Dreamscape Teams Up With Arizona State University
‘Dreamscape Learn’ opens a new world to the VR pioneer
We deal a lot in immersive entertainment around here, in part because it’s fun and in part because a lot of the culture of simulated reality is going to be defined in the entertainment realm.
Yet the big, systematic work, will go down in academia. Which brings us to this press release about a partnership between Dreamscape Immersive and Arizona State University.
The new partnership, Dreamscape Learn, merges the emotional power of the best Hollywood storytelling with the nation’s leader in online and digitally-enhanced education to deliver fully immersive VR learning systems to the ASU community and beyond.
Dreamscape Learn will add avatar-driven VR experiences to both campus-based and online courses, starting with introductory biology and eventually expanding throughout the sciences and beyond. The partnership will also include the establishment of immersive, experiential Dreamscape Learn Labs on ASU campuses, where students will work beside leading-edge science, arts, and engineering faculty to solve problems, explore, and engage with virtual worlds and spaces that are attuned to specific courses and disciplines.
ASU prides itself on being ranked #1 in innovation by U.S. News and World Report (you know, the thing you looked at when you were making up your mind on where to apply for college). Which makes this partnership worth following from both the immersive and the educational angles.
We’ll be following this.
Press Release Follows
Dreamscape Immersive and Arizona State University Launch Bold Partnership to Bring Cutting Edge Virtual Reality to Learners Worldwide
“Dreamscape Learn” Will Transform Educational Experience
Through Exploration
SEPT 18, 2020 — Dreamscape Immersive, the world’s leading virtual reality company, and Arizona State University, the most innovative university in the United States, have teamed up to transform education through exploration.
The new partnership, Dreamscape Learn, merges the emotional power of the best Hollywood storytelling with the nation’s leader in online and digitally-enhanced education to deliver fully immersive VR learning systems to the ASU community and beyond.
Dreamscape Learn will add avatar-driven VR experiences to both campus-based and online courses, starting with introductory biology and eventually expanding throughout the sciences and beyond. The partnership will also include the establishment of immersive, experiential Dreamscape Learn Labs on ASU campuses, where students will work beside leading-edge science, arts, and engineering faculty to solve problems, explore, and engage with virtual worlds and spaces that are attuned to specific courses and disciplines.
With the launch of this educational partnership, ASU joins a list of Dreamscape investors and partners that includes some of the biggest names in media and entertainment, including WarnerMedia, Viacom, Disney, AMC, IMAX, Steven Spielberg, and Hans Zimmer. ASU President Michael M. Crow said the partnership will push the boundaries and set the standard for how people learn in the 21st century and help eliminate learning gaps for students.
“We’ve always known there is huge potential to unlock new learning realms for students by merging VR — and all that it empowers educationally and socially — with advanced, adaptive educational experiences,” President Crow said. “Through Dreamscape Learn, students of all ages will be able to explore completely different worlds and perform complex learning, discovery, and problem-solving tasks that you wouldn’t be able to do in a traditional learning environment or lab in a campus setting.”
Dreamscape CEO Walter Parkes adds, “We believe that 2020 will be seen as an inflection point in the history of education — the moment when society recognized it had both the urgent need and the digital tools to provide first-class educational experiences remotely to a previously unimaginable number of students in previously unimaginable ways. We intend for Dreamscape Learn to be a uniquely important educational asset moving forward.”
The initial Dreamscape Learn experience built for ASU students will be based on Dreamscape’s first original VR adventure, Alien Zoo, which transports users to an orbiting wildlife sanctuary for endangered lifeforms from the far corners of the universe. The concept was developed by Dreamscape Immersive CEO and Co-Founder, Walter Parkes, along with Academy Award-winning director and producer Steven Spielberg.
For Dreamscape Learn, the Alien Zoo will become an immense VR “laboratory” to allow students to explore, observe, and collect digital specimens, and solve problems which reflect the key concepts taught in introductory biology. Working independently or in teams, students will confront issues arising in real wildlife refuges on Earth, such as treating infectious diseases, managing genetic diversity, and balancing food webs. In doing so, they will complete the requisite course work for introductory biology in an entirely new, experiential way.
Dreamscape Immersive has created and exhibited VR experiences with a revolutionary proprietary technology that enables a level of immersion never before achieved in the industry. Unlike all other VR companies, Dreamscape’s leadership comes from the worlds of Hollywood motion pictures, the Disney world of imagination and theme-park attractions, and global live music events.
Parkes and Crow agree that teaching, learning and discovery are at the center of our society’s ability to adapt to new and unexpected challenges. They are designing Dreamscape Learn initiatives with full academic rigor to empower student learning, enhance learning outcomes and accelerate technological innovations that will have broad societal impact.
With more than 230 learning and education technology partners, ASU has long embraced technology as an asset in enhancing learning outcomes, both by expanding access to a university education and by enhancing the learning experience. Dreamscape Learn will offer new opportunities for education through exploration, providing virtual and augmented reality for learning, direct links to human cognition, intelligent tutoring through verbal query, and tools for group learning.
Dreamscape Learn is expected to be available to students in 2021 with rapid expansion into other subjects by 2022.
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About Dreamscape Immersive
Dreamscape Immersive is a world-leading VR company pioneering immersive experiences for entertainment, enterprise, and education. Backed by some of the biggest names in entertainment and media — 21st Century Fox, WarnerMedia, Viacom, Steven Spielberg, and Hans Zimmer — Dreamscape VR combines the emotional power of Hollywood storytelling and the visceral excitement of great theme-park rides with proprietary full-body tracking technology to create audience engagement never before achieved in the industry.
Dreamscape has now extended its state-of-the-art VR platform and immersive content capabilities to students, researchers, and educators via Dreamscape Learn, a new partnership with and investment from the nation’s leading innovator in education, Arizona State University.
Dreamscape was founded in 2017 by an unlikely pairing: an extraordinary group of Swiss technologists with roots in medicine called Artanim and a mix of proven leaders in entertainment. These medical researchers, cinematic heavyweights, live events experts, and gaming veterans all came together under a collective mission: to leverage singular VR technology with Hollywood-certified storytelling to create unforgettable virtual reality experiences. Dreamscape’s founders include Swiss computer scientists Caecilia Charbonnier and Sylvain Chagué; entrepreneur Ronald Menzel; producer, screenwriter, and former head of Dreamworks Motion Pictures, Walter Parkes; former Chief Creative Officer of Disney Imagineering, Bruce Vaughn; global music events producer and serial entrepreneur Kevin Wall; and global live events producer, Aaron Grosky.
The company is headquartered in Los Angeles, with a facility in Geneva. Its location-based VR venues began rolling out across the US and Middle East in December 2018, with additional domestic and international locations coming soon. Dreamscape Learn is set to rollout in 2021. To learn more about Dreamscape, please follow @visitdreamscape or visit our site at: dreamscapeimmersive.com.
About ASU
Arizona State University has developed a new model for the American Research University, creating an institution that is committed to access, excellence and impact. ASU measures itself by those it includes, not by those it excludes. As the prototype for a New American University, ASU pursues research that contributes to the public good, and ASU assumes major responsibility for the economic, social and cultural vitality of the communities that surround it.
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