New Culture of Learning

Creating Significant Learning Environments (CSLE) to enhance learning

Today, students are given a piece of paper with a list of teacher names and courses to select from. If they are lucky, the counselor will provide them with some information about what is being taught in those courses. However, students don’t fully know and understand the course topics being taught. Students are signed up for their core classes; however, they are expected to select electives from a sheet by providing only the course title and teacher name. Sometimes the counselors “try” to describe what happens in those courses, but oftentimes they don’t really know. They don’t visit our classrooms and rarely ask us what we really teach.

After school begins in August, they move students around from class to class and place them to "balance" the master schedule, ensure students receive the necessary accommodations, and then assign some students to our classes who don’t want to be there. Therefore, it makes it hard to have a class of students who are interested in our class material.

I have been in education since 2009, but have been teaching for the past 8 years. During that time, I have seen students thrive with my class material, experience "ah-ha" moments with my special programs (such as Photoshop), and even create masterpieces that have won first place in both our district and national competitions. I have taught students from diverse backgrounds. Students have been homeless and living out of their car or shelter, to being considered middle class.

However, in recent years, the common denominator that has plagued our classrooms is students being distracted by cell phones. Even a few years ago, the students who really didn't want to be in my classroom even tried a little. I would be able to talk to them and see why they struggled to find some common ground with our class material, and "try" to produce some kind of work, Now a days I am spending more classtime trying to get students to put their phones away, focus on my work, or taking up phones. Still, they can't keep them hidden in their backpacks.

When a teacher prepares their lessons for school, they prepare them with heart and emotion. They put a great deal of effort into their designs and plans. They don't throw it together haphazardly.

What does course selection and learning look like in today's classroom?

What concepts from A New Culture of Learning will you use, and how?

When a teacher prepares their lessons for school, they prepare them with heart and emotion. They put a great deal of effort into their designs and plans. They don't throw it together haphazardly. They consider it from every angle. Every student needs, and what they will have in class. How will they be able to differentiate it for all types of learners? Then, they take that lesson plan and craft it from its original version into different types of "remixes" (Thomas & Brown, 2011) tailored to meet the needs of every student.

In the book called "A New Culture of Learning" by Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown, the authors talk about how Thomas was teaching a course titled "Massively Multiplayer Online Games and the University of Southern California." He proceeds to discuss the course lectures over a several-week period and the students' behavior during them, noting how their behavior shifted from the beginning of class to what they produced for their final exam. Thomas was so discouraged that the students didn't follow his "traditional" teaching style. That each week, as the students came to class, they slowly transformed it into a meeting that catered to their needs for the topic, while still allowing them to pick the brain of their professor on the topic to learn and grow. "During week nine, one of the students was getting married (for the third time) within the construct of the game. The entire class was invited. It was elaborate, with all sorts of in-game items repurposed to transform a guildhall into a wedding chapel. Players all helped carry candles, and the ceremony lasted over an hour." (Thomas & Brown, 2011)

However, by the final exam, students had written papers full of examples from their own experiences they had learned from during the course of the semester. "They had woven together with readings that had never been addressed in class, either through lecture or discussion." (Thomas & Brown, 2011).

This is a perfect example of COVA. COVA is a learner-centered active learning approach that gives the learner choice (C), ownership (O), and voice (V) through authentic (A) learning opportunities (Harapnuik, 2018). These students found exactly that through that course. Thomas didn't realize it at the time, but he was cultivating something greater than he could comprehend, and sometimes that happens in life. We go through something like this, but don't realize that we are essentially creating something greater than what we had initially set out to build.

This is EXACTLY what teachers all over the world are trying to do today. THIS is exactly how I teach in my class. Years ago, when I started teaching in 2016, I had no idea what COVA stood for or even that this thought existed outside of my classroom. I was a fresh new teacher. I was 31 years old and had just given birth to my first child. I was teaching at a Title 1 school in Houston. I had a class of 25 students who had never seen the program called Photoshop, much less owned a computer at home. I was as green as they could be for a first-year teacher. I had so much hope, passion, and ambition in my heart. These students were going to learn Photoshop, layers, colors, the move tool, etc. We were learning how to use those tools and build a digital Mr. Potato Head. It took me two weeks to finally get the whole class to understand that topic and actually create what I wanted fully. One day, I was walking around the room coaching everyone, helping them, guiding them, I heard a voice from across the room, "Mrs. Speck, I did it. I'm done. How do I turn it in?" I replied, "Make it bigger and better. Add a color, background, and give Mr. P a name. THEN give me a story about him using the text tool. Dream big, and make him who you want him to be. It can be made up or a real person. But I need to know his name, and something about him." Oh, the names and stories I got about their potato were wonderful!! I loved it. To this day, it remains my favorite lesson to teach in September. It brings me so much joy. I had students going above and beyond with their color choices, finding the gradient tool for their backgrounds, and adding cars and other images to their pictures, all while exceeding my initial requests. I just wanted them to move Mr. P's body parts and digitally recreate him. Yet, I, too, was getting wonderful made-up stories of their character.

