[Coral-List] Re. Underwater 360 imagery/VR dives

[Katie Ebanks]

Good Morning Geoffery and Coral-List,

My name is Katie Ebanks and I wanted to respond to your message over NOAA's Coral-list server concerning obtaining imagery to create virtual experiences for your students. I am the Education Manager at the Central Caribbean Marine Institute (CCMI) based primarily out of the Little Cayman Research Centre, a non-profit in the Cayman Islands; While we do not have any 360 imagery to provide you with, I did want to bring your attention to one of our most popular and FREE education projects which is similar and may be of interest to you, called Reefs Go Live.

Reefs Go Live is a Virtual Live Experience (VLE), where one of our researchers or educators teaches a marine science lesson, in real time from the coral reefs of Little Cayman, Cayman Islands. These broadcasts are delivered 4-6 times annually each Spring, with all lessons following the standards set in place by the Cayman Islands National Science Curriculum, which is based off curriculums from the UK and USA. All lessons include a full lesson plan for educators, an activity sheet for students, a vocabulary sheet and 'test', as well as additional resources on the topic delivered. These broadcasts are recorded and saved on both our website and YouTube channel for educators to use at a later time, should they not be able to join us live. Since the project's inception in 2018, Reefs Go Live has produced over 25 broadcasts in over 35 different countries to thousands of students and educators. It is truly a remarkable project with generous funding both locally from within the Cayman Islands and internationally. Check out the Reefs Go Live portion of our website here: https://reefresearch.org/what-we-do/education/reefs-go-live/

If you (or anyone else on Coral-List!) have any questions about Reefs Go Live or any of our other education programmes, please don't hesitate to contact me directly...as I LOVE to talk about this amazing project!
Best, Katie

Katie Ebanks (She/her)

Education Manager

Central Caribbean Marine Institute (CCMI)

1-345-948-1094 (Office)

1-345-324-9320 (Cell)

kebanks at reefresearch.org<mailto:kebanks at reefresearch.org>

Reefresearch.org<http://reefresearch.org/>

Facebook<https://www.facebook.com/reefresearch/> | Instagram<https://www.instagram.com/reefresearch/>


“Sustaining marine diversity through research, education, outreach, and conservation"

Message: 1
Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2022 19:06:00 +0000 (UTC)
From: Geoff Cook <geoffreymcook at yahoo.com>
To: Coral List <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
Subject: [Coral-List] Underwater 360 imagery/VR dives
Message-ID: <2132354246.3984326.1664996760655 at mail.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

Greetings Listers,
I hope this note finds you well.
I'm writing to ask if anyone out there has experience obtaining underwater 360 imagery. I am interested in using this kind of imagery to create "virtual dives" that can be experienced via Oculus2 headsets for the purpose of teaching students about the marine environment.?
While taking students underwater on SCUBA would be preferable, that option is not possible at my institution so I am trying to determine if a virtual approach would be feasible.
My sincere thanks in advance for any tips you are willing to offer?about relevant equipment, app building, etc.
Wishing you all the very best.Geoff?

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