Bill Ballo
I did one use a pig heart, but I dripped blood on things, and that wasn't popular. So I decided that, hey, this would be really cool. And within a month—I mean, that was 2019—within a month I was using it in my classes, and my students were wowed.
Brad Scoggin
Well, welcome back to the ArborXR Industry Leaders Podcast. I'm your host, Brad Scoggin, the CEO and co-founder of ArborXR, along with my co-host, Will Stackable, also a co-founder and our CMO. And today we get to visit with Bill Ballo. Bill is faculty at Madison College in Madison, Wisconsin, and Bill actually started one of the first VR labs on a college campus back in the late 2010s. Bill, you got started in EMS. I'd love to hear kind of where that came from.
Bill Ballo
Yeah, sure. So, 1996. Sometimes it hurts to say that, but back in 1996, I started as an EMT, went to EMT school, and loved EMT school. I hated school up until that point. Definitely. So, when I graduated from high school in 1993, I went directly into the military. That was what I was going to do, and that was it. I knew that was what I was going to do, but I wound up getting a discharge out of basic training, and I was kind of lost for a while. Then I decided I wanted to be a combat medic. So I decided, you know what? I'll just do it in the civilian world. And so that's what I decided to do. So, in 1996, I went to EMT school, and that really gave me direction. I found something that I really liked doing. I didn't really like high school. I didn't really like college. I barely passed high school. But EMT school really kind of gave me a direction, gave me a purpose.
So I went to paramedic school two years after that. I've been in EMS now for going on 30 years, and it was one of the greatest things I did. I worked as a regular EMT and medic. I worked for a private service, a public service, and a fire service. I just loved it. Then I got into education. I started to look at, you know, what would I want to do? Right? That was when I decided to go to the University of Florida. I didn't go to the University of Florida for anything medical-related. I went for a degree in telecommunications, and I got my bachelor's in telecommunications from the University of Florida. But I loved it. I was there during the national championships and all that stuff. It was a little different. I was the 30-year-old guy going to class, so that was a little weird.
So I got a really good idea when I went to college. I finally did my master's degree in public health. So I kind of came back to the medical field, but I got a really good idea of what I liked in terms of education and what I didn't like in terms of education—things that I liked in the classroom, things I didn't like in the classroom. That kind of helped guide me because I got into education because my wife was an educator. I met my wife in 2007, and she was an educator. I thought, well, I wonder if education would be interesting. So I decided to do that, and that actually turned out to be one of the best things I ever did. EMS—being a paramedic, being an EMT—that was fantastic. I loved it. Being able to teach it was a treat for me.
I think some of the best use cases we have found come out of the pain that you're feeling. So you have this EMS background. You have kind of a love for teaching. You're developing a love for teaching. You also know what you didn't like when you were being taught in the classroom.
Brad Scoggin
So how did all that come together to bring VR?
Bill Ballo
Yeah. So, I got bored very easily with PowerPoints. I always looked at the PowerPoint as the same thing as the overhead projector. They didn't really change it; they just made it a little snazzier. I never really wanted to stand up in front of the class and click through slides. I would walk around. I'd go sit down next to my students. We'd have discussions, those kinds of things. So I was looking for ways to make things more interesting because, once the smartphone came out, I started teaching right as it was getting really popular. The smartphone comes out, and then I'm fighting against it to try to make things interesting for my students.
But I think one of the things that really did it for me was my cardiology class. I was famous for my cardiology class. My students loved my cardiology classes, but I was always looking for new ways to make them more interesting and more engaging. I was working on a different project with my now-supervisor, Carly Brady. Carly came to me and said, "Hey, I know you do all this kind of cool stuff." This was before we were working together full-time, but we were working on a different project. She said, "I know you do all this cool stuff. I've got something I want to show you." She introduced me to a program that we use called Acadicus.
I hadn't put on a VR headset since 1995 in the mall, when you were shooting pterodactyls out of the sky and you had this monstrous headset and a big old tether. So I put the VR headset on, and they had already found out that cardiology was my thing. They had a heart in there that was about the size of me. It was cut in half, beating, and all of that. Previously, I had been using a little plastic heart under a document camera. I did one use a pig heart, but I dripped blood on things, and that wasn't popular. So I decided that, hey, this would be really cool. And within a month—I mean, that was 2019—within a month I was using it in my classes, and my students were wowed. They loved it. They found it much more interesting, much more engaging, and we even looked at what we could do further with it. I didn't really look at it as a simulation tool. I looked at it as a lecture tool. I know a lot of places look at it more as a simulation tool. For me, it was, "How can I make my lectures better?" Students loved it, so I just kept doing it.
