January 5

Because the Hook Brings You Back

Full disclosure: I have a thing for song lyrics, so if you are singing this song now then a) I’m so, so sorry and b) you are of a “certain” age and c) it has nothing to do with this post other than discussing hooks.

Teaching requires hooks all the time. Take a look at Matt Miller’s post about hooks if you don’t believe me (or just read it because it is good and you do believe me). Thinking back to teacher prep courses, I guess you would call this your anticipatory set, but you get in a rut sometimes and forget about the hook. Sometimes you just need to dive right in and get to work, so your warm-ups just take the place of the hook and that magic gets lost in the fray.

Earlier in the year, I had the opportunity to try out a new hook that I’m still on the fence about. In all honesty, I still think this might be nothing more than a shiny geegaw in the classroom; others might find it more beneficial than I do. Perhaps it is the content I teach or the way this type of technology is used, but I’m not sure. What am I talking about? Virtual reality (VR) in the classroom!

At the end of last year, our tech consultants asked if I would be interested in trying out the district’s Google Expeditions set with my students in the upcoming school year. For the first year, the set – 30 Viewmaster-style VR headsets, mobile devices, wireless router, and tablet for the teacher-leader – resided in a kindergarten classroom and received tons of use. The kindergarteners “took” trips to the Arctic, outer space, and zoos. Later in the year, when a new student from China joined their class, the students familiarized themselves with their new classmate’s homeland during a VR expedition to China. Taking a PD session from the kindergarten teacher really hit home why this type of technology would be important for opening up the world to students who might lack the background knowledge. But in a writing classroom? I still was not sold.

So, back to the query about using it in my classroom. I scoured the Google Expeditions app to see if there were any connections to stories that my students might be reading or topics they were learning about in science or social studies and came up with nothing. Truly – there was virtually nothing in there for us. However, in using Google Cardboard in a previous class on emerging technologies, I remembered an app from TimeLooper, which took viewers back in time to see how the locations changed. Good news: they had an Expedition. Bad news: it was different from the Cardboard app. Even though it was different (no sound, no timey-wimey stuff), I still appreciated their attention to detail in the expedition that they had: iconic New York City landmarks. But how to tie this to writing? Think, think, think . . .

A few days prior to our expedition, a huge container showed up in my classroom. Body-sized is about the best descriptor I can think of. Several kids noticed it in my classroom. “What is that?” they would point. “Oh, that. It’s a time-travel machine.” You would be surprised how many kids just shrugged and got on with their day. Lucky for me, our tech consultants – three of our four extremely talented teachers came to spend the day with us – had the set up down to a science, so we had our headsets ready to go in a few minutes. Because the kindergarteners had worked out so many of the kinks, the students had extremely clear-cut directions about how to use the headsets: put the safety strap around your wrist; you can turn around but one part of your body must be touching the desk (hip, hand, leg); if you get dizzy, just take the viewer from your face; the leader can see your bubbles on the screen; and have fun.

We told the students very little about the expedition other than we were going to explore some locations in New York City during the past 250+ years. The first stop, Federal Hall in the late 1700s, no longer stands in New York City but served as a great jumping off point. But the next stop brought the most gasps: in the middle of the Empire State Building during its construction. Picture this. You’re on a cobble-stone street looking at George Washington, and in a split second, you are seemingly in the middle of the air, balanced on a steel girder. If you ever need to bring yourself out of a funk, try this with a group of seventh graders. Trust me when I say that their gasps and oohs did not get old that day. After the Empire State Building, we jumped ahead a few years to Rockefeller Center’s construction, then to VJ Day in the middle of Times Square when a famous kiss was captured, and then finally to 2015 and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. All in all, it was an extremely enjoyable day in room 217.

But now what? Because so far we had a gimmick. A shiny bauble. Something to do and talk about when parents asked, “What did you do today in school?” But what we really had was a hook . . . for writing.

The next day, we spent a lot of time discussing what we knew prior to the expedition, what we learned, and what we saw. Did we fill out a KWL chart? No, but we certainly could have modified one and created it. The students came up with a lot of really interesting observations (Did you notice the woman with her head missing in the fourth location? How about the way the two buildings looked during construction? I went home and looked up that location, and you were right: Alexander Hamilton is buried down the street.) but still more questions. Sounds like a good opportunity to research some of these places, which was perfect because expository writing was the next unit for our class.

Each table was assigned a specific location, and for the next day, students individually researched their locations and compiled a list of facts. After that, they shared their information and collaborated on a master list of facts, ideas, and information. The final two days, the students worked to create a sample textbook page using a LucidPress template I created. They had to determine who did what in their groups and produce a final product that would educate someone new to the area about these five locations. When we returned from Thanksgiving break, we broke the locations down a bit further and compiled a huge list of topics inspired by the places, and anything was game if you could justify it. Revolutionary War fashion, depiction of historical figures, construction techniques, history of photography, Thanksgiving traditions, women and the war effort. Basically, if you could explain how you were inspired to look into this topic based on one of the five locations, you could research it. Sure, you could take the boring route (the history of the Empire State Building) but why not look at something more interesting (3-D representation of locations). Right now, we have completed the research and written a draft. The next step is to take the drafts and turn them into infographics, which I figure will take about a week since the hard part – the writing – is basically completed.

Will I use virtual reality in the classroom again? Probably. Do I think it’s the be all, end all? No. You really have to figure out how it will work best for you and your students; otherwise, it is nothing more than a shiny gimmick. For my kids, it was a hook to get them into their next type of writing and to allow them a choice about a topic they found interesting. Obviously, some of them chose safer topics such as straight-forward historical research, but for the ones who picked something different such as building techniques and their evolution, I doubt they would have discovered this had it not been for a trip through time to visit Federal Hall.

Pros:

  1. Super engaging for your students – I don’t think I’ll ever forget some of their gasps!
  2. Introduces them to new locations or concepts
  3. Relatively easy to use (provided you don’t have a major technology fail – our district has a dedicated router that travels in the kit because Google Expeditions relies on all devices streaming at the same time)
  4. Better realism in virtual field trips

Cons:

  1. Expense – I know I am privileged to work in a district that values technology
  2. Limitations for your content – I struggled to find anything that “fit” my content, which is writing
  3. Lack of sound and video – I think I was expecting the same thing as Google Cardboard, which had both; maybe the VR that you select will have that
  4. The next class – my kids were completely wiped out for their math class!