This virtual lab will revolutionize science class

Today I am going to show you
how this tablet

and this virtual reality
headset that I'm wearing

is going to completely
revolutionize science education.

And I'm also going to show you

how it can make any science teacher
more than twice as effective.

But before I show you how
all of this is possible,

let's talk briefly

about why improving the quality of science
education is so vitally important.

If you think about it,

the world is growing incredibly fast.

And with that growth

comes a whole list of growing challenges.

Challenges such as dealing
with global warming,

solving starvation and water shortages,

and curing diseases,

to name just a few.

And who exactly is going to help us
solve all of these great challenges?

Well, to [various degrees]
it is these young students.

This is the next generation
of young, bright scientists

and in many ways,

we all rely on them

for coming up with new, great innovations

to help us solve all
these challenges ahead of us.

And so a couple of years back,

my cofounder and I were teaching
university students,

just like these,

only the students we were teaching
looked a little bit more like this here.

(Laughter)

And yes, this is really
the reality out there

in way too many universities
around the world.

Students that are bored, disengaged

and sometimes not even sure why they're
learning about a topic in the first place.

So we started looking around for new,
innovative teaching methods,

but what we found was quite disappointing.

We saw that books were being
turned into e-books.

black boards were being turned
into Youtube videos

and lecture hall monologues
were being turned into MOOCs;

massive online open courses.

And if you think about it,

all we're really doing here
is taking the same content

and the same format,

and bringing it out to more students.

Which is great --

don't get me wrong.

That is really great,

but the teaching method
is still more or less the same,

no real innovation there.

So we started looking elsewhere,

and what we found

was the flight simulators
had been proven over and over again

to be far more effective

when used in combination with real,
in-flight training to train the pilots.

And so we thought to ourselves:

why not just apply that to science?

Why not build a virtual
laboratory simulator?

Well, we did it.

We basically set out to create

a fully simulated, one-to-one,
virtual reality laboratory simulator,

where the students
could perform experiments

with mathematical equations

that would simulate what would
happen in a real world lab.

But not just simple simulations,

we would also create advanced simulations
with top universities like MIT,

to bring out cutting-edge cancer
research to these students.

And suddenly the universities
could save millions of dollars

by letting the students
perform virtual experiments

before they go into the real laboratory.

And not only that,

now the could also understand --

even on a molecular level
inside the machine --

what is happening to the machines.

And then they could suddenly perform
dangerous experiments in the labs as well.

For instance also here,

learning about salmonella bacteria,

which is an imporant topic

that many school cannot teach
for a good safety reasons.

And we of course quiz the students

and then give the teachers
a full dashboard,

so they fully understand
where the students are at.

But we didn't stop there

because we had seen just how important
meaning is for the students' engagement