Jethro Jones: On this episode of a vision for learning.
I'm going to play a recording from a previous interview
that I did on my podcast.
Transformative Principal.
This is from.
2020.
In July when I talked with VJ, Robin, John.
About Florio, which is an app that helps kids with autism
understand social interactions.
This is really powerful because it combines the iPhone with the VR headset.
With VR therapy, which is pretty cool.
And what I'm really excited about are these kinds of opportunities that kids and
adults are going to have to experience.
Things in new ways that they haven't had an opportunity to experience before.
I'm hopeful that I'll get to have another conversation with VJ
here in the next couple of days, and be able to bring that in.
But I wanted to share this episode.
Because this was three years ago.
Where he was already doing this kind of work and., even though.
The apple vision pro is new.
This idea of using virtual reality to help people.
Is not new.
And so I'm really excited.
For you to hear this and experience it.
And you may not have heard this on Transformative Principal.
So here's my interview from Transformative Principal.
No edits, no updates.
So this is three years old, but I still think there's something valuable in here.
And I especially want you to stick around to the end.
And hear what he says about how to be a Transformative Principal.
And understanding what people are experiencing and then how to
work backwards to support them.
Welcome to transformative principle today.
I am excited to have VJ at Ravindran on the podcast.
How'd I do pronouncing your last name.
I'm all.
I'm all worried down.
Okay.
Good.
All right.
So VJ created a awesome app that is called Florio.
And so VJ, I'll let you tell a little bit about the story of that and how that
can be an app to help kids with autism.
We'll start.
Yeah.
Vijay Ravindran: Great.
Thanks for having me on, you know, Florio as a company was started four years
ago, the company is inspired by my son who is 10 and on the autism spectrum.
And the idea for the, for the system that we've developed.
Using virtual reality came from his first experience using
a virtual reality headset.
Um, back in late 2015, he really likes maps and navigation.
And, uh, he I've seen the Google street view had just come out in VR.
And so I had them try it out using a Samsung gear VR.
And you really liked it.
He started engaging in pretend play for the first time, which is a delayed
skill for a lot of kids with autism.
And that triggered the idea that what if virtual reality
could be a therapy media for.
And so what we have today is a application that runs on both iPhone and iPad.
It say it's an app, but it's really a system that combines the use of an iPhone
and a virtual reality headset with an iPad, uh, that talks over the network.
And, uh, and then enables a supervising adults to.
Coach through the iPad therapy sessions or training sessions
for a child as they enter into the virtual reality environment.
And, uh, and then experience scenes that, um, work on different developments.
Jethro Jones: Yeah, I really, I really liked that.
And so being able to have a, a coach in there with you, I mean, I just downloaded
the app and used it myself with, you know, some Google cardboard that I had
sitting around and it was, uh, just the trial part was a neat experience.
And so my daughter has down syndrome and she exhibits some of
the same characteristics of kids who are on the autism spectrum.
And of course there are different.
And they have different, uh, abilities and skills and developmental
levels and all that kind of stuff.
But, uh, the idea of doing therapy through VR sounds like a really cool thing.
Can you talk a little bit more about how that actually works
and what the mechanics of that
Vijay Ravindran: are?
Yeah, I'm happy to, and then you're right.
There's once you start diving into this world of, uh, people with
developmental delays, you realize there's actually quite a bit of overlap.
Treatments across the board.
You know, when we first started this path, uh, our vision was that really,
that VR could help in two different ways.
The first was that there's opportunities to create the type of therapies
that are being done face to face.
Using fun, animated characters, you know, kids with autism go through
hundreds of thousands of hours of therapy and they can get pretty
monotonous and patronizing at some point.
And so, you know, at first objective, let's just make this more fun.
Let's figure out a way to recreate what's being done with toys and play paradigms
face to face and create an NBR can make it much more fun the second area.
And so we have scenes that, you know, work on things like eye contact or how
to imitate another, another person.
So we were able to use cartoon characters, fun animals, we can do silly stuff
and we can, we can use animations and rewards in life to really spread that.
The second area that we saw VR was very powerful and it ends up.
It's also a major area of developmental focus today is, uh,
is around social and life skills.
So we have lots of therapy to help a child with the basics like eye contact.
Today's world.
Uh, what we don't have is that as they get older and older, how to
help them with those much more subtle social skills or how to help them in
safety situations that are hard to replicate in the therapist office.
And some there we were able to, in virtual reality, we can create situations that
you can't recreate on therapist office.
So we can have a child go through a law enforcement encounter and practice.
Talking to that police officer in a way that'll keep them safe.
