Pleasantly Inspired

As an educator, I have often thought that it is the teachers job to inspire students in a variety of ways to help them learn and achieve success.   Surely that is the role of teacher and coach, however, this week, I was the one who was inspired by students.   And I am grateful.

I had the opportunity to work with some 8th Grade Students at Forestville Middle/ High School.  A friend and colleague of mine, Todd Langworthy, (History teacher) as well as, ELA teacher, Mike Borrello wanted to try our Understanding the Holocaust Virtual Environment program.  This program lets students use avatars in a virtual world to explore the digitally recreated streets of Amsterdam 1944, when Anne Frank and her family were in hiding.  Students work through 10 Common Core based activities designed to help them understand the concepts, history, and themes of the Holocaust and let them think like a historian to create an exhibit in a Holocaust Museum.  See previous post.

With this program, I get the opportunity to go into the school and work with the teachers and students to help them get used to the virtual environment.   Since this is such a vast departure from anything students have done in a school setting the enthusiasm is pretty amazing.  When the students actually broke out and worked in the environment they were incredibly excited and put that excitement in all kinds of directions within the environment.  And I told the teachers that the first day would really be a day where the students would need to play.  Play they did.  Their most important thing to do was to update their avatar!  However, as the afternoon settled in... I noticed something quite interesting.  Several students started building.... and building.... and building.  Skills that took me a long time to figure out, these students were doing in a mater of minutes.  They were fearless in their explorations and THAT is what inspired me.  I knew that the students would be engaged in this form of learning.  But I was inspired by how they quickly pushed the limits and were using technology to problem solve and create.  They were already talking about geometric shapes, textures, measurements.... using appropriate terminology and logic.  

When I returned the next day, the students started developing more focus towards the setting and the educational objectives, but I would like to say that play was still a part of the learning.  Play has become such a dirty word in education, but I think it is such an essential part of learning, and this project is confirming what I knew would be true.  The builders stayed after school and kept on building all the while learning from each other.  I am inspired.  Take a look at their first project or read more about this project specifically through my avatar Blog- professorilluminati.blogspot.com

Student Built Kitchen

Student built couch

Student built block house