Yeah, I’ve read the outline about the educational technology, the AR/VR one.

Exactly. That’s the second one. The first one is actually a little bit simpler, and it’s very personal to me because I’m originally from Bolivia. That’s in South America. There, we speak Spanish.

When I was younger, when I was about 10 years old, we moved to the United States. My parents just threw me in English class without knowing any English. I was basically the weird kid in class that would sit in the back and wouldn’t speak. I just developed this habit of studying on my own just because I couldn’t communicate with anybody.

I always appealed to computers and that stuff. When I was younger, people saw me and they gave me opportunities. I got a scholarship to go study. I got summer education. I got to go to private schools, boarding schools, because people kept giving me opportunities.

I graduated school, and I came to Taiwan. That’s where I met Ting. We were working at a previous company. The whole cram school system just didn’t appeal to me, and I didn’t want to be stuck teaching that. Me and Ting decided to open our own company. That’s when we opened up Vine Education.

Our difference is we went the business English route. We went to just teaching adults because like I said we wanted to skip that whole cram school system in Taiwan, focusing on testing, and vocabulary, and grammar.

We opened up Vine Education. We’ve been training adults, training them in language but also in culture, getting them used to dealing with and doing business with foreigners.

COVID-19 happened. 75 to 80 percent of our business is with corporates. At the beginning of this year, they’re like, “No more training, cut that. Switch to online training or wait till next year.” I had lots of free time. What I decided to do is I started going and volunteering at…

I had friends that teach in public schools in Taiwan, so I started volunteering, and I’m like, “All right, let me see what I can do there.” I went to talk to kids basically, teaching them English and about my culture, about Bolivia, and about how English is more than what they find in their books. I started volunteering at all these places.

Then, something interesting happened. This is one of the notes that I received from some students. They always write thank you notes to me. That was nice, but two of them caught my attention.

The first is this one by Daphne. She said, “Sometimes I think English is boring and difficult, but now I changed my mind. Thank you, Daphne.” This was interesting because I only had 40 minutes talking to 30 kids. She felt already, “OK, it isn’t just what’s in my material.”

Another student, she said, “It’s my first time talking to a foreigner,” and this is the class that I was teaching. I was introducing my country and talking about how I learned English. These two things really stuck out to me because it shouldn’t be their first time talking to a foreigner.

That’s right.

They shouldn’t feel that English is difficult, and English is just, “Let me memorize a million things.” There should be aspects of communication in that. That’s really where we excel. I’m like, “How can I give this to them?”

I’ve been trying to think of ways to do this for many, many years, but I realized I can’t because the system is too big. The machine is too big here in Taiwan. There’s too many cram schools, too many special interest groups, too many publishers. There’s too much money floating around, I’m not going to fight the system.

At the same time, Taiwanese produces some incredibly smart kids. Because I proctor SAT, so I see them taking SATs. Man, these guys are good. What they’re doing is not wrong. I just want to add to it. I want to help as much as I can. So I came up with the system. This is what we do for adults when we’re training them for their performance reviews.

Basically, what I want to do is I want to go and sit, give every Taiwanese high school student the experience of interviewing for a university. This is preparing their essay, preparing a CV, and a one-on-one interview with me where I can give them some feedback. What are your goals, and what do you want to do in the future?

I can give them some advice and some help on how to do that. I call this program Who Am I? The reason I say this is because I have students when I meet with them, and I’ve been teaching them one on one for six months, eight months. When I meet them and I say, “How are you?” “Good,” “How’s school?” “OK.” They can’t have a conversation with me.

What I want them to do is I want them to be able to sell themselves, talk about themselves a little bit more. It’s a six-week program. At the beginning, it starts with training the teachers, giving the teachers some support.

Before the program starts, we would go, and we’d meet with their English teachers in their local schools and help them out, give them our lesson plans, give them information, access to our modules, and everything. The students would get a YouTube video of what’s expected to them in this course.

Now, keep in mind I’m not taking them away from their school system or anything.

I’m aware of that.