These are the types of transformations teachers aim to create within each and every class period. As an educator, this is what I strive to do daily in class. However, it does come with its pushbacks.

Bringing VR technology into the classroom for career exploration is exciting, but it comes with several challenges. Whenever you want to make a change or shake things up, there will be struggles or resistance. In this case, I foresee considerable resistance from the following situations:

Push back from teachers- no lessons created for VR technology, and creating it from scratch.
It breaks from the traditional mindset and school structure as we know it.
Admins have less control over things and are not able to micromanage.
They ask teachers to change their classrooms to be student-centered and "flipped," yet, giving up that control is hard.
Professional development is needed for teachers on how to use the device, either at the campus or district level.
Equipment- costs of devices, storage, and software
Technical support for devices, software, and wifi infrastructure
Protecting students on the internet, as well as their data being collected, etc.

What challenges might you face, and how will you overcome them?

We will need to set aside multiple days for teachers to plan lessons, discuss issues they foresee in their classrooms, and create planning sessions for them. I would love to talk to, or shadow, other school districts that have already implemented this into their system to see what they have come up with. Working with Technology to see how the infrastructure holds up and what we need to do to get it in place for adding these devices. Researching the costs of devices and identifying funding or grants that can help offset out-of-district expenses. However, ultimately, the most significant setback will be getting the CTE director and Superintendent on board. Therefore, we will need to explain to them the necessity of this within our CTE courses. We will need both people to buy into our “WHY” and get on board (Sinek, 2009).

How will this approach impact your organization?

With any organization, there will always be resistance and hesitation. However, a well-developed, thoroughly mapped-out plan is one of the first steps. Fortunately, I have addressed some of those issues and created a proposal letter, a literature review with supporting data, and an innovation outline. We also have some amazing teachers in our district who are eager to try new things and provide valuable feedback. Therefore, I believe we will have some educators who will help us implement this in their classrooms, showcase it at staff development days, and demonstrate to others the great potential it has for them as well. Once we show the “WHY” (Sinek, 2009) and get them on board, it will be much easier for others to follow. Galena Park I.S.D. is home to innovative teachers. They go out of their way to seek new opportunities to show students what the real world has to offer, and this will be another tool in their toolbelt.

My Innovation Plan

How can you encourage broad, holistic thinking (not just holistic learning)?

When we apply holistic thinking to Virtual Reality (VR) in the classroom, this means considering VR not just as a single piece of technology, but as part of an interconnected educational system that includes students, teachers, curriculum, technology, and the learning environment. All five of these pieces are interconnected elements that balance each other out, and you need each one to make the system work as a whole. When students use VR technology for career exploration, they broaden their understanding of career opportunities while gaining a deeper understanding of complex subjects by simulating real-world scenarios. It helps create social-emotional learning environments by providing students with experiences that foster diverse perspectives and different types of environments. Therefore, teachers providing crucial facilitation before and after VR lessons in the classroom are crucial for students to connect their immersive experiences to a broader and deeper learning objective that bridges the gaps of “traditional” learning and real-world workforce skills.

Is your perspective broad enough to shape your learning philosophy and actions?

By embracing a holistic perspective, educators and students can not only utilize COVA (Harapnuik, 2018) but also develop a classroom that fosters a student-centered approach to COVA, allowing educators to have a more profound influence on their teaching practices in the classroom setting. When we view learning as a collective, interconnected system, we see that for education to be effective, it must involve more than just content delivery. It blends the diverse needs of students, teachers, the curriculum (TEKS), and the learning environment. VR technology enables all of this by blending immersive experiences with social-emotional and cognitive growth.

References

Harapnuik, D. (2015). Creating significant learning environments (CSLE). YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ-c7rz7eT4&t=371s

Harapnuik, D. (2017). CSLE + COVA. It's About Learning: Creating Significant

Learning Environments. https://www.harapnuik.org/?page_id=6988

Harapnuik, D. (2018). CSLE. It's About Learning: Creating Significant Learning

Environments. https://www.harapnuik.org/?page_id=849

Harapnuik, D. (2018). COVA. It’s About Learning: Creating Significant Learning

Environments. https://www.harapnuik.org/?page_id=6991

Sinek, S. (2009, September). Start with why -- how great leaders inspire action

[Video]. TED Conferences. https://youtu.be/sioZd3AxmnE

Thomas, D. (2012). A new culture of learning. TEDx Talks: YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM80GXlyX0U&t=252s

Thomas, D. & Brown, J. S. (2011). A new culture of learning: Cultivating the

imagination for a world of constant change. Soulellis Studio.