BETTENDORF, Iowa — STEAM On Wheels, a Quad Cities non-profit, is using virtual reality to teach kids at its chess club to think quicker and act faster; spicing up how they play a centuries-old game.

Carl Hortsmann found a way to take his 87-year-old father scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef, go skiing for the first time and bring him on a tour of his old neighborhood in Union, N.J., where he ...