XR for Crossover Podcast - Julie and Alan Smithson Chat About Education and Immersive Learning XR for Learning

After a short hiatus, Julie is back with a special episode, where she interviews (is interviewed by?) her partner in business and life, Alan Smithon, who you may know from our sister podcast, XR for Business.







Julie: Hi, my name is Julie Smithson.



Alan: And I'm Alan Smithson.



Julie: And this is the XR for Learning podcast.



Alan: Well... which podcast are we on? Is it mine or yours?



Julie: I think it's mine.



Alan: Yours, so the XR for Learning podcast.



Julie: Yeah.



Alan: I'm going to interview you.



Julie: Yes.



Alan: OK, cool.



Julie: Hi, my name is Julie Smithson, and I am your XR for Learning podcast host. In all of my episodes, I talk about the way that we need to change the way that we learn and we teach, to adapt to the immersive technologies that are being implemented in enterprise and business today. So today, my guest -- my special guest -- is Alan Smithson.



Alan: Hello.



Julie: My partner and husband of almost 20 years. And we're going to talk about education. So welcome. Thanks for being on *my* podcast.



Alan: Thank you so much for having me. I'm a little nervous, I'm not going to lie. This is an interesting podcast dynamic.



Julie: It really is. We've never done this before.



Alan: No, we have not. So I want to ask you questions, because you are the guru in immersive learning systems. So we'll hopefully kind of dig up where this lies, and what we have to do as a society to really push the needle forward.



Julie: So what I like to do with all my podcasts is start with a baseline technology. Where are we today? Like, what's going on today? Which is really good question, because it's definitely different than it was six months ago.



Alan: I would say, in the industry-- I'm coming from the business side of things. What we've seen is there's been a hyper-acceleration of digitization. So in retail and e-com, it has been decimated. People couldn't go to a store physically, and so everything moved online. And in e-commerce, we're seeing shopping trends that would have existed in 2030 happen today. This is trickling down to everything, not only retail, but then also meetings. Everybody's meeting on Zoom these days. Everybody. There's just-- we're moving to digital and we're moving to these things much faster than we had ever, ever hoped to do. Plans of digital transformation that would have taken five years are now happening today. So it's an interesting time to revisit and relook at what does education look like in an exponential world of digital transformation.



Julie: And this is where the skillsets that are now needed -- in enterprise, business, and organizations today to digitally transform -- those skillsets are not being taught in the school system today. So COVID coming in and forcing people to virtually connect online, the education systems were forced to actually be online and rethink how they're teaching things. But the unfortunate thing is, is that we didn't get to the point of talking about what we were actually teaching. It was just more of a digital connection for the past six months.



Alan: Well, I think since this thing has hit, it's been really just how do we make the technology work in a seamless way that is comfortable for both the teachers and the students? And to be honest, we're not quite there yet. My kids are more tech savvy than--



Julie: Our kids.



Alan: Our kids. I'm sor