Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Adam Bevan. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Adam, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear from you about what you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry and why it matters.

Unfortunately, corporate America is more focused on profitability than adding value to students and teachers within the education industry. I think that this is mostly because there are very few founders who have a background in education or that have spent time in classrooms actually teaching students on a day-to-day basis. What we have is a lot of very smart businesspeople and technology experts trying to force what they think schools need into the educational market, when what we actually need is education experts creating solutions to the unique challenges which teachers and students actually face day to day in the classroom.

Adam, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

In a nutshell, EvolveXR provides a new tool that allows everyday teachers to create their own, customizable, virtual reality educational experiences for their students and their classroom culture. These experiences also give the teacher valuable feedback from the students that have used them, so that the teacher knows whether the student has understood the learning.

I got into education after spending a lot of time in sales. I wanted to make a difference, so I got my teaching qualifications and stepped into the classroom. I loved spending time with students day to day and I did feel that I was making a difference; over the years I saw more and more how the current systems in place are antiquated and actually antithetical to learning in many places, though. For example, I got in trouble with one school for allowing my students to use their phones as a research tool. The kids loved being able to integrate technology they use all the time outside of the classroom into their learning environment. For me as a teacher, I was limited to using basic technology like PowerPoint, Presi and YouTube, when I knew that I could do so much more with better software. At that moment, I knew that I would want to transition into edtech and try to build some edtech that I would want as a teacher to help me, and that I knew that students would benefit from and that it would enhance their learning.

Soon after, I handed in my notice at my school position and bought a few virtual reality cameras. I was certainly no expert in the field but I played around with the technology that they had back then and found that I could capture some compelling footage. I traveled to Antarctica and recorded seals and penguins, I travelled through London and New York, through National Parks and even wineries to bring interesting ‘field trips’ to students. We even got interest from an international NGO, Railway Children, and went to Tanzania to show some children there the work we were doing. This learning really engaged the students that I showed it to in every country… and then we had a global pandemic, so I had to rethink!

At that point, I realized that there are too many limitations to virtual reality cameras: firstly, you can’t step into the scene and move around in it, because it only uses something called 3DOF technology, and I needed to move into 6DOF to stay competitive with an industry that was evolving almost daily. So, we moved to CG (computer generated) scenes and got back to work. Soon, we had a suite of science games in which the students actually interact with the content and learn real skills that they need for their examinations and to succeed in science. We are in the process of moving into many other subjects.

I think that what I am most proud of overall is that we’ve shown our work to students and teachers on 4 continents and in each of those cultures and environments, it has made the people we have shown it to smile. Our ambition is to get this into as many hands as we can and most importantly, actually impact teaching and learning in a positive way, no matter what your background is or where you are from.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I had a client that needed 20 virtual reality headsets for a contract that she wanted to do with me on behalf of a large university, and from the initial conversation to the start date that they wanted was only one week. Business agreements with ordering headsets usually have a lead time of at least a week, and that wouldn’t have given me enough time to actually prepare the headsets for the client by putting our software onto them. At that time, there was also a major demand for this particular headset, so I had to call dozens of stores to check for stores that had stock, then drive hundreds of miles to go to many different stores that each had only one or two headsets in stock.

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

There have been so many! Elon Musk once compared owning a business to “chewing glass and staring into the abyss” and sometimes, I definitely relate to that. The worst situation we have been in financially was based on a hold up from our biggest contract. They had an outstanding balance with us of a significant amount of money, which had been budgeted for some of our payroll. The client needed certain evidences that they could only get by using the headset in a new way, which had not previously been discussed in any of the meetings and was not in the contract that we had agreed. Technically, we could have simply demanded payment but I would prefer to think long term about the relationship with that organization and the rapport I would prefer to keep with them, so I was flexible and gave them the additions they needed in order to be satisfied and make payment… a day before we would have missed payroll. I did have a plan b, though: I’ll never miss payment for my staff, even if it means I have to take on personal debt to cover it!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.evolvexr.com