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Courtesy of Woofbert, Inc. and College Bound
College Bound student DeAnia Brown experiences art through a pair of Woofbert's VR goggles.
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Courtesy of Woofbert, Inc. and College Bound
Leonard Stewart wearing a pair of Woofbert's VR goggles.
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Courtesy of Woofbert, Inc. and College Bound
College Bound student Chastity Smith.
From the baby wearing the onesie representing his grandfather’s alma mater, to the four year-old girl learning to play tennis so that she may one day play at the collegiate level, and the seemingly endless discussions of private versus public high schools, one thing is evident: some Americans take higher education for granted.
But when it comes to attending college, there is often a gap between low-income and high-income families.
A St. Louis-based organization, College Bound, provides students from under-resourced backgrounds support and guidance in their journey toward higher education. Through academic enrichment, social support and life skills, students gain the necessary tools needed for college and beyond. Nicole Rainey, Senior Manager of Grants and Communications at College Bound, shares the profound impact that the organization has had so far. “The students in our program all dream of going to college and they all face barriers to that dream,” she says. “Our students are very diverse, so their barriers are all different. One of the things a lot of the students have in common is that neither parent has completed college, which research shows to be a predictor of the daughter/son going to college.
”We have this comprehensive program that provides a really diverse range of services for our students—predicting the barriers a student may face and helping the student overcome those barriers,” she adds. It is this opportunity—to build the depth of relationship with the students—that Rainey values most.
Leonard Stewart, a senior at Clyde C. Miller Academy, has been a part of the College Bound program for the last three years. He believes the program has helped him define and shape his goals. “It puts a positive light on my options when it comes to college and it’s just real optimistic,” Stewart says. When asked what he has gained in particular from the program, he replied, “wisdom and friends.” This fall, Stewart plans to attend Cornell College in Iowa, and has chosen the practical major of engineering. His true passion lies in the arts, particularly fashion.
On March 29, College Bound teamed up with Woofbert, Inc. ("WbVR"), the leading Virtual Reality arts education platform that “uses VR technology to create and deliver content-rich, user-driven, immersive experiences of museums and cultural sites around the world.” WbVR transports students out of the classroom, beyond the textbook and into the space where art lives.
Larissa Bailiff, Senior Editor, Education & Content at Woofbert, was one of the representatives who came to work with the students at College Bound. “Virtual reality works by creating a sense of ‘presence’ in the user,” she explains. That is to say, within the HMD (head mounted-display) or goggles, the experience seems so real through minute detail and the ability to look around in every direction, walk around, etc., that the user feels that they have been transported to another place; they feel fully there in another space and/or time.”
Stewart happened to be one of the students partaking in this Visual Arts Reality experience. When asked what his experience was like, Stewart described it as “Extraordinary. This is my first time ever using the Virtual Reality [goggles], and it’s not like I thought it would be, it has exceeded my expectations.” For Stewart, his favorite part of the visit was getting to go inside the painting.
When asked what the purpose of bringing College Bound students a virtual reality visit from a museum across the world is, Bailiff explained: “Most students can't make it across an ocean to see art. Some won’t even get to visit a museum in their lifetime. We wanted to share our Courtauld Gallery and Turner Contemporary experiences with these students to give them a sense of freedom, to transport them to a place they might otherwise not feel able to go to for a whole host of reasons...These collections include iconic paintings: Impressionist and Post-Impressionist in one gallery, and very different post-war abstract works by Helen Frankenthaler in the other. We wanted to share our virtual reality experiences with the students and have them feel immersed in, and connected to, a deep sense of history, as well as a more global sense of space and time. Virtual Reality has been associated with spurring empathy and opening up new creative pathways of understanding and memory.” “We learned a lot from them," She added. "It was a beautiful classroom exchange on many levels.”
For more information on College Bound, visit collegeboundstl.org.
