BIV MAGAZINE
16 | BIV MAGAZINE: THE EDUCATION ISSUE 2021 PUBLISHED BY BUSINESS IN VANCOUVER
TRAINING GETS THE VIRTUAL TOUCH Organizations turn to online learning and virtual reality as pandemic upends the norm
TYLER ORTON
F
ield trips to the planetarium or the aquarium have given way to a tighter, school-bound curriculum – for now – as students adjust to the new reality brought by the pandemic. Mike Irvine sees that changing with what he likes to describe as his “Nature Netflix” venture that can take those field trips directly to students. “With COVID-19 taking a massive hit on the education system that has already been having lots of challenges … we noticed a significant uptick in usage and need for online resources – quality and curated [resources] in particular,” says the CEO and co-founder of Live It, a technology-driven company based in Nelson, B.C. The company’s content, offered via an online platform, can bring those field trips to the classroom with programming that includes short tutorial videos and activities for students. The Live It platform offers games, science experiments and arts and crafts on subjects ranging from visits to B.C. wildfire sites to close-up inspections of salmon runs. “We’re trying not to be that organization that’s promoting too much of a virtual field trip experience.
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We do take kids to different locations through our programs, but we keep them short and concise, and so really the idea being that we just want to inspire the kids, get them excited about the world around them and then encourage them to participate in different ways in their own backyard,” says Irvine. Prior to the pandemic, though, the programming emphasized live events, rather than virtual offerings. The COVID-19 crisis brought about a sharp urgency for Live It to shift its business model, expand its market globally and begin offering multilingual programming. “We took our three-year plan and turned it into a three-week plan. We moved on it very quickly,” a chuckling Irvine recalls. “We had some hindsight on this [pandemic] back in early March, and even before that. So we started to brace ourselves in case everything shifted and it did. So before even spring break had finished, we
2021-01-06 9:46 AM
