Observational Notes:
Bruce McBannon is a 32 year old teacher in a middle school. He has been teaching in this district for eight years, the last five at this school. He has had three prior successful observations on record in this district. This is my third formal observation of Bruce for this term, and it was not an announced time.
The TutorAI system logs show that between last class and this class, Bruce has reviewed the personal learning plans of his 24 students, and updated his observational notes on 14 of those students. TutorAI has proposed next steps for all 24 students, and Bruce has reviewed these plans, approved 16 and modified eight of them.
At the beginning of the class, Bruce provides clear instructions of the tasks they have to complete today. The primary task is a tour of the disabled nuclear power plant in Fukushima. Bruce is careful to put some students in small groups, and allow some others to work alone. He has clearly tested the VR equipment prior to the class, as there were no issues with the students connecting to the Fukushima site. I was particularly impressed how the level of questioning presented to the students was appropriate for where they were in their learning in the radiation unit.
Each student was engaged and on task throughout the activity. The scaffolding provided for each student, either through differentiated questioning or the peer interactions, appeared to be providing the right degree of challenge for each student, without being too easy.
I was particularly impressed that Bruce leveraged the VR to allow students to have sensory experiences that are not possible in the classroom, especially when the students were able to handle the enriched uranium fuel pellets and with their hands feel the heat coming off them still, 100 years after the accident.
After bringing the students back out of the VR, Bruce was careful to review some of the key points, and allowed the students to share their observations with others. After some time for formative assessment and reflection within their learning logs in TutorAI, Bruce explained that in the next class, the students would be going to the Moonbase to see how radioactive isotopes are being used to provide power to operate the equipment in the Habitat.
Recommendation: Contract renewal
Observer: Louise Zawadi, Principal
Hey Allan,
I really appreciated your description of the VR experience the students had. It’s always been my dream to rent VR sets for my students and take them on some sort of “field trip” with them. Hopefully one day they will be more accessible to classrooms as I think they could make for incredible transformative learning experiences. Like the one you just described!
Allan,
First of all, I enjoyed both of your speculative scenarios.
In my Dystopian future, I also focused on A.I. reviewing human success. I also noticed Trista did as well. I wonder why it is that we all immediately think the future will have A.I. assessing us? Further, why are we so scared of this? Is it because we believe A.I. will never be able to understand our actions or be able to relate and have sympathy for us? We really have no reason to believe this, do we?
In Speculative Everything, the authors discuss when they develop speculative futures, there are cones of likeness that they use; probable, plausible, possible, and preferable. Where do you think yours would fall (Dunne & Raby, 2013, p. 2-5)? Which of your two scenarios do you think is more likely? I would like to believe it’s the utopia. However, you can never know for sure. The important thing is to use these models to create a discussion of where we are and where we want our relationship with technology to go (Dunne & Raby, 2013, p. 2-3).
References
Dunne, A., & Raby, F. (2013). Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. Cambridge: The MIT Press.