Eventually, the pandemic rolled around, and then we had a new problem to solve. We were losing clinical time. So then we actually did have to start looking at it as, could we use this as a simulation tool? By the summer of 2020, we had our students using it as a simulation tool. So we moved that fast.
It was great. The momentum was great. I had a lot of backing from my management, my supervisor, her supervisor. I had a really great amount of support, and we got it going.
I'll go back about three years because all of that stuff—me doing individual projects, bringing laptops around, helping people do simulations by bringing laptops around—that was great. But we needed a place. We needed a center. We needed somewhere for people to go. So, in 2023, myself, my supervisor Carly, and one of our partners with Acadicus all started getting together to create an Extended Reality Center.
So, in May of 2023—May the 4th—we had a big Star Wars party and our official grand opening. On that day, I had three programs working with me: EMS, which is not fair because that's me, respiratory therapy, and nursing. That was it. Three. Today, we are at about 30 programs.
Bill Ballo
We have nursing, EMS, dental, respiratory therapy. We have CNA, botany, vet techs, Spanish classes, English as a Second Language, marketing, 3D art classes, the volleyball team, meteorology, biotechnology, automotive, and intramural sports. We just started an intramural sports program. We played golf in VR, and it's great. It gets people that exposure to VR, but then it also gets them in the center talking about VR. Then it gets them wondering, "Well, I don't know if my teacher uses VR." That's kind of where I come in: "Well, how could we use VR in any of the classes that they're doing?" So I have always kind of made it my policy to never say no. If somebody comes in and they want to use VR, let's find a way to do it.
Brad Scoggin
What do you think when you think about the impact? I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of powerful examples. Does one or two stories come to mind when student’s have an “a-ha” moment? How do you think about?
Bill Ballo
Yeah, I get a lot of that in medical simulation. One of the things that happened that was really, really impactful—I had a student who... We do both PC-based and standalone VR. What we use for medical simulations is PC-based because we want really high fidelity, and that's what we get by using PCs. So anyway, the student was taking care of a patient. The whole idea was that he was a gentleman who had come home recently from a hospital visit. He wasn't feeling so great, and eventually he goes into cardiac arrest. Then they have to work through the cardiac arrest—CPR, giving medications, all of that kind of stuff. I changed the patient's vital signs, but then I also changed his appearance. I took the patient from a normal skin appearance to a very pale skin appearance. Almost immediately, she looked down and went, "Oh, that's not right," and looked up at the monitor. That's something that I try to train my students to do: always look at your patient first. You'll see the changes in your patient before you sometimes see changes on the monitor.
So she's looking at the patient. I take him from a normal skin tone to a pale skin tone, and she immediately goes, "That's not right," and looks up at the monitor and realizes that the patient has gone into a lethal rhythm. Then she goes through the entire treatment process. So it was the connection between the visuals within VR and her previous knowledge that really made that connection because, with the rubber manikins, it's a little hard to do that.
Brad Scoggin
Yeah. Right. Well, I mean that type of training and that kind of an “a-ha” moment could literally save a life at some point. You’re able to experience that in a moment when there’s no consequences. I think I’ve seen a quote from you on this, but something we think about a lot is, as excited as we are about VR since it’s such a powerful tool for learning, I mean, we always say that it's transforming how people learn, right? It's more access, it's faster, it's better attention. But even with all that said, I think that VR, at its best, is still an augment to traditional learning. I think it's finding how those pieces fit together. If you go too far one way or the other, I think it doesn't work. So how have you approached that?
Bill Ballo
It's a tool like any other. Look at it as a tool. Look at it as a way to make your lectures more interesting and engaging if you're simply using it in lecture classes. That's wonderful. I have one of my instructors who uses it in the LPN program as part of the lecture. It's like a lecture-hybrid simulation. Three students will go into VR, the other students will be watching what's going on on the big screen, and they all kind of contribute to it. We deliver a baby. Most of them have no point of reference for delivering a baby. Some are parents; some aren't. But many of them don't have a point of reference. So what this experience gives them is a point of reference, so that when they're listening to that lecture or discussion or anything like that, they're able to go back in their brain and see that experience.
