5/13/2018 When Virtual Becomes Reality - Mountain Brook Magazine

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When Virtual Becomes Reality

May 1, 2018 | Schools & Sports | 0

By Rachel Crisson

Photos by Rebecca Wise

When you were a child, did you imagine putting on

magic goggles that can take you anywhere on earth, even

to the stars? Imagine taking in dazzling 360-degree views

of the solar system, video chatting with students across

the world, and engaging with material like never before.

This is all happening for students in Mountain Brook

schools today. “Technology is about di erent ways to

engage students, keep them going with the material to

get a better understanding of things… and we have to

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keep up,” says Mountain Brook Elementary School

Technology Coordinator Thea Patrick, one of several

specialists leading the way for these advances in

education in Mountain Brook Schools.

And Mountain Brook Schools are doing more than

keeping up—they are leading the way in putting

technology in the hands of students, teachers and

administrators. For example, a set of 25 Android

smartphone-based Virtual Reality headsets regularly take

students across the globe and into outer space using 360-

degree photographs from Google Expeditions and videos

from the New York Times VR app.

Students compare volcanoes and rock formations on

other planets with those on Earth. They take a dive under

sea ice in Antarctica and come face-to-face with marine

life in ways they may never get to do in person. Teachers

can t the media to their individual curriculum, so a

history class can visit a national monument and talk

about why it was built, while a math class could visit the

same place and look for geometric shapes and patterns —

all from inside the classroom.

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“These are places the students could not go as a group,

and that’s what we wanted them to have: group

experiences, shared experiences they could talk about

just like they do on eld trips, but instantly,” Thea

explains. “Now, just getting those headsets out makes the

students pay attention more.”

Even cooler is the fact that Mountain Brook students are

actually able to add to this wealth of information

themselves. As a part of a Google Expeditions Beta

group, MBE and Brookwood Forest students are building

their own expeditions for Birmingham, as the city

currently has none. In March and April, students used

360-degree cameras to take photographs of important

places around the city, like the Birmingham Museum of

Art, Civil Rights Institute, Vulcan and UAB. They

provided the photos as well as historical, cultural and

other pertinent information on each location to Google

Expeditions, which has to approve each expedition

before adding it to their app.

“This is a unique opportunity,” Thea says. “And students

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are so engaged with this. To know in the future these

students could say, ‘That’s my Google Expedition that

you watched in China!’ is so cool.”

Another way students are engaging with information and

people across the globe is through Level Up Village

(LUV), a program that matches classrooms of similar size

and curriculum to complete STEAM experiments and

exchange cultural information with one another. For

nine weeks, they work on the same projects as their sister

classroom and keep each other up-to-date on progress

through student-to-student video postcards and the

occasional live chat, time zones permitting.

Susan Andrews’ fth-grade class at MBE used LUV to

learn about water safety and ltration this year, and they

were paired up with a classroom in Bogotá, Colombia.

Students created videos for their virtual pen-pals and

even more excited to hear back. Similarly, Kelsey Frey’s

kindergarten class at MBE was paired with a class from

Jordan, and one of the students was so engaged that he

began learning simple words in Arabic so he could speak

to their sister class. Kelsey opted for full-class video

updates rather than the personal postcards the older kids

made.

“Tech provides an opportunity for students to have

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conversations to learn a little more about their fellow

man and see that we all have things in common,” Thea

says. “We want students to empathize and understand

someone else’s perspective. You may not agree with

them, but you need to be listening.”

Before MBE kindergarteners are able to read or write

sentences, they are already using a program called

ScratchJr to learn the basics of coding through cute little

sprite characters. Using Chromebook touchscreens, kids

can drag and drop with their ngers. And if a child wants

to make their cat meow but does not know how, they

have no fear trying a bunch of gestures or in announcing

their predicament out to the class—and one of their

classmates generally comes to the rescue.

“We do have some really supportive students. They can

build o each other, and there’s a lot of sharing even in

kindergarten,” Thea says. “[The tech] is so engaging that

they really want the other kids to be successful. They are

so willing to help each other.

“In some ways, it’s really building community because

the kids are having to think at a higher level We have to

problem-solve to get through a lesson, and the kids just

roll with it.”

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Speaking of thinking at a higher level, through the app

CoSpaces Edu, students are creating blocky 3D

environments, like in the video game Mindcraft, of

planets they dream up in science class. After they build

their planets on the Chromebooks, teachers can load

them to the VR headsets and let others look around the

newly created virtual environment.

“Before, students made environments in paper-mâché,

but this will take it to the next level,” Thea says. “They

can compare the planets’ environments and compare

them to each other and to earth to have a better

understanding of geology or biology.”

The biggest new technology component currently being

tested at the Board of Education is an interactive

classroom that tech coordinators hope to have in several

schools down the road. The room will be out tted to

have an interactive oor and walls, where students can

walk up and manipulate projected objects. A handful of

students from Crestline have already tested out the

practice room at the board.

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“Our K1 students really can’t use [the VR goggles], so the

classroom would give everyone an opportunity to explore

virtual reality,” Thea explains. “This technology that you

use to create something is what I’m interested in

expanding in our schools.”

According to Thea, all ve MBE teachers who applied for

the school system’s Institute for Innovation grants in the

2017-18 school year met their tech goals “and beyond,” so

plans are in place to expand use of both VR goggles and

LUV next year by the full sta . “Parents who have heard

about [the tech] or read the blog want their kids to have

it, too,” Thea says. “It’s not just a cool thing. They’re

really learning.”

May/June 2018 • Mountain Brook City Schools •

Mountain Brook Elementary • technology

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rachel Crisson

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After earning her degree and spending eight

wonderful years living around Montevallo,

Rachel made the move back home to Cahaba

Heights, where she lives with her cat

Calypso, her roommate Sarah and Sarah’s cat

Hermes. You can nd her most days working

at Image Arts, Etc. in Crestline Village, taking

portraits, editing photos or laying out phoo

books. Nights nd her hanging out with

family, attending community events, playing

games with her friends or watching cartoons

with her cat.

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