinoZapp. This video shows a preview of the first prototype:
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Towards a theoretical framework for Virtual Reality in Education
For my current research I broadly explore the potential of Virtual Reality for education. As a part of this I try to form some sort of theoretical framework to describe the unique characteristics of VR as a medium and how it can be used to explain complex concepts and teach different skills.
With some googling you can find quite a few articles (both academic, popular and in-between) that describe the various ways VR could be used in education. There are even a few listicles out there, to use the parlance of our times. Now, who can resist the simplicity of a 5 point overview of this new medium and its role in learning?
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The dangers of techno-pessimism in education
I do research on the potential of Virtual Reality for education. Now, people generally find VR very exciting and because of this I get a lot of enthusiastic reactions. People can imagine all sorts of useful applications for education. Students could learn about our solar system while experiencing a space flight, or walk through ancient Rome and learn about its history.
Of course, I also receive a lot of reactions that are more critical of VR as a learning tool. We are at a point in time where there’s hardly any decisive research about learning performances in Virtual Reality. We don’t even know yet whether people will buy VR headsets. Shouldn’t we wait for these kinds of things before we invest in hardware and educational VR content? VR has been a hype before, can the technology deliver the promises that are being made?
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Hack de Pont – VR Hackathon
On the 30th of April 2016 I gave a Unity3D Virtual Reality workshop for the VR Hackathon ‘Hack de Pont‘, organised by Creative Coding Amsterdam, Lava Lab and Submarine Channel. Among the participants were Syrian refugees from the very noble Hack your Future program. Although a large part of the group had never worked with Unity3D before, quite a few interesting projects were created that day!
After the workshop I joined artist Sander Veenhof to create a project of our own. We mixed Ricoh Theta 360 photos Sander took on the ferry ride with a 3D modeled world in Unity3D to create an experience where you travel from the analog to the digital world. In the future it might be available in the Play Store, this tweets shows a preview:
Co-creation with @robindelange: VR experience that lets you take a ferry trip from the analog to the digital world pic.twitter.com/o2QfDa1wRT
— Sander Veenhof (@sndrv) May 3, 2016
Virtual Reality for Science & Education 2016 – a Review
On the 10th of March 2016 we organized the Virtual Reality for Science & Education symposium at the Scheltema Complex in Leiden. I think we can safely state the event was a great success!
Over 125 people attended the event, causing a small shortage of chairs at the busiest time of the symposium. I have seen many familiar faces, but also met a lot of interesting new people. The list of attendees included researchers, professors, high school teachers, entrepreneurs, Virtual Reality developers, policy makers and artists. I think this mix of people led to very interesting discussions, thank you all very much for your input!
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Why are people enthusiastic about VR in Education?
During the past year I have spoken with a lot of people about the use of Virtual Reality for learning, which is the topic of my research. Surprisingly many people are really excited about this. But why is this? Why are people enthusiastic about VR in education?
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Guest lecture Education & ICT – University of Utrecht
Embodied Vision 2015
In the spring of 2015 I taught the course Embodied Vision together with Dan North. The course was part of the Media Technology MSc. program.
In the lectures given by Dan the students learned about special effects and illusionism in cinema and how this is used in the service of narrative and spectacle. In the following workshops I gave we explored to what extent the visual effects used in film are usable for creating immersive experiences in Virtual Reality. The studens identified differences and similarities between film and contemporary Virtual Reality. For their final project for the course the students created cinematic VR projects which experimented with e.g. stop-motion, green screens, interactive gaze-controlled video and the dolly zoom effect.
Below you can find some of my slides for the course.
Virtual Reality for Science & Education
In May 2015 the Gratama Stichting and Leids Universiteitsfonds announced that my research project into the possibilities of Virtual Reality for the field of education will receive the Gratama research grant. Prof. dr. Jaap van den Herik helped me with the application procedure, the research will be part of my PhD work supervised by prof. dr. Bas Haring.
The research project includes an elective course where 30 students will explore the potential of Virtual Reality for science and education by creating experimental VR prototypes. More details about the course in the e-Studiegids.