This would just be six weeks. During these six weeks, we’ll have modules where every week, they’ll have something and they’ll create their CV. They’ll create their personal essay. They’ll peer-review it so they can all help and assist each other. In the last week, they’ll do interview practice.

All of these lessons, once a week, they’ll have online help with that that they can log into our website and have extra videos, extra help, extra assistance. We have that all on our website already that we do for adults, but that’s…

I read through their website. The kids’ English section, I’ve read through that.

[laughs] Thank you. Thank you for looking at it. Finally, at the very end, they get that face-to-face interview with us. What they’ll get is they’ll get individual reports. Every student will get an individual report about their skills and recommendations that they need. They’ll get support through the website.

Most importantly, what I want to do is I want to plant the seed in their head, just like I did with these students here. I want to plant a seed in their head saying, “OK, for the next nine years, there’s hope.”

Right now, it’s 2020. They’re in high school. By the time 2030 comes around, they’re going to be in their first job. They’re going to be applying for jobs. They’re going to be looking at their first promotion. They’re going to be thinking about this stuff. I want them to be competitive.

I was able to start this business with nothing here in Taiwan. Taiwan gave me a lot of opportunity. There is opportunity for them in Taiwan if you want it. That’s what I want to do. I want to basically prepare them so they can be competitive, either in Taiwan when they’re communicating with foreigners or with everyone.

Since we will go and we’ll meet every high school student in Taiwan eventually – I think in the beginning, maybe just start with some pilot, a couple of schools – but eventually, my goal in five years is to be able to literally go to every high school, talk to every student.

Just like someone picked me out for scholarship years ago, I’ll be able to find out who are the key talent for Taiwan, and what resources do they need to be prepared? That’s this program that I’m thinking of.

Anything Ting would like to add? I think…

I’ll let Russ take charge of this, mainly because Russ really is the driver between this kind of work.

I’ve been so focused on the business side, where Russ really has driven in getting into the schools and the kids. Also creating new workshops, new ideas, how can we get more into the education institutions and away from the corporates. Not away, but where we can help all.

In terms of that, the content that Russ mentioned, it’s the tech areas where…Again, I’m not a tech person. Russ more is, but how we would be able to scale it is my concern, and also how to have it sustainable over the years.

Thank you. With 100,000 high school students graduating every year, that means that you have to meet 500 or so students every day in order for you to meet everyone.

[laughs]

I’m not sure, is this actually you’re doing that? By you, it’s you plural? You’re going to train the trainers? [laughs]

It’s us, plural. I’m fortunate enough to have instilled this mentality in all my teachers in my company, so they’ll assist me with it. It won’t be one month. It won’t be six weeks out of the year. It will be spread out, maybe the first half of the year.

This semester, we can be in Northern, then Central, then Southern eventually, and I have teachers in Kaohsiung, and then Hsinchu, in Taichung also that I’ve trained to do this. I did have a…

Sorry to interrupt. Russ, you also mentioned the interview part is there’s two parts, right? There’s one where they would do their self-record, and then the other one where they actually would be face to face afterwards. That’d be like their test in the final week.

Yeah. I’m basically the test, or our teachers are basically the test, where it’s like, “You can cheat. You can copy. You can memorize answer on an exam, but face to face with me, it’s a little bit more difficult.”

I got what you’re saying. I think it’s a very worthwhile goal to work with. The new curriculum actually give you a lot more room compared to the old curriculum where the kids’ time in school was longer, and there was no room for this kind of supplementary teaching.

Now, there is such a room. Even if the school wants, it can just appoint this way of learning as the way to learn English as not just a foreign language but as a second language.

Exactly, exactly. That’s always been a goal of mine when I meet adults. I meet adults that are in their 30s, 40s. They’ve been studying English for years.

I’m like, “Why do you come to me? You don’t need me. You’re not going to get just English from me. I have you for a couple weeks out of the year. I need to give you the tools so you can develop and learn on your own so your own education can be sustainable. You’re 40 years old. You don’t need me to be here. You need me for culture, correction, and advice, but you don’t need me for English.”

