Photo by Roberta Ashley Martinez
Texas Border Business –
By Roy Martinez,
For years’ residents of the Rio Grande Valley have lamented the Valley is always behind in many areas of life starting with medicine, entertainment and education.
Not the case anymore as the medical community has raised the standards of medicine and a new private company is on the cutting edge of technology.
Nerdvana is bringing new technology and the use of it in the educational field to South Texas.
Nerdvana, a technology hub, is a first of its kind in the Rio Grande Valley. Chris Sanders, Vice President of business development and co-founder, says, “The purpose of Nerdvana is to bring emerging technology and to integrate it into the education system with the Rio Grande Valley. We are bringing the latest and greatest technologies and bridging the gap with education.”
“We have had absolutely nothing but positive feedback from the school districts. They are conscious of the fact that VR (virtual reality) is an emerging technology, but they recognize a couple of things- just watching children engaged with VR, the level of engagement and retention that of a student is higher with VR than just reading a book or watching something on a screen.”
Sanders believes that students will have a greater opportunity to learn more and retain more.
“You only remember 20% of what you read,” says Sanders, “keep 30% of what you see but 90% of what you experience. VR is so immersive that it tricks the brain; you emerge into a new world”.
Recently, Nerdvana hosted representatives of the Dell Corporation and Intel at the facility in Edinburg. Among those attending the event were representatives of local school districts, cities and also included South Texas College. Snow White, global professional learning manager at Dell, on the Dell education strategy team, spoke to Texas Border Business about their purpose of their visit. White says, “today is just exploratory, she adds, “finding out what is the interest in such an emerging technology, not all technologies are for the K12 classroom.” Dell is asking a lot of its customers how they are thinking of using VR (virtual reality) and see how districts might be using VR that would help them.
White hopes to find out where their customers are concerning VR and if there is something they want immediately. “At that point,” says White, “then we will create a strategy plan, with the best technology available. Dell has already made investments in hardware designed for VR; now more on the college level. My goal would be to figure out how to bring that technology to the K12”.
Hiten Patel, CEO, and Co-founder of Nerdvana says “we want to create a new class of technology-minded entrepreneurs,” he adds, “to make that happen we have to start building the environment where people can start learning and acquiring the skills that make them more technically able.”
Looking at the future, Patel wants South Texas to know, “Nerdvana will be at the center of innovation, entrepreneurship, and technology adoption in the Rio Grande Valley. There is a tremendous lack of access to resources for technology exploration, for tech start-ups.” He adds, “Nerdvana is being built to create access to tech resources and house the growing community of problem solvers, builders, and designers who will drive South Texas forward.”
There is so much more Nerdvana has in store for the students in the Rio Grande Valley. TBB
