Stoking Curiosity with XR, featuring Sam Nulf XR for Learning

It’s a blessing that XR technologies exist to help kids continue to learn through the COVID-19 pandemic. But if we just treat the tech as a delivery system for classroom homework, we’re doing students a disservice. Education consultant Sam Nulf explains why.







Julie: Hello, my name is Julie Smithson, and I am your XR for Learning podcast host. I look forward to bringing you insight into changing the way that we learn and teach using XR technologies to explore, enhance, and individualize learning for everyone. Today, my guest, Sam Nulf, has 15 years experience on instructional design in learning and development for enterprise and education. He's worked both internationally and in Toronto, Canada, as an educator and administrator. Sam has been a guest speaker on conferences speaking about 21st century learning and strategies for reimagining the curriculum. He co-authored the Inquiry Framework Tool, a guide for implementing inquiry based learning into the classroom, and has consulted with organizations on their curriculum and learning programs. Sam is currently working at the VR and AR Space, marrying his two passions, innovation and learning. Thanks for joining me today, Sam.



Sam: My pleasure. Nice to be here, Julie.



Julie: Great, great. So please tell me a little bit more about your passion, your vision. We talked right before we started recording here today, about when we decided we were going to record; it was pre-COVID and this isolation that's going on right now for everyone, and how education and learning from home has impacted everyone. And I'd love for you to just take off in a conversation with me, about how we're going to adjust learning from home, and what you're seeing from your perspective and your experience.



Sam: [laughs] That's a really big question. I'll try and break it down.



Julie: Absolutely, absolutely. How are we going to fix this problem? [laughs]



Sam: Right, right. Let's just first maybe touch on what I perceived to be the climate out there. I think there's been some reporting in the news channels about some dissatisfaction and frustration from parents, with how the roll-out of the learning programs through the use of technology has gone. And that frustration, I think it generally revolves around a gap in understanding for parents. Parents need a little more support in how to help their children at home. I think there needs to be-- that bridge between the institution of education and parents needs to be supported and built out a bit more. And then that will inform how robust the learning can be with what's being pushed out. It seems that the tool -- if we're talking about technology as a tool -- hasn't quite been used to its full potential. It's more sort of like a delivery service for the checklist of items that parents have to do. And the board will call it learning. "You do this, you do this, you do this, and your child is learning." But there's an opportunity that's been missed, to make the learning really rich. And that is one part technology, but it's another part, the instructional design piece or the pedagogy. Rethinking how to how to teach. And there has been some big conversations about inquiry based learning or problem based learning and 21st century competencies, that sort of are amplified with that type of instruction. So I think there's still some work to do.



Julie: Yeah, just a story I've heard this week about a very frustrated teacher who has put a lot of pressure on the parent, for not engaging their child at home enough with the remote teacher. So, first of all, the frustration of the teacher not having the parents sit there by the student and say, you have to do your work, get onto the computer and you have to talk to this teacher. But