I just want to be able to give that but at a younger age, get them started much younger with that.

That’s a pretty good…

It penetrates that learning loop where they get the feedback immediately. They can revise and change things.

Thank you for the introduction. It makes a lot of sense.

Then I’ll move onto the second portion, the tech portion. This one’s a little bit more ambitious. I got started with this idea by copying a Japanese kindergarten basically. There’s this Japanese kindergarten that has this like tree in the middle of it.

They made a TED talk about it, where it’s giving kindergarteners this giant environment to play with, to learn, and to erase borders from them. I liked that. I was like, “Oh, man, I would love to be a part of that.” That exists in Japan. That doesn’t exist in Taiwan, and I’m not going to build a kindergarten in Taiwan.

I’m like, “All right, what can I do? How can I transport these kids? Now, I’m talking to younger age. I’m talking maybe 4 to 12 years old. How can I transport them to another world?” I toyed around with AR and VR. But I hit wall, after wall, after wall; mostly equipment, mostly the controllers, wires. Especially for kids, it’s just a big mess.

Ting here is wearing a AR device. I see it on screen. It’s called air pods.

He has the air pods and he has the background, but Ting is stationary.

It is the AR device. I’m sorry?

Ting is stationary. Me, you, and Ting, we’re all on stationary. We’re sitting down looking at a screen.

That’s right.

What I came up with was something called the learning room. Basically, the learning room is a learning environment for younger kids to do. On the outside, you have this sensory experience. You have like a museum, like a library. It’s all these places where they can run around and touch things.

It’s completely all-English environment. There’s no Chinese in this environment. It is for them to experience English in sights, and sounds, and touches, and everything. I also played around with a magic mirror, which is Johnson, the exercise company. They have this mirror that can scan you, and you can do body exercise stuff. I played around with that. That was a lot of fun.

We’ve been working – me and some friends that own a tech company – we’ve been toying around with that, seeing how we can involve English and not just exercising. We have all these cool demos and stuff.

What I’m most interested in, even we created some virtual characters where the students, young people are having online classes with us. They don’t see me. They see this avatar.

Like FaceRig? I’m aware of that technology.

Exactly. I want to create a sensor that has all these things in it for them to experience English, for them to connect to teachers all over the world, and connect to students all over the world. Most importantly, they have this thing called the learning room.

I’ve been to a museum. In the museum, I saw this wall. This wall is a touchscreen wall where they go around and they move the pictures around. It’s fun. It’s cool. It’s a nice demo, but that has potential. What I want to do is I want to develop a room that’s four touchscreen wall LCD panels. In this, I create my learning modules.

It’s the space that the kids walk in, and we have different learning modules for them. Outside, when they go in, “What’s our lesson plan today?” “Today, we’re going to talk about transportation.” They go inside the learning room, and they talk, and you have a 25-minute lesson on transportation. All the walls are touchscreen.

They’re kids, there’s a group four to six of them. They walk in there, and they’re touching. They’re seeing. Maybe I can put them in a subway, and they can walk around. They can touch the stool. This is the chair. This is the train. This is the train conductor. As they touch, the words are coming out. We can have lessons. We can have games.

I separate it into three different parts. The first part is situational experiences where we can create almost like an escape room. We can transport them to rain forests, deserts, and anywhere we want really. We can create reading experiences for them. We can have the text on screen. That text is read for them. They have these images all around them.

They’re not just sitting there looking straight at their teacher. They’re experiencing a whole new world. We have interactive experiences. Because they’re touchscreen panels, we’ll be able to do games like, “What is the bear doing?”

The words pop up around them like in one word, it says sleeping, and the first kid to go touch the word sleeping wins. You got it correct. We can do lots of great learning modules.

The basic concept behind it is just with younger kids, we find that they’re a little bit more kinesthetic learning. They enjoy running around, jumping. They learn through that kind of experience.

It’s called room-scale VR. I understand the premise of immersion. Also, to sustain immersion, you really only need three walls. The other wall can be a door, but let me not interrupt you. Please continue.

