Current Event Paper

Current Event Paper

Background

The article What is virtual reality’s role in education?: An interview with Nearpod cofounder Filipe Sommer, written by Blake Montgomery and posted by www.edsurge.com on February 24, 2016, discusses a new addition to the Nearpod educational toolbox.  Nearpod is a web-based presentation tool that pushes the presentation directly to the students’ devices allowing for the teacher to pose questions and set tasks for the students to respond to within the presentation.  The presentation can be given in a live session or sent as homework in a flipped classroom setting.  Nearpod presentations can include text, audio, video, weblinks, polls, quizzes, and drawing content.  Nearpod allows teachers to create their own content as well as provides numerous pre-created model lessons for teacher to use.   

Summary

The article is an interview with Nearpod cofounder Filipe Sommer about the company’s latest release on February 17th of 2016, of their virtual reality lessons.  Nearpod is the first to company to make this publicly available to schools, however there are other companies in sort of a “soft opening” or beta-stage of use.  The aim is to further engage students with the content being presented by the teacher, to allow them to “travel” to distant lands and to experience how they have changed from historical periods of time to the current day.

The co-founders are keenly aware of how teachers will or will not adopt new technologies into their classrooms and have focused their launch of virtual reality lessons to best approach this challenge.  As cofounder Guido Kovalskys states “Our biggest hurdle is to become relevant to teachers that are not fully ready to adopt technology.”  The article poses the question that, as technology is ever racing forward and specifically in the field of virtual reality, whose responsibility is going to be to provide the professional development for the teachers that seem to be often left behind?  Filipe Sommer sees it as, if not the responsibility of the software companies, a huge opportunity for the developers to provide the support to teachers/users so that the technological innovation can gain a foothold.  His idea is that if teachers can see the benefit of the tool in their own practice, they will more readily adopt the product and ultimately get to the stage of “cultivating their own gardens.”

In the interview, Filipe sommer relays several angles that his company is approaching this critical moment in the adoption or rejection of an innovation in educational settings.  Even though virtual reality is a hot topic in technology and commercial settings, teachers and schools operate on different levels.  Nearpod is first sending out free trial kits to schools and individual teachers who show interest, building a base of enthusiastic users.  Inline with Sommer’s view of how to get teachers to adopt their innovation, Nearpod, as part of a school’s purchase agreement, provides on campus and online professional development on how to best integrate their tool into the classroom.  Nearpod believes that their option for teachers to create their own content is the real power behind their product, however they also have created ready-to-use lessons to allow teachers to access Nearpod immediately.  The last aspect that Sommer talks about in effort to ease the transition to using Nearpod in classes is that they have consciously decided to develop the virtual reality capability as web-based and not as software for a specific device, such as the Rift Occulus.  They are aware of the fact that many schools are BYOD and that the additional purchase of Virtual Reality headsets is simply outside of the budgetary abilities of the vast majority of schools.

Analysis

It is incredibly refreshing to see a software company so focused on creating options for educators to enrich their curriculum, engage their students, and bring back that sense of wonder and amazement that learning something new can bring, but even more so, it is particularly impressive to see a company committing to providing the necessary professional development needed for a new initiative to grab hold.  So often do good ideas in technology fail to connect on the educational side because of the lack of professional development and support of the intended users, teachers, who each come into the situation with varying levels of computer competencies.

Whether the people at Nearpod have followed or are aware of the Concerns-Based Adoption Model or have come to the same understandings through their own inquiries is unknown, however the ideas and processes being implemented in the launch of the virtual reality initiative are closely related.  The Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM) states that change or adoption of change generally occurs in a specified sequence starting with the individual questioning, what is it? and how will it affect me?  Moving on to, how can I use this product or practice efficiently?  Finally, when the self-oriented concerns are accounted for, the teacher looks at, is this good for students and how might I improve the use of it in my practice? (Hord et al, 1987)

Nearpod has answers for new adopters at each of these stages critical to successful integration of their offerings.  The initial question of what is it and how will it affect me is met head on at the onset of entering into a contract with Nearpod as they insist on providing professional development on what the practice is and how it will affect you (in a greatly positive way mind you).  They know that they will not be able to meet their goal of enriching the students’ experience if they can not demonstrate the positive effects of the innovation.  

In regards to the question of how teachers will be able to use the material efficiently, Nearpod recognizes that teachers don’t always have the time to invest in new software and creation of content.  This is where the draw of Nearpod is probably the strongest.  Nearpod creates ready-to-use, high quality lessons for teachers to jump right into, while providing the teacher with option of creating their own content.  The option is so open that Nearpod will even let teachers take the pre-made lessons, manipulate, reorder, add, and delete content to best suit the teacher’s individual needs.

As for getting to the stage of, is this good for students? Nearpod already knew that their product is good for students and through training and the ease of use design, teachers will get to agree with that notion as well.  Giving the teacher the tools and option of creating their own content to relate to the individual curricular needs is how Nearpod hopes to get teachers to take that next step in the adoption of their new innovation.  The power is now handed over to the teacher who has been empowered throughout the adoption process to become the innovator.

Montgomery, B. (2016). What is virtual reality’s role in education?: An interview with Nearpod cofounder Felipe Sommer. EdSurge. Retrieved from https://www.edsurge.com/news/2016-02-23-what-is-virtual-reality-s-role-in-education-an-interview-with-nearpod-cofounder-felipe-sommer

Shirley M. Hord, William L. Rutherford, Leslie Huling-Austin, and Gene E. Hall, (1987)The Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM): A Model for Change in Individuals from Taking Charge of ChangePublished by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, retrieved from http://www.nationalacademies.org/rise/backg4a.htm