Students bring memories to life with virtual tours

SPRINGDALE, Ark.—Two students adjusted the virtual reality headset so Eddie Sue Adams could get a clear view. She was sitting in an armchair in the Rocking Chair Inn retirement home while she experienced a 360-degree view of a boat gliding across a lake.

“Move slowly to the left and right,” Adam Teakell said.

Adams moved her head. She saw kids playing and heard them laughing.

“I liked the video very much,” she said. “It was like being there—back on my son’s boat.”

The experience is part of the Back to the Past project by four seventh-graders in the EAST program at Sonora Middle School, the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported.

Teakell, Alyssa Wilson, Brayden Hamilton and Kylee Dunn are diligently working this semester to make the inn residents’ memories come to life.

EAST is a project-based, service-learning oriented program that provides students with high-end technology to find creative solutions to real problems in their community.

Sonora was one of many Arkansas schools that implemented the initiative in the 2014-15 school year.

Many joined before and since totaling 221 EAST schools today in the state, according to the nonprofit group’s website.

Derek Ratchford, the Sonora EAST teacher, said he is very hands-off and wants his students to learn through trial and error to navigate technological, legal and other hurdles that might come their way.

After some setbacks with their original client idea last spring, Wilson remembered volunteering at the Rocking Chair Inn where she heard residents’ stories, and noticed how the stories changed a little each time they were told.

“We were hoping to help them get one of their most precious memories back,” she said.

Wilson and Dunn asked some of the residents what places and times they would most like to revisit. The girls explained their group planned to record 360-degree video that could be viewed virtually through headsets attached to a cellphone.

It took some explaining, Dunn said, but residents said they liked the idea once they understood what the group was trying to do.

Once they had a concept, Teakell and Hamilton came in on the tech side. Teakell filmed and uploaded the finished product onto YouTube. Hamilton has a knack for editing and learned the ins and outs of Adobe Premier Pro.

The group gathered as many details as possible about some of the residents favorite moments and places to try to capture what made those memories special, Ratchford said.