Melissa Woo offered a real peek through the looking glass this week.

Woo, the UO’s vice provost for information services and chief information officer, is among the still relatively few people with the latest in wearable technology: Google Glass. She offered a glimpse of the eyeglasses-as-computer at a campus demonstration in the Lillis Business Complex.

While a Google glass headset is worn like a regular pair of glasses, the device is positioned slightly above the eyes rather than directly over them so they don’t impair vision. The wearer uses voice commands to control the device, making it the ultimate in hands-free computing.

“The upshot for me is that I don’t have to look at my smartphone all the time for a lot of stuff I used to have to,” said Woo. “I can run across campus and send a text at the exact same time.”

An eager crowd squeezed into a small room on the third floor of Lillis Hall, with all eyes on Woo as she explained how the headset works. She tapped the side of the frame to turn the device on, and then used the command “OK Glass” to begin. After that, the wearer uses spoken commands to put the computer through its paces.

Woo demonstrated using Google Glass to send texts, make calls, get directions, take pictures and search information through the Google search engine.When asked about the ease of using the product on a day-to-day basis, Woo said, “I think Google Glass is great, I got used to it really fast.”

-By Sarah MacKenzie, UO Public Affairs Communications intern