We can have them practice crossing the street and looking both ways,
but without the consequences of messing up in the real world.
Yeah.
And for the social skills, you know, we can put you in the school and the
cafeteria and the classroom, but moreover, you know, today for traditional therapy,
a child is essentially taught by an adult.
And so I've seen with my own son where he will be able to handle a situation
if it's adult to child, but then on the playground, when it's another child is
not able to necessarily traverse that.
And in VR, we can create the characters to be, to match the children and age.
We can vary the race and ethnicity.
Make sure that both genders are represented so that we can create actually
a much more comprehensive set of, yeah.
Jethro Jones: So I love those examples that you shared about being able to
go into these situations where it's hard for them to, to practice that
in a therapy session, especially with consequences that are there.
And so I've seen so many amazing creative things from my own daughters
therapists with different ways of helping her learn different things and.
And, you know, she's doing some physical therapy right now and she painted this
giant picture and the whole purpose of the giant picture was to help her
put equal weight on each of her legs.
And it was, that was the whole purpose, but she didn't even know
that's what she was working on.
And she couldn't comprehend that that's what she needed to work on, but the
therapist was going above and beyond doing these great things to help.
With that.
And, and I love that this app now gives therapists an additional opportunity to,
to incorporate those things in as well.
And I think that the, the truly lifesaving features can be really important.
And you shared an example of not being able to, to associate an
interaction with a, an adult with a peer, like out on the playground.
And I've seen that so many times with students at school, but also with my own
child where, when it's somebody who's.
Standing over them telling them this is how things need to happen.
They've been able to be successful, but then when it's
appear, then that just goes away.
And then with privacy issues and things like that, you can't always get those
peers to come into the therapy room and participate in those same activities.
So I love, I love what you're doing with that.
What are some of the stories that you've seen, where kids have used this and
have been able to grow because of using.
Yeah.
Vijay Ravindran: You know, we we've gotten some great stories.
Um, I'll just add one thing also from what you do, what you just said is that one
of the really fascinating and powerful things we've seen is that once you put
this in the hands of professionals, like therapists and special education teachers,
they use it, they use the scenes in ways that we don't necessarily have predicted.
They they're able to come up with ways to help kids.
And as a Alina into your question, And we've seen that play out.
Um, we had one school system in Pennsylvania.
That's been using the system successfully used Florio with a PTSD
and schizophrenia child that was having major fears of going outside.
And our street crossing lessons ended up helping that child get enough
confidence that they could actually.
Um, with the next phase of, uh, of acclimatization to the outside
world, they want it to, with the child, we've had, uh, kids who have
been mostly non-verbal interact with this and literally get feedback
that they've never seen the child.
Uh, interact and traditional therapy and an as engaged way as they have here.
But going beyond the anecdotal, we have made a big emphasis around research.
We pretty soon after starting the company started looking at research
partners and two important ones early on, or a special education school in New
Jersey called celebrate the children.
And the children's hospital, Philadelphia center for autism research.
And so with celebrate the children, a special needs school with north, the New
Jersey, we have, we held our first study where we had 12 kids go through five
weeks of three times a week intervention.
And these were kids with moderate to severe autism.
And we were able to.
Work on their eye contact using lessons we've developed.
We were able to do benchmarking before and four weeks after the study and were able
to show improvement in 10 of the 12 kids.
And, uh, we're proud to say that those results were published in
JMIR pediatrics and parenting.
Uh, medical journal, uh, last summer and, um, separately with children's hospital,
Philadelphia, uh, where the recipient of a what's called an NIH fast-track grant.
So we received a $1.7 million grant in 2017 that has helped on
really groundbreaking research at the intersection of the autism
community and virtual reality.
We're in the third year of that research now and in a randomized clinical trial.
Um, which is unfortunately a little bit on pause at the moment given COVID 19.
So we'll see when we were able to get back to doing that, but we've
been able to show that Florio is safe and highly enjoyable in that study.
Um, based on the phase one and.
Year of the phase two at chop, we were, uh, in a controlled
treatment structure where we were going head to head against, uh, a
well-established, uh, video-based therapy.
And so we've made it a priority early on to focus on.
Gathering the type of research that also shows that Florio is
worth the time of these tips.
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Yeah.
I just think that is so fantastic.
And it's something the reason why I wanted to talk to you on this podcast and share
this with principals around the country is that I had never thought of using VR.
As a tool for helping kids with autism and.
As an educator been baffled for years about how to reach specific kids, how
to help them, how to do things that would accelerate their growth and all
while recognizing that, just because they may not be able to communicate
with us doesn't mean that they don't have feelings and concerns and passions
and desires and all that kind of stuff.
