These included an augmented reality storybook, complete with QR codes to scan and view “pop up” material, as well as an augmented reality experience – along with accompanying lesson plans – which lets students “play together” with traditional instruments, supplementing their learning about traditional Korean music in the classroom. She also brought along some augmented reality cards for audience members to scan and see augmented reality effects showcasing a tiny traditional Korean dancer.

“It’s always about giving information in context, and showing the application of knowledge,” says Vasey. “So, I think giving lots of case studies is really important. Bringing that information closer to people so that they resonate with it and can take it on is really important to me.”

It’s a philosophy that informs the way she approaches learning with her own kids, too: “If I teach them something, ’I ask ‘what can this actually be used for? And how could you use it?’”

Teaching education to sing

Art and creativity are core interests for Vasey, who is also a keen music-lover. During the pre-conference set-up for the summit, Vasey turned up in a Led Zeppelin shirt, and and she finds that music is a natural lens through which to examine and discuss education with her.

From Beethoven to J Dilla, the music industry has always been successful at harnessing new ideas and innovating, while simultaneously working within its core elements. How can education do the same? Vasey gamely runs with the idea of music as a point of comparison, but points out that unlike teachers, musicians have time and space to experiment, and that very few musicians create completely on their own.

“The difference between musicians and educators is that musicians do have an awful lot of studio time, where the whole point there is to do some kind of cool experimentation, riff off the other band members and break things, make things,” she says. “Unfortunately, what happens with teachers is they’re very, very time poor. And they did their studying [on] how to become a teacher a number of years ago, when all of this technology wasn’t here.”

In order for extended reality technologies to actually help teachers, Vasey argues, it is important to create a similar system of connections and space for experimentation between educators and tech collaborators. This could work by having industry professionals enter schools to show educators what they’ve been working on, and let teachers experiment alongside them, or having more material available in case study format for teachers to build lessons around in the classroom.

“If we don’t do that, teachers are always going to be very much left behind, and always playing that catch-up game,” she says.

Creativity as a competitive advantage

Having been a teacher, a lawyer and a Director of Arts, Vasey seems particularly well-placed to connect the worlds of education, technology and art. She refers to her career history as a “journey of self-discovery”, and she credits all these experiences for making her a better entrepreneur overall.

For her, art is a way to communicate and connect, and she is incredibly thoughtful when it comes to talking about what art means to her. “Art is a way that we can connect with each other and see each other through different ways,” she tells QS Insights Magazine.

Coming from the legal world, Vasey says she would often find herself reading a 300-page contract, wishing that there could be places for “a little diagram or something” to make the heavy material more comprehensible.

“A picture cannot communicate everything, because it's obviously down to interpretation,” she says. “But it's a route into a world that can then explain something.”

At the same time, art is also a great method of storytelling to pass on heritage and folklore, she adds. It is also “very much around conversations”, she says, offering focal points for connecting with others by asking, for example, what someone else thinks of a particular painting or sculpture.

Turning towards the pragmatic, Vasey also points out that art and creativity are key in terms of education, giving students the downtime to just experiment, create and stand out in a world of 8 billion people and counting.

“I think as we go forward into this Metaverse age, this is when we're going to have the dawn of the digital creator as being absolutely key,” she says.

“How you have that competitive advantage is to be able to innovate and think creatively about the changing world and the changing technologies that we have, and the changing needs of our people and planet.”

Vasey with Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook. Photo: Kay Vasey

Design for the “lowest common denominator”

Connection and a route into another world can equally be applied to Vasey’s view of how augmented and virtual reality can be used for education, with their ability to broaden access to learning.

Looking to the future, she’s excited about platforms like Roblox and Fortnite Creative, which she says can be used in classrooms to “augment, not replace'' traditional methods.

“My eight-year-old came to me the other day and… told me all about how bees pollinate flowers, and how honey is made, all just through playing Bee Simulator on Roblox, where you can either play the bee and fly around or you can play the apiarist who's actually harvesting the honey,” she says.

It’s these sorts of “experiential learning journeys” that Vasey and her team are really interested in, she says, and want to do more of.

Even so, she acknowledges that discussions about augmented and virtual reality can sometimes be used as a way to whitewash existing inequities in education.

These technologies are “entry points to the Metaverse”, stresses Vasey, but she agrees that virtual reality in particular has “massive problems” when it comes to affordability and accessibility.

“There simply are not enough headsets around, and the headsets that are around are still at a price point that you're not necessarily going to want to have at home all the time.”

Things can be different when it comes to augmented reality accessed via smartphone, however. Here, an important consideration for MeshMinds is to always design for the lowest common denominator, says Vasey.

“We still have super old Android smartphones – old iPhones as well – that we always test the experiences on to make sure that we're designing for those phones,” she says.

“We want more of these educational experiences to reach every corner of the globe, but it requires us all to come together and make experiences that are inclusive.”

This article was published originally in QS Insights Magazine 8.