I have the great privilege of teaching
at Simon’s UConnect I am lucky enough to
teach IT and music but I’d like to start
with a question think back to your early
childhood days and what was Monday
morning like for you if you are like me
you were already calculating how long it
was until Friday and then out came the
ruler and the pencil in the eraser not
for work but for creating these
wonderful contraptions these inventions
and then maybe starting to continue
barring that hole in the desk can you
any can any of you baby boomers remember
the size of those holes in those old
wooden desks well I suppose the modern
equivalent modern equivalents of that
boredom is the twitchy thumb syndrome
kids quickly trying to get a text off
before the teacher notices but I want to
ask you another question that you
connect we have a passionate interest in
learning how to harness the power and
the potential of virtual reality
technology so how do we take that
frenetic texting and transform it from
just using technology which we know kids
embrace to kids actually making
technology how do kids get the courage
and the curiosity to just not just use
other people’s technology but to create
their own become creators instead of
consumers whereby they can make their
own applications have the courage to
market it maybe make a living but most
importantly make the world a better
place through it how does that happen
how do kids become inventors instead of
duplicators innovators instead of
innovators instead of image
haters how do kids become not late
adopters that blindly followed the Pied
Piper of the mass marketing machine but
actually become enthusiastic pioneers of
technology this is a really easy
question to ask but an urgent one to
answer given global competition it’s a
sobering fact to realize that by 2020
there’s going to be 50 billion online
devices in the world today unbelievable
your network your appliances in your
home will be networked your self-driving
cars and trucks will be networked even
your clothes will have Network fabric
that changes color and maybe even shape
according to your mood in social context
there will be implants in your body that
monitor everything from your blood
pressure to your blood sugar level and
will be connected to your doctor’s
office maybe to release cancer
medications so as educators as parents
how do you aim your students your kids
at a target that doesn’t exist yet how
do you fulfill objectives that cannot be
defined how do you launch your kids on a
journey where there’s no place in the
map because the US Department of Labor
estimates that within a few years 65% of
the technology that your children will
be using has not even been invented yet
let alone conceived aiming for a target
that doesn’t exist so I’d like to share
with you a few lessons that we’ve
learned on how kids can be creators
instead of consumers I want to start
with a story and it was one of those
revelations aha moments those moments of
enlightenment that every teachers career
it was the early 90s and I’ll never
forget as already has been alluded to
the cd-rom that came to our classroom
the multimedia PC oh my goodness
it was incredible do you remember
Windows 3.1 whoo
when I looked at this and got to learn
it I thought this was going to be
transformative this was going to be
epical this was going to lead my Monday
morning kids into a pedagogical paradise
these sizzling graphics these powerful
presentations would grab their boring
attention boredom and focus it and they
were going to be lifted up to
achievement that would reach the Stars
whoo was I wrong naive and then there
was Logan Logan was a 10 year old girl
and I’ve asked permission to share this
10 year old girl who actually
transformed my teaching Logan didn’t
care about my stable of pedigree cd-roms
she liked to write with a pen and she
liked to draw with magic markers I was
insulted Logan was born with a challenge
she was born with cleft lip and palate
it’s a picture of her and through her
short 10 years she had endured many
invasive painful operations and medical
procedures
one day Logan got an idea it was more
than an idea as you will hear it was a
great vision she decided she wondered if
I catalogued if I wrote down all of my
experiences in the hospital put it into
a book then perhaps when other kids who
are having medical problems and
emergencies read it to have less panic
in the hospital so
she catalogued she went through all of
the operations that she had gone through
and produced this making faces but an
interesting thing happened when she
realized that she could reach a much
wider audience with computers she put
down her magic markers and she’s
embraced learning technology with much
passion and I wondered I thought there’s
a lesson here you see for Logan
technology was just a tool it was just a
means to a different end it was just an
instrument that she played and when the
message was urgent she put down the
violin of her magic markers and picked
up the trumpet of digital publishing and
created this it was published and right
now this book is in thousands of
hospitals and clinics around the world
so that when an eight-year-old girl is
clutching the hand of her mother about
to let go because she’s going to be
wheeled down that long intimidating
corridor into the o.r to have a cancer
tumor removed she will have less anxiety
because of the understanding and the
education that Logan’s book gave her
that really touched me and I thought
wait a minute
I’ve been bragging about these power
computers with their 50 Meg’s of memory
and their hard drive and their 1 gig of
ram maybe I have not just been putting
the cart before the horse I’ve been
putting a 20 ton cart before a miniature
dwarf thumbelina Pony yeah and my
thinking needed some reorientation and
it suddenly dawned on me that perhaps
what I needed to be doing was not
teaching all of these wonderful
photoshopping technique and programming
and coding as much as making them tools
to serve a higher purpose a higher end a
higher vision and that that changed my
life and I’d like to show you some
examples of the results that it produced
a great way to get kids to be creators
is to use all of the thousands of
different types of LEGO pieces and hook
them up to an ev3 Lego brick an ev3 Lego
brick is like a mini computer that can
take on sensor data it can do all sorts
of really interesting outputs outputs
it’s a controller that not only can be
used by a seven-year-old student but it
can also challenge university
engineering students they actually use
it in a lot of engineering faculties
it’s an amazing amazing not really a toy
and the potential for education is
amazing
so we gave our kids got our kids to buy
into a vision let’s use this engineering
to come up with a way to make
transportation more efficient and
effective so they got to work and my did
