West Liberty-based Shaking Earth Digital is a development company that develops applications for mobile devices, desktops, virtual reality and other emerging technologies.
“We like to work as much as possible with new, leading-edge technologies,” said Jens Zalzala, founder of Shaking Earth Digital. “The last few years we’ve been working a lot with virtual reality and these days augmented reality has become a hot topic. So we’re about to start a couple of projects focused on that.”
Earlier this year, Shaking Earth Digital partnered with the West Liberty Community School District and helped them apply for a $25,000 state stem grant. After winning the grant, Shaking Earth Digital continued to work with the school district to develop an app that students could use to learn how to program.
“That was a really great partnership and really cool opportunity. We like to do a lot of outreach stuff like giving talks to different schools around the area,” Zalzala said. We really wanted the students to be able to create something in virtual reality, not just go visit a place or see something, but actually be creators.
Shaking Earth Digital developed an application that allows students to learn how to program and to make a game in virtual reality.
“We made it a point to work with students while we were developing this,” Zalzala said. “We had students coming in and testing it and giving feedback to contribute to the development process.”
Once the application was developed, Shaking Earth Digital rolled it out as a VR after-school club for West Liberty Middle School students. Over a 6-8 week period, students were able to learn the program and create their own game in virtual reality.