This is what I do with my students. It's not just—we do things like case studies and stuff like that, and that's great—but I can see that case study in my head. My student can't. So what I decided I was going to do was start doing some case studies in VR. I did them in VR. I recorded them as 3D recordings, and then I made them into 2D and put them on YouTube, that kind of stuff. So the students can watch what's going on in my 2D recording on YouTube, or they can go into the headset and actually be where I was, watching everything I'm doing and seeing everything I'm explaining, almost as if we were standing together in a one-on-one clinical environment.
Now you can connect to it. If I tell you about a congestive heart failure patient and let you listen to lung sounds on a little puck lung sound simulator and stuff like that, I'm not giving you the connection to a patient. But if I tell you this is Miles Johnson, and Miles is having congestive heart failure, you get to see that his legs are swollen, you get to listen to his lung sounds—
You get to hear from him personally. I voice all the patients, so it's me with an accent. My Miles has a bit of a Northeastern accent. Simon has a Southern accent, those kinds of things. So now you're not just talking to some static thing. You're talking to a person. You're just talking to me, but you're taking the visual of you and me talking out of it, and you're immersed in a full environment.
I get a lot of students who say they like it better because they really feel like they were immersed in the environment and not just in the room. You know, we did birthing yesterday. Today we're going over congestive heart failure. It's the same room, same environment. The mannequin looks different.
Will Stackable
I'm curious. You started out with just a couple of programs, and now you have 30. I think you said you have 80-something headsets between PC-based and standalone. Tell me about that. What was the ground game of getting... I mean, adoption in any organization is so challenging. I remember I went to the University of Oklahoma, and at one point I worked with the head of digital transformation. He said it was a five-year process to get professors to adopt tablets.
Not VR. Just tablets in the classroom.
Will Stackable
How have you been able to do that? That's remarkable. We talk to a lot of colleges, and I'd say not everybody has been able to get that kind of penetration across so many different departments.
Bill Ballo
My supervisor—honestly, the best person I've ever worked for. That's not blowing smoke. It's 100% true. The best person I have ever worked for. The best thing that she does is she trusts me. That's amazing. When you have the trust of your supervisor, and your supervisor goes, "Listen, I trust you. Do this. Make this great." I've got this "go for it" kind of thing, and that makes it so much easier. The thing that I do, and I think this is so important, is that one of the biggest mistakes people make is they go and get all of the hardware, and then they'll say, "Well, this instructor over here teaches EMS. Let's go to that person and see if they'll use it." That person goes, "Oh, I'd love to use it, but I don't really have the time to learn this whole new thing and all that kind of stuff. Wait, I've got to connect it to a computer? Are you kidding me?" That's not a good model. The best thing to do is to have a person.
All of the programs that I have found that have sustained themselves and been able to pull in more programs have had someone who was dedicated to bringing VR into classrooms. I go to the classroom, or they come to the center—one of the two. I've learned so much about botany. I never knew anything about botany.
Now I know a lot about botany because our botany program is using VR to learn how to grow plants on Mars. In order to sustain life, they have to sustain life for two years. This was an idea that came from the instructor. The instructor and I talked about what we could do, and I thought, "Wow, this is a really great idea." We could go to Mars, and they have the plants. They have to decide, based on water, resources, and everything they have, how to make good decisions. Then, at the end, they get to see whether or not they actually sustained life, what the other groups did, and that kind of stuff.
They come to the center because the hardware works, because I'm always on top of the hardware. I know what's going on. I make sure everything is ready to go. Then I guide the software side, too. Now I have instructors who have said, "You know, I can pretty much do this on my own."
I can take off with this, and I think that's great. I'm there for support. I'm there for technical support. I'm there for instructional design—how does it align with the curriculum? Those kinds of things. But, in general, I'm there running it. I'm right alongside them. I'm with them. You mentioned the tablets. They gave people tablets, and then what? Right? It's like, "I've got this really awesome, cool tablet, and I'm just not sure what I want to do with it." So we need some support with instructional design. We need some support with aligning it with the curriculum. We need some support in the classroom because sometimes the Wi-Fi doesn't work and that kind of stuff. I'm not above, like in our Spanish class, setting up all the chairs. We usually do that in a hallway because that can be up to 30 students. So I set up all the chairs, I have all the headsets set up, and the students come in, they sit down, they put the headset on, and they go. There's no, you know, "The instructor has to do this or do that."
The instructor is with me at this point. She absolutely could do it because we've been working together for about three years. Some of these instructors absolutely could fly without me, but many of them don't want to do that. We've created little branch programs, too. I help manage our Career Services department. They have their own equipment that they use. They have their own headsets. I help them get them. I help them get them onto device management and all that kind of stuff. I help them get them onto ArborXR so that we're ready to go, and off we go. But, essentially, when something big goes wrong, they can come to me. They're running their own programs, and I love that.
