Mo Physics Mo Problems

In the book and movie Ready Player One, users visit a virtuality space called the Oasis to play, work, create, and learn. Although the world of the Oasis was set in the future, there are virtual spaces where students can learn and create in today. In a recent episode of Matt Miller’s Ditch That Textbook Podcast , I was introduced to a new virtual reality tool for the classroom by his guest Mike Drezek . That tool is CoSpaces EDU . It is a great tool for teachers and learners to build interactive 3D environments on their own our collaboratively.  These environments can be viewed on web enabled devices like smartphones, tablets, chromebooks, and desktops. Smartphones can be put into a VR viewer like Google Cardboard to make the environment a fully explorable VR experience. If you head to the Cospace web site and login, you can explore the gallery of user created environments.  If you want to get the VR experience in the gallery, you can download the Cospaced EDU App.

Many educators champion the goal of giving learners more agency over their learning.  I put myself in the category of being on this journey of helping learners own their learning. While reading Kasey Bell’s new book Shake Up Learning , I encountered the following reflection question, “In your classroom, how do grades affect learning?” This question led me to step back and think about student motivation in general. We are a month away from the end of the school year. As students look towards the end of the year, I am looking to keep motivation high by using learning modes that my students find engaging.  So, I put together a survey for them to get some feedback about modes that they found engaging and those that were not. But in the first 3 questions, I asked them some more general questions about motivations in school. The answers I found were quite troubling. This was not designed to be a highly scientific endeavor just a snapshot of my students thoughts. I had student