That’s exactly what I’m hoping to do. The nice thing about…What I think that we have raised, because I have these years of lesson plans already and I have this IT background, I want to merge that into just one thing.

I can create a room like this so we can have parents bring their kids and play, either outside play, interact with foreigners, like that student said, “The first time I talked to foreigner.” No, just go around, talk, read. There’s a reading corner, different places that that they can do.

Even just playing video games or whatever, as long as they’re experiencing an English world, English environment and then, as they go in for their class, this is their classroom. We can do all sorts of great stuff with that. This is the other part, the learning room that I’m interested in.

That sounds very, very clever. I will also say that if the kids see themselves, the digital doubles like avatars appearing on the other side of the virtual room, that makes it even more compelling. Previously, VR immersions are like a solo experience, because the wall doesn’t really respond to whatever you’re doing except when you touch them.

You can’t really even do the kind of video conferencing we are doing now, but now technology has evolved so that even with a very simple webcam, we can actually put ourselves into what we call the Together Mode in Microsoft Teams.

If you are a host, you can switch our conversation into Together Mode, and then suddenly we feel like we’re looking into a mirror together. That is also very compelling. Skype also has that mode now for group calls.

For group classes, yeah. That’s great. Part of that – you mentioned that group class – that was what I was struggling with when I was doing VR. When I was doing AR, I always have to have a phone in my hand. I don’t want the device in my hand. When I was doing VR, it’s just me by myself. I’m sitting there learning by myself.

I was like, “I don’t want to burden parents with buying this device. I’d have to wait for them to buy in order for me to be able to make something from it.” By doing something like this, we can have four or five kids that are learning together, talking to each other, and communicating with each other, interacting with each other in English.

Talking to each other in English won’t be an awkward situation. It would just be like, “Oh, quickly, we have to do this. We have to do this.”

That’s right. I like it, totally.

Just 10 days ago, Skype got the Together Mode. They took it from the Teams team.

I just posted the link to you. I had a conversation using that mode and find it to be quite pleasurable. That’s also something your VR experience maybe take a page from.

That was a lot of fun. However, what I found trouble with is when adults and students getting them to turn on their camera. Oh my god, it’s such a fight. They’re like, “Oh, my room is messy. Oh, I didn’t put on make-up.”

That’s exactly what this mode does. It just automatically removes the background. For each of us, it’s just us, but nothing that is in the background. That makes people happier, I guess.

[laughs]

Then you also mentioned avatars like FaceRig, in which case this is just your sound alone can animate to your avatar characters. You don’t even need a webcam. That is also something that may be useful.

That would be good. For some of our teachers overseas, that would be good. Sometimes we have some teachers that work overseas, and maybe their audio connection will be important.

That’s right, because if they only send their audio connection, and at most, maybe their hands, where their hands are, there are also technologies that can just report where their hands are and nothing more. That will bring their avatar fully animated.

What’s your advice on how can I make these things a reality for Taiwan?

Sure. There are many communities already working on deploying such technologies. This is the education and technology, the ed tech community. There’s summits. There’s meetups. I just recently spoke to what they call the…I think the idea is called “Dream to the Power of N, or [non-English speech] .” I’m pasting you the link.

It’s in Mandarin, but they are specifically just touring around Taiwan, finding the teachers in all sorts of basic education in order to train the trainers basically and make sure that newer ideas around competence-based learning, as well as not as foreign but as second language and so on, are spread across the island.

There’s already a sizable community. I think they say they have members around 20 percent of active teachers in basic education, which is a really large percentage. I would encourage you to engage with the education technology communities. Of course, it’s not just Dream to the Power of N. There’s many ones like that.

But if you can make sure that they integrate it into their methodologies, then other people will do the spreading of the idea, will spread it for you.

Great. I’ll look into that. Thank you for listening.

Thank you for the time. This is really exciting story.

Thank you. If you have any other advice or anything, or think of something, something comes up in the future, please send me an email. Something that can get me started, OK?

All right. Live long and prosper.

Thank you so much.

Bye.

Thank you for your time.