they get to work we entered them in the
world’s largest Lego competition story
the largest robotic competition the
FIRST LEGO League over 250,000
participants worldwide last year I’ve
never seen motivation Tran
formed they put their heart and soul
into this they went to the regional
competition at SFU one that they went to
the provincial competition at BCIT they
won that and then they were given the
honor for two years in a row
of representing Canada at the Worlds
these little wobbly pieces of Lego you
know I’m sure all of your kids have
played with Lego but these little pieces
of Lego took these kids to Japan to the
Olympic Stadium they took them to
Atlanta to the huge basketball stadium
there and dated really well they came in
third one year third in the world in one
of four judging categories for myself
Wow for myself I had to change my whole
teaching style I had to basically get
out of the way talk a lot less and
facilitate a lot more oh I expanded my
skill set but I never had had a Prodi on
organizing potluck suppers and I had to
get up earlier Saturday morning because
the kids were saying we need to get into
the school okay
even December 24th one year ooh okay we
had but we had such a good time and the
bonding with those kids and the parents
that that that community produced
because of this higher vision was
absolutely incredible let me give you
another example kids got the vision of
doing something about the plight of
Pacific salmon they created a simulation
salmon stream simulation design design a
simulation that the user can create
their own salmon stream online salmon
dissector
online salmon business builder and again
people began to notice they found their
work reviewed and USA Today BBC they
went down to San Francisco to get an
award from a thinkquest that’s the
that’s the president of of Oracle one of
the world’s largest software companies
offered our kids jobs when they graduate
to London Royal Museum of Science on and
on and on then to NASA designing
underwater robots beside astronauts that
are training crazy like what happened
Rockets building model airplanes and on
and on and on and now we have at our
school a most amazing collection of
virtual reality hardware and software
thanks to the generous donation of
parents and many other donors we’ve got
enough for a pilot project what are we
gonna do with them
well our kids got together we’ve only
had it for a few months and our kids
have made incredible progress talk to
Lori and Leanne our science and English
teacher and King and we came up with an
idea of creating a math app based on
Greek mythology and wouldn’t you know it
Christian and Gerhart and Karis and
Ethan they wanted to come in over the
summer so several times they were in
over the summer and they created this
most incredible math app mastering a
technology that is very very difficult
because virtual reality and you all have
a viewer is not something that you just
look at on a screen it’s a world that
you enter and when you put on those
glasses you can look up you can look
down you can look sideways you’re in a
you’re in a virtual bubble in a totally
immersed environment and programming and
for that is exponentially more difficult
than just programming for a flat screen
and our kids are on their way to
where the kids are programming on for
Google cardboard they’re programming for
oculus but the most exciting is oh I’m
just going to take a little rabbit trail
here I’ve excuse me for being geeky but
I don’t know whether you’re familiar
with the term texture mapping we are
going to be using a drone with two
cameras two 4k cameras you can see them
there above and below they they have
eight lenses on them and they can create
this 3d bubble that we can use to put in
the world so the kids can spend more
time learning programming rather than
doing the modeling sorry I said throw
that in but the most incredible platform
is hololens so you can see that the
student here is looking through it’s
almost like big ski glasses what the
hololens does is very different than
what the oculus and the cardboard does
you look through this and you see the
world the room in which you are standing
but then suddenly Holograms
crisp Holograms start to be layered
because this technology is not immersive
its additive and you layer all around
you with these Holograms and you can
create some incredible things a while
back a student came to me and said mr.
Harris I’ve developed an application for
the hololens but it’s too big to fit in
my basement so last week the three of us
snuck into our gymnasium and this space
that was designed to be a basketball
court suddenly was transformed in a
piece of real estate that was housing
nearly life-size castles that you could
walk into and explore I’ll never look at
our gymnasium the same again what’s in
your gymnasium in our gymnasium we’re
going to have models of that you can
explore of ancient Mayan civilization
that Ethan made we’re going to have
we’re gonna have ancient Greek complex
temples that been made because this
technology is unbelievably are so
fortunate to have it actually it’s not
available for the general public yet we
were fortunate enough to get a beta
version with this technology any piece
of spare space can become magic anything
any piece of spare space can be a door
in which there are some very foreboding
things lurking behind this piece of
spare any piece of spare space or any
mundane object can launch fairytales it
can launch stories it can launch movies
3d movies of which you’re a character it
can even launch trap doors hope there’s
not one under me right now amazing what
happened think back to the childhood
imagination I think what your childhood
imagination used to do to everything
from dark closets to watercolor ponies
what happens to that imagination when we
grow up the adult brain how do we
recapture it how do we recapture can
these tools be used to recapture that
imagination can these tools be used to
transform reinvigorate the dark drab
rational urban sprawl Zin which the
majority of humanity lives oh you’re
saying Oh mr. Parrish you’re geeking out
again like you did with those 3.1
windows machines yeah yeah I’m sorry but
one thing I do know is that our kids can
become creators and they can put down
the phones that they’re texting and they
can become creators instead of consumers
if they put this new technology to serve
a higher vision to channel a higher
vision and what is that higher vision
that higher vision is to celebrate the
mystery the Wonder the joy the sublime
gift of being alive on this marvellous
planet in this tiny tiny little pocket
of the Milky Way galaxy with our
existential loneliness on cold winter
nights being cured by the comforts and
joys of being around wonder fellow
travelers like yourselves who care
intensely passionately for our children
thank you [Applause]