Trying to find a way that we can adapt what we're doing to help them.
And, and so when I read about Florio, I thought that it was
just such a great way to do that.
And so now, as we, as we think about doing this at scale or moving this
into other places across the country in schools and then private therapy
sessions and at children's hospitals, what are the challenges you see to
people adopting Florio for working with kids with autism specifically?
Yeah,
Vijay Ravindran: that's great.
Great question.
And you know, so we're we're today we have 18, uh, clinic and school customers.
And, uh, I would say the biggest challenge is helping both families
and the professionals that work with, uh, with kids with autism.
Think about how you can schedule and integrate a product like ours.
When these kids are already scheduled to the hilt and their time is very precious.
And, uh, using the virtual reality is still not commonplace.
And so there is some apprehension around the technology that, you know, in many
cases, you know, we carry the burden of being the first virtual reality experience
for both the adults and the child.
And so we're presenting this it's the first time they've used VR.
I'm not to the kids, but the adults, in many cases, the kids have already used
VR because of games, but for parents or teachers or therapists that this is new.
And so that then ends up being a challenge, you know, excitingly, we
announced last week that, uh, the system, which again, is really two pieces, a
smartphone and a virtual reality have said, and an iPad for the developed that.
We now support the iPad running over the network in that teletherapy or
video conferencing style of deployment.
And so, oh, that's very cool.
Given the challenges happening across the world right now with being in the
same place at the same time, you know, these kids are suffering where they're
not receiving the therapies that they were two weeks ago, three weeks ago.
So we think Florida has a big role that it could play in helping by.
Behavioral therapy over virtual reality.
But yeah, I think virtual reality is still a new technology.
So there's a barrier there, you know, there's, there's an investment
around equipment, which we've tried to bring the cost down dramatically
through a partnership with sprint the mobile carrier where we're
sourcing refurbished equipment.
But I would say the biggest barrier above all else is that a
child with autism has a very busy schedule, um, with their existing
therapies, uh, on top of schooling.
Thinking through not only whether Florio can help, but whether
it's worth integrating that into their already busy schedules in
some manner is a big decision.
Yeah,
Jethro Jones: for sure.
And so it's not, it's not just one specific type of therapy, either,
depending on the child's ability level, it could be a lot of different therapies
that, you know, you, you may not somebody else, you know, who's not actively
engaged with that with their own child.
May not realize how many different therapies.
Right for that student to be successful.
So yeah.
So VJ, I think what you've done is really great.
Can you tell us how to get to, to learn more about Florio?
Vijay Ravindran: Yeah.
If you've at our website, Florio tech.com.
That's I O R E O T E C H.
Um, from there, you can basically register to get more information
from someone on the team.
You can also go directly through the app store, if you have an iPhone and an iPad
and download the app, and then you'll need to talk to us through link to, uh,
figure out the appropriate subscriptions.
So we have subscription plans for the software, both for enterprises
like schools and clinics, as well as for families who are looking
to do home supplemental care.
Jethro Jones: And, and so that's the route that I went.
I just download the app, tried it out for myself.
I gave it to my kids to try a little bit of, and they, they enjoyed it.
And there's there's enough there that you could see if there is.
If there's a engagement piece, right from the beginning.
And so I could tell immediately that all of my kids, not just my
daughter with down syndrome were able to engage and understand how
to, how to work with it right away.
And it was, it was really neat to see that, to see them be able to just pick
it up and start doing stuff with it.
So the last question I asked VJ is what is one thing that a principal can do
this week to be a transformative leader?
Like.
Vijay Ravindran: Well, I mean, this is a, this is a very special week.
Isn't it?
Given that the world is going to, I think starting with, uh,
understanding the unique situations that families and students are in
right now, especially working from home parents, trying to juggle.
Working from home while their kids are being homeschooled
through some cotton packets.
And, you know, I think, you know, many years ago I worked at Amazon and
we had an expression that you start with the customer and work backwards.
And I think that's no, that is extra true right now because we've
never really imagined being in the situation that we're in to the site.
We were trapped inside.
We are, so that's a big piece, but, um, you know, for me, what's really motivated
me to start the company and work on this for the last four years is, is knowing
how much potential these kids have.
And what's possible if they can get through.
Tools delivered to them and the professionals and family around them.
And so that's been very motivating.
Jethro Jones: Yeah, definitely.
All right.
Well VJ, thank you so much for your time.
This has been an awesome conversation.
I really appreciate all the work that you were doing.
Thanks so much for being part of transformative principal.
Thank you for having me