Six months ago when I was planning the initial itinerary for my scholarship application, coming to Atlanta was not on the agenda. Neither was going to Adobe MAX or connecting with Darin Nakakihara in Orange County. The places I’ve been, things I’ve seen and people I’ve connected with may have changed from my initial ideas but I’m so glad that those changes happened.
Especially in regards to coming to Atlanta.
A little caveat to this blog. Mount Vernon Presbyterian School is a private, selective school in Sandy Springs, about 20km north of Atlanta CBD. It’s not as “selective” as say James Ruse or Baulkham Hills High School, but students still need to sit a test and come for an interview before being enrolled. But what they are doing here is nothing short of incredible, in terms of the education that goes on here and the impact that it’s making in the world around them.
The head of the school is Dr Brett Jacobsen. A charismatic, dynamic and gracious man (about my age) who is a part of every facet of the school. He has changed Mount Vernon significantly since taking up his role with his educational philosophy:
“We vary our [educational] routes. The future demands it, learning yearns for it, and ultimately our mission requires it.”
I sat with him in his office for about an hour during the first morning. It was while the school was having a “cyclone drill”. He gave me a great history about the school and how it has changed through their primary focus of real-world learning. Similar to project-based learning, the students work on tasks that have an actual need in the real world. And this happens across the school. One of the projects the students were working on was in conjunction with Delta Airlines – who are based in Atlanta. After speaking with the CEO, no less, they settled on the need for Delta staff to become better aware of sex-trafficking and the signs and signals to look out for. This led the students to begin researching into the topic, discovering its darkness, looking into statistics and trying to understand what to look out for in airports and on planes. They are only starting on this topic so I’ve only seen some initial ideas but the students are engaged, learning and feel like they’re making a real difference.
As a quick side note, I never knew much of an economic powerhouse Atlanta is in the USA. Due to their “business friendly” tax incentives many businesses have relocated their headquarters to Atlanta including, for example, Mercedes Benz. Georgia is also known as “Hollywood of the South” due to the number of shows and movies filmed here, including “The Walking Dead” and “Stranger Things”.
I’ve connected with lots of great people here, watched my first school American Football match (As a “special guest” I even got to go out with the captains into the middle) and toured their amazing facilities – which will only improve once their new building is finished. But my primary focus here was to meet one person and see what she’s doing with VR. Her name is Marie Graham.
Initially I found Marie while searching for how VR is being used specifically in High Schools, and her name kept popping up. It kept talking about this “maverick teacher” and the new VR lab at the school, set up through a partnership with Alienware, who are owned by Dell. What is truly amazing is that Marie only discovered VR about two years ago through a Google cardboard experience. She was doing a project involving refugees and was having trouble getting her students to really connect with the topic. She found a National Geographic VR experience online and found herself in tears as she watched the story in immersive VR. The next day she brought it in to her students hoping for a similar empathetic reaction. And she got it. One story she related to me was a student after watching the VR story saying, with tears down her cheeks, “they’re just like me”. The students got to see teenagers, like them, but in horrific situations brought on by war. It moved her students in a deep way and it was then that Marie understood the potential power of VR in education.
Another amazing thing about Marie is that she epitomises the idea of a lifelong learner. She had no idea of VR when she started but, never one to say no, she read and investigated, and watched and connected with people and before too long she became someone to connect with. Currently she is taking a course in Unity, which is a system for creating VR worlds. It involves coding and intricate 3D modelling, all of which Marie new nothing about, but she signed up and her skills are improving. She’s happy to learn alongside her students and while this is happening , they get to see what lifelong learning is – first hand.
VR is a tool and it is used as such at Mount Vernon. More teachers are beginning to use the headsets and powerful computers available in the “Hive” and Marie is only too happy to show the teachers how to use them and set them up. One difficulty Marie has faced is finding good VR educational content. She couldn’t find a website that curates VR content in a meaningful way so Marie and her VR-Team students (a group of students who come in their OWN time to work on new projects) are building one. Did any of them have web design experience? No. So they’re teaching themselves. Some other projects on the go include working with a school in India to help develop VR content for teaching English to their students and partnering with Atlanta’s largest children’s hospital to help develop VR content to make patient stay more enjoyable. Projects where the students are learning new knowledge and skills, mandated learning requirements can be ticked off, but which can also make a difference in the world in which they belong. Inspiring!
From the moment I found Marie Graham online and read about what she is doing in the realm of VR and education I thought I must go and meet with her at her school. I’m so glad I did. Marie has given me the perspective that VR is just another teaching tool and doesn’t substitute for quality teaching and building relationships with your students, but when used properly and thoughtfully, it can be a powerfully addition to the classroom. The “Southern hospitality” that I’ve been shown at Mount Vernon over the past two days by all the teachers has been a huge blessing and I’ve met people there who I know I’ll keep in contact with and, as a lifelong learner myself, from whom I’ll keep learning.
