This week, Mr. Myke Healy shares his thoughts on the use of technology in education. Mr. Healy has been at TCS since 2004 and is currently TCS’s director of teaching and learning.

Written by guest blogger, Mr. Myke Healy
 

As my diving cage descended into the shark-infested waters, I wondered abstractly, “Is this going to make me sick?”

Thankfully, the answer was no, and the risk to life and limb was zero due to being strapped into a VR headset and an immersive chair. This first virtual reality experience led me on a path to investigate how virtual and augmented reality could be harnessed to make learning more immersive for our students. Just last week, our colleague David Ingram remarked how powerful it was to tour Anne Frank’s Amsterdam house in virtual reality – down to the moment he was able to reach out and open the bookcase concealing the Frank family’s attic hiding space.

Using weather conditions and climate as a metaphor for life’s experiences is hardly unique. From Shakespeare (“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”) to the Mamas and the Papas (“All the leaves are brown”) and Vivaldi (Four Seasons) to the Beatles (Here Comes the Sun), the natural world around us is often connected to some of life’s most enduring memories.

In my own experience, having grown up in Montreal and Ottawa (where there are real winters), snowstorms today provide an opportunity for me to reflect upon my childhood, lessons learned early in life and the passage of time.

Monday’s snowstorm in Ontario and Quebec, with the resulting cancellation of in-person schooling for students across much of the two provinces, was a trigger for me. Allow me to reminisce a bit about the seasons of my life.

And, so begins the 2022 calendar year! It’s customary at this time of year to plan and set goals for the next 12 months. But during these most unusual times, you might wonder what’s the point of planning anything, when there are so many variables that are simply out of our control.

However, I think goal-setting is still possible – and important. Sure, we will likely