My research project was mentioned in the Leiden University newsletter and Mare.
Art of Neuroscience talk – Virtual Reality visualization of live EEG data
On March 24th 2015 I gave a talk at the Art of Neuroscience symposium in the beautiful Eye in Amsterdam. More information about this yearly event can be found here.
In my talk I presented the Virtual Reality visualization of live EEG data I created with my team mates Eva Delincakova and Bert Spaan at the Hack the Brain hackathon in May 2014. I discussed the potential of Virtual Reality for immersive data visualization and how this could be used in the field of education.
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Embodied Vision Workshop: Augmented and Virtual Reality with Unity3D
On the 19th of June 2014 at 10.00, I’ll teach a workshop for the Embodied Vision course of the Media Technology MSc. program. Below you can find a short description of the workshop and the assignment. After the workshop I’ll post a summary of what we’ve discussed.
Embodied Vision Workshop: Augmented and Virtual Reality with Unity3D
In this workshop we will go through the basics of working with Unity3D, discuss interesting projects made with the software and experiment with creating your own Augmented or Virtual Reality project. I will explain about the Vuforia library which can be used to create mobile AR apps and get you started to develop for Oculus Rift. For the workshop you will need Unity Pro which can be downloaded from unity3d.com. Please install the software beforehand. You can make use of the 30-day trial version.
Assignment
Groups: 1-3 people
During the lectures you have learned about many different special and visual effects used in film and the different goals (such as: distraction, shock, spectacle, narrative, integration, immersion) that can be reached by applying these effects. For this assignment you are challenged to make use of the visual effects offered by Augmented and Virtual Reality to support one (or more) of these goals you find most interesting.
Since learning Unity3D is an essential part of this workshop, you should make use of this software for your project. Exceptions can be made however, if you can give good reasons for this.
Brainstorm – Hack the Brain hackathon
For the Hack the Brain hackathon, organized by Waag Society, TNO and the Donders Institute, we created an immersive 3D environment of EEG data using the Oculus Rift. To experience our project you wear a cap with electrodes to capture an EEG signal from the electrical activity in your brain. The Oculus Rift places you inside your brain from where you can see the captured brain activity and fly through your brain. The intensity of the visual effects expresses the activity of alpha waves in that part of the brain. This immersive environment could be used by students to better understand brain activity and the EEG signal this produces. ADHD patients could use it as a neurofeedback system to improve their concentration level and neurologists might use it to simulate the experience of epileptic patients when they have a seizure.
Media
On the Mind Extensions website you can find the article I wrote about the entire hackathon. he crew of the Dutch television program ‘De Kennis van Nu’ reported live from the hackathon, the playlist is embedded below. The television show can be found here.
Extended cognition in Education
On the 28th of August 2013 I defended my graduation project:
Developing an Augmented Reality application to promote an extended concept of cognition in education
[ABSTRACT]
The ever decreasing size and price of computer parts seems to be leading to computing power becoming ubiquitous. Similar to technology such as pen and paper, computing power becomes intertwined with our problem solving processes in such ways that it becomes invisible. This development has, and will have, enormous influence on our cognitive profiles. The field of education however, has barely changed to cope with this change in cognitive profiles. While developments in information technologies are changing how we learn in many ways, we believe it is essential to rethink what we should learn in this perspective of increasing availability and accessibility of computing power.
This research reviews an extended concept of cognition, in which technological elements can actually be part of the cognitive process. We suggest this view as a framework to discuss the goals of education and the technological aids that can be used to reach these goals. To raise this discussion, a mobile application is developed which shows the potential of Augmented Reality techniques to display context-sensitive information, which can be incorporated in the problem solving process.
ARBieb
Together with Berber de Vries we developed ARBieb, an Augmented Reality application for children’s books. The app stimulates children to read books and share short reviews. At the same time, it introduces children to Augmented Reality.
The app was developed using Unity and the Vuforia Augmented Reality library.
The app can be downloaded from the Play store, although an updated version will be released soon.