Will Stackable
One of the things you're touching on, which is maybe worth clicking on, is using content and picking use cases. That can be such a challenge and really stressful for educators. How have you navigated that? It sounds like you have quite the library if you're working with 30 different programs.
Bill Ballo
Yeah. Well, the first thing I do is ask, "What programs do you use currently in your class?" A good example: I talked to the instructor for mechanical engineering, and I said, "What programs do you use currently?" He goes, "Well, I use this program called SolidWorks." And I went, "Oh, SolidWorks." I've heard of SolidWorks. I don't know much about SolidWorks, but I think they have a VR connection. I was like, "I wonder if we could use SolidWorks, like you're using it now, connected in VR, and maybe make something good out of that with your classes." I'll be darned. There you go. That's the way it happens.
So it starts off with that sometimes. What do you already use? "Oh, you know, in architecture we use Chief Architect," or "We use Revit." Okay, those both have VR connections. So let's figure out how we're going to leverage that for a class. Let's make it meaningful. Let's not make it a one-time thing where you never come back to the center.
Let's make it something that maybe you do twice a semester. Maybe you do it a little bit more. Let's incorporate it into your class, and let's use it instead of that PowerPoint to get the curriculum across. Everybody thinks, "Oh my God, I've got all this curriculum I have to teach, and I have to click through 358 PowerPoint slides." No. You have to teach the curriculum, not necessarily the slides. I've also had instructors—for example, my Spanish instructor came to me and said, "I want to use VR in Spanish." I went, "I don't know how to do that, but let's find out because I'm not going to say no."
So I went to one of my colleagues and said, "Okay, Spanish and VR. Find something. Let's see what we can do. Let's see what will be good." He found something, and I found something. He found ImmerseMe, and I found something else. Then we brought both to the subject matter expert—the instructor.
We got demos for both of them, put her in both of them, and she said, "I like the one that he picked." All right, that's fine. ImmerseMe is a great program. We've been using it for three years. The students go into the headset, and there's a learning curve to get the students in. But I do all of the initial instruction. Here's how you get into the program. Here's how you go from there. Here's how you're going to log in. This is how you're going to do this. This is how you're going to select what you're going to do. Those kinds of things. So I do all of that background work.
Will Stackable
Okay, I have to ask because you've probably seen everything over the last six years. Are there any gems? It could be any subject matter, but are there any real standouts for you? You can be biased, I'm sure, with the class that you teach. Maybe give me one that we've probably all heard of, or a couple that we've heard of, and then give me one or two that are sleepers—the B-sides.
Bill Ballo
Yeah. I have an absolute go-to every single time. I do demos off of this all the time. We do botany in it. We do vet tech in it, EMS, dental, respiratory therapy, CNA, HVAC—like, all of that comes out of Acadicus. It's been my go-to.
It's what I learned first, so of course it's the thing I'm probably most familiar with. That's been my absolute go-to. I did work part-time for them, so, you know, fair warning. But yeah, Acadicus—you just go to Acadicus.com. That is PC-based, so if you have a gaming computer, you can download it onto your computer and try it out.
You'll see me in there. You can actually see some of the examples, too, if you go to my YouTube channel. That's just my last name, “Ballo”, and then "Medic." (“Ballo Medic”)
If you go to my YouTube channel, you'll see some of the examples. Most of the stuff that I have there is from Acadicus. So Acadicus is my go-to when it comes to PC VR. As for gems that I've found, I think ImmerseMe is one of the best language-learning programs out there, especially when it comes to VR. I think the VR component is underutilized. One of the things that I always have to do, because when we talk about universal design for learning, is design the program for everyone. We may have some people that... I mean, I've put about 1,000 students in VR now, and I've had three who have said, "I have to stop. I can't do this." So, for me, it's relatively rare. Do I have some that say, "I felt a little weird" or "I got a little dizzy" or something like that? Yeah, that happens. But most of them get through it because they love what they're doing. I always have to be aware of that. One of the things I like about Acadicus and ImmerseMe is that they have out-of-headset experiences you can do as well. I think, for me, that's been pretty important to make sure that works well for my students. We've also done some team-building exercises with our volleyball team and our soccer team. I love that they do that. We found a cool game called Acron: Attack of the Squirrels!
If you haven't played it, it's great. I haven't done much gaming—I'll admit I'm not really a gamer—but that one has been a really fun game for team building. Then we leverage a lot of the free tools that we can get, like Open Brush. That was great for our 3D art class.
That's great for demos. My students love that kind of stuff. Again, a lot of it is connecting to things that the program is already using. Plumbing came to me at the beginning of the semester and said, "Let's do something." I said, "What do you use already?" He said, "Revit." I said, "We're there. Let's go."
I love doing it that way because one of the things you've got to get past is fear—the fear of, "I have to try this new thing, and I'm afraid it's going to cost me a lot of time."
Will Stackable
I actually wanted to go there a little bit. A lot of people listening to this are probably considering building their own XR program for the first time, or maybe they're considering expanding into other use cases or other departments. You could talk a little bit about the challenges when you first started it back six or seven years ago. It's gotten a lot easier now, and we know this. You can purchase hardware and content software through your existing channels with grant money. There are just a lot of ways to get into XR now that don't require you to go buy something from Best Buy and plug cables in to get it loaded up.
But maybe talk a little bit about the evolution you've seen. If you were going to start a program today, where would you start? What would you do?
Bill Ballo
It's interesting because you really have to find a person. I just can't stress that enough. There has to be a person who's going to be dedicated to doing this. Let's say, for example, you're in a nursing program and you want to use VR in some of your simulation. I think it's wonderful. I think it's great. Don't try to say, "Okay, this instructor, that instructor, this instructor—they're going to try it out," and just give them hardware and let them go from there. Find someone who will.
My wife taught me this. She's an early childhood educator. It's called parallel play, right? We're doing the same thing. We're playing right next to each other, and we're exploring and learning things together. That's what I do with my instructors. We go into VR together. We experience these things together. We try these things together. That way I know what I'm doing because I have to guide them. But what I would do is find that person and make sure that either this is what they're dedicated to or that they get a good portion of their schedule dedicated to it. That was the brilliance of my management. They said, "We're going to let you do this. This is going to be your full-time thing." That can be a little scary, but have that person who's dedicated because the other thing you work through in education is turnover. If you give it to this instructor, and they're flying with it, they're doing amazing, they're doing great, and then they leave. Now what happens? Everything just gathers dust. You don't want that. You spent that money. Every single one of the headsets we've spent money on has had a student in it. Every single one. There are none sitting in boxes. There are none that aren't plugged in. There are none that aren't, in some way, shape, or form, being utilized. Even the old ones are still being utilized. So find that person. That's step one. Once you've got that, figure out where you're going to go with it. Find an interest. For me, it was EMS and cardiology. Find that instructor who's going to be open to it.
I had some instructors who came and were interested in it, but they said, "I'm retiring in a year." I'm like, "Okay, that's all right. That's totally fine. We can still do it if you want to." Again, I'm not going to say no. But if you're retiring in a year, maybe this isn't something you want to get into. Let them know that you're going to support them throughout the whole process. Be there. Make sure the network is working correctly and that everything is connecting. If you're using PC VR and connecting to Wi-Fi, or, like I do, connecting directly with a cable, make sure the instructor doesn't have to worry about that. Then, for me, I made sure the scenarios that were brought into VR.
Nursing is a good example. They brought me the scenario and said, "This is the scenario we currently use." Try not to stray from that too much because that creates familiarity. Once you've got familiarity, now you've got that instructor. Now you can say, "Hey, you did this Carl Shapiro scenario (that's one of our scenarios) with me. How about taking a look at this one? Do you teach this? You might enjoy it." Find the instructor and make sure you get them into the headset. Don't try to explain it without getting them into VR first. Get them in the headset. Experience it. Try it out. You don't have to start where we are. We've got a nice big area, and we're talking about potentially expanding. We've got 12 PC VR stations. We've got 80 headsets. You don't need to be there. You can start off with two or three laptops and headsets with Link cables. Now you've got both PC VR and standalone VR.
You can do it both ways, and that can be relatively inexpensive. We actually did it on a refresh cycle anyway. Some of our computers were up for renewal, and we just said, "Can we renew and upgrade to these really nice PCs?" They said, "Yeah, we can do that. Did your capital request get approved?" "Yep." "Cool. Let's do it."
I think the biggest thing is don't be afraid of the challenge. Being a paramedic helped me so much with that because triaging and troubleshooting are almost exactly the same. They're almost exactly the same. If I have a patient in the back of my truck, I'm trying to figure out what's going on with that patient. That's kind of the same thing I'm doing when my PC isn't connecting correctly or the Meta headset has lost tracking. Don't be afraid to do that.
Then, when you connect with Tech Services, they love food. Bring them food. Trust me on this. Take people to lunch. Shake hands. Show them all the cool things you're doing. Make a lot of friends with the people who are running the network and all of that because, when something goes wrong, you go to that person, and they're there for you. They'll say, "Oh yeah, absolutely, Bill. We can help you out. We've got this taken care of." Shout-out to all my Tech Services people. That's just it. Shake hands. You're going to do a lot of relationship-building in the early days. Figure out whether you're going to be using PC VR or standalone VR. Is it worth it? What are you doing? Are the students going to enjoy it? Is it going to align with the curriculum? I'll get a lot of instructors who say, "Oh, I like this, but it doesn't do this, this, this..." VR isn't going to replace everything we do.
VR is going to supplement what we do. It's going to be part of it. It's going to be that experience students get. In HVAC, one of the things we were doing was we didn't want students freezing their fingers with refrigerant. So we thought, "Hey, let's make a digital twin of it. Let's bring it into VR." They'll get to practice a whole lot on this so that, when they actually use the real HVAC system and they're hooking things up around equipment that can harm them, we've reduced the chances they're going to get hurt.
Talk to the people who handle workplace injuries at your college or company, probably in Human Resources, and ask, "Where are people getting injured the most?" We heard vet tech. I was like, "Yeah, that makes sense." They're getting bitten. They're getting kicked. So what should we do to help with that? Let's do a VR experience on what the safe places around a horse are and what the unsafe places are. What would it look like if I was going to get kicked in the forehead?
Will Stackable
Do you get to physically simulate that? Do you wait for the kick to come and then kind of give them a little push?
Bill Ballo
The great thing is they generally know what they're doing even before they come into VR. So they go into VR and do the right things. They do the things they're supposed to do. But sometimes they'll mess it up just to see what it would be like. Like, "I wonder what it would be like to get kicked in the face by a horse." Where are you going to do that? You're going to do that in VR because it's not safe to even attempt it in the real world. Right? They took the cow apart and put the muscles through the ceiling. Cool!
Brad Scoggin
Your passion, both as an educator and for VR, is fun to see. It's contagious. Wrapping up with a forward-looking question that we always like to ask: Where do you see the future of VR in education? What would be the most exciting thing?
Bill Ballo
One of the things I'd really love to see is more use of augmented reality. We haven't used it enough, and I want to use it more. One of the things I love is if the two of you wanted to see the same thing that I'm working on in your room—and you can see me as well—it's like we're all standing together. We did it during COVID with Acadicus. It was myself, the CEO John, and another gentleman named John. One was in California, one was in Montreal, and I was down in Florida. We weren't socially distancing—we were in VR. We were seeing blue heads and hands, but I wasn't seeing it in my environment. I think augmented reality would be really big. If I could bring an engine into the room and have it floating in the middle of the room, have the students manipulating it, and also have a subject matter expert there saying, "Okay, let's guide what we're doing"—we can do that in VR right now, but I'd love more of that in augmented reality.
Brad Scoggin
Yeah, that's cool. We're definitely seeing that. I think AR is having a bit of a moment this year, so hopefully we're on the cusp of some of those experiences.
Bill Ballo
I think it is. We also have to talk about the elephant in the room: how much is AI going to impact what we're doing with VR? I could see it being an addition to some of the things I do with medical simulation. For me, the main thing would be so I don't have to do ridiculous accents anymore. I do love it. I have a really great Southern accent. It comes out when I'm mad because I grew up in the South. My kids have heard it. But I think that would be impactful. What I don't necessarily want to see—and other people may disagree—is my students simply being put into a headset, put into VR, put with an AI, and then the AI gives me feedback and says, "Your student is competent." I'm not ready to go in that direction. I still want to be there. I still want to know what's going on. I still want to be the person evaluating whether or not my student is competent.
Brad Scoggin
Where can people find you?
Bill Ballo
Yeah. So, Ballo Medic on YouTube. There are a lot of examples of the stuff that I've done in VR. Obviously, you can find me on LinkedIn as well. LinkedIn is probably my best one. I really haven't gotten into Twitter and all of that. I think it's all this gray hair that keeps me from some of those things. But definitely LinkedIn. I connect with anybody. And check out my YouTube channel, Ballo Medic. Absolutely.
Brad Scoggin
Great, we’ll list those below. This has been great, Bill. Thanks so much.
Bill Ballo
Yeah. Thanks so much for having me on. I really appreciate it.
