BLOOMINGTON, IN, MAY 1, 2024. Flyover Zone is a leading educational technology company that has developed YorescapeTM as its platform for curated virtual tours serving the needs of higher education in fields such as Art, Art History, Classics, and History. Yorescape tours run on mobile devices (iOS/Android), PCs (Mac/Windows), and VR headsets such as the Oculus Quest. Fifteen virtual tours have been released to date taking you to such iconic destinations as the Acropolis in Athens, the pyramids of Giza, and the Forum in ancient Rome. Yorescape tours not only show you the ruins as they appear today but also reconstructions of the sites as they looked in antiquity. At every stop on a stop, you can listen to experts explain what you are seeing. Subscribers can visit the stops in any order they wish and whenever they wish. Yorescape’s virtual tours are asynchronous: they run 24/7.
Today, the company announced its commitment to work more closely with K-12 educators. Company founder Bernard Frischer stated that, “our goal is to make it easier for K-12 teachers in California and throughout the United States to integrate the curated virtual tours on our unique Yorescape platform into their existing courses.”
Frischer cited a number of steps the company will take in the coming academic year to bring this about. These include creating short versions of the tours (typically 2 to 3 hours in length) so that they can fit within a single class period of 40 minutes. Tours will also be available with audio commentary at different levels suitable for elementary, middle school, or high school students. The company will increase the number of teacher resources it offers (lesson plans, vocabulary lists, timelines, study questions, and reading lists). For California in particular, the company will be developing curated tours to meet the state’s standards for courses on California (Grade 1), the Missions of California (Grade 2), and the American Revolution (Grade 5).
Frischer remarked that “Flyover Zone’s mission is to enrich existing courses by making it possible for teachers to use Yorescape to take their students on virtual field trips to the sites and monuments they are studying. To date, we have focused on developing for colleges and universities. Yorescape is in use from Princeton to UC Berkeley. Now, we are making a new commitment to extend our impact to K-12. Research has proven that immersive learning such as what we offer on our Yorescape platform is an effective way to increase student engagement and learning on all levels. We recognize that there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to realizing this goal. We must and will tailor our curated virtual tours to meet the specific needs of K-12 teachers and students. In this endeavor, we are fortunate to have ProConsort as our partner. A well-established company in direct contact with schools and teachers all over the United States, ProConsort is well-positioned to ensure that as Flyover Zone designs our products, they respond as closely as possible to our users’ requirements.”
About Flyover Zone
The company was founded in 2022 and is headquartered in Bloomington, Indiana. Its founder and CEO is Dr. Bernard Frischer. Jeremiah Stevens is the company’s CTO. He received his M.S. in Computer Science from the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at Indiana University. Mohamed Abdelaziz is the company’s Art Director. He is a Ph.D. student in Egyptology at the University of Alexandria. Lasha Tskhondia is the company’s Director of 3D Modeling. He is a professional sculptor and graphic designer who lives in Tbilisi, Georgia. Albert Prieto is the company’s Director of Content. An American living in Rome, Italy, he earned his B.A. in Classics from Harvard University, his M.A. In Classical Archaeology from St. Andrews University, and his Ph.D. in Classical Archaeology from the University of Texas, Austin. Courtney Morano, Director of Interpretation at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, is Flyover Zone’s consultant for education.
About Bernard Frischer
An innovator in the use of computer technology to understand the ancient world and bring it to life, Bernard Frischer founded Flyover Zone in 2022 to take innovations in digital archaeology and virtual tourism beyond the university to students, teachers, and the general public.
Educated in Classics at Wesleyan University (CT) and at the University of Heidelberg, from which he received his Ph.D., Dr. Frischer was on faculty at UCLA from 1976 to 2004, during which time he served as Chair of the Classics Department and Director of the UCLA Humanities Computing Facility. In 1998 he founded the UCLA Cultural Virtual Reality Lab, which he directed until 2004. He subsequently was a professor of Art History and Classics at the University of Virginia (2004-13), where he founded the Virtual World Heritage Laboratory. In 2013, he was recruited by Indiana University to start a new doctoral program in Virtual Heritage, the first such program in the United States. He relocated his lab to Indiana, where he directed it until his retirement at the end of 2023. The Virtual World Heritage Laboratory is known for its Uffizi-Indiana 3D Digitization Project, through which several hundred ancient sculptures in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence have been digitized and made freely available online.
A Trustee from 2009 to 2012 of the American Academy in Rome, where he has been both a Prix de Rome Fellow (1974-76) and a Resident (1996), Dr. Frischer is the recipient of the Pioneer Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Society for Virtual Systems and Multimedia (2005) and the Tartessus Lifetime Achievement Prize of the Spanish Society of Virtual Archaeology (2009).
About ProConsort
ProConsort is a library service organization supporting the procurement and administration of electronic information services for libraries since the year 2000. For over 24 years, by reducing costs and streamlining procurement processes, ProConsort has served hundreds of libraries, covering thousands of subscriptions and millions of dollars. Customers have included libraries of all types: single academic libraries and consortia, public libraries and public library systems, K-12 libraries and systems, and special & hospital libraries. ProConsort was founded to service libraries in the New York City metropolitan area. It has recently expanded its reach to cover New York state, New England, the Mid-Atlantic states as well as library groups throughout the United States, including California. ProConsort provides a full spectrum of procurement services, including negotiating favorable contract terms for special deals, securing favorable prices for multi-product and multi-user orders, supporting multiple consolidated billing & renewal cycles, offering open orders with “to be determined” titles: and the support of multi-year subscriptions at discounted prices, with either pre-paid or annual payment options.
Contacts:
- Flyover Zone: Dr. Bernard Frischer (bernie@flyoverzone.com)
- ProConsort: John Stromquist (john@proconsort.com)
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