Today was an early-ish start as I’m off to Adelaide. While I’m here I’m meeting a few different places/people and first on my list is Aberfoyle Park High School.
Thanks to David Gardiner, I was welcomed to present to the Grade 8 advanced math classes. I wasn’t sure what would excite them but I thought if anything would, HoloLens would.
It’s the first presentation I’ve done where I had questions before I even opened my mouth!
I started with the “boring stuff” – how I got into IT, what sorts of things I work on etc. and included a few pics or the technology I grew up with for some context.
Out of all the pictures I showed Donkey Kong got the biggest reaction as it seems a lot of Dad’s had one of these…which is not surprising since their dad is probably a similar age to me.
With the boring stuff over, it was time to bring out something more fun. The vibe in the room immediately changed from disinterest/distracted to electric!
David’s daughter had a play with the HoloLens before the session and kindly allowed me to take a pic…
I had no shortage of volunteers to show off how the device works. The students played with Dippy endlessly putting in on people’s laps, changing from female, to male to babies.
There were endless ooohhs, ahhhs and of course “Can I have the next turn?”
In amongst all of that there were good questions. Including what Dippy was for. Again I was surprised that some of the students knew what a Diprotodon was.
I was also really impressed (but not surprised) at how quickly the students “got” the airtap and gaze. Most of them preferred the “C” method and quickly adapted to turning their waist rather than their head when they had their hand in front.
Thanks to the teachers who allowed me to take over their class for the afternoon and then would have had to get them to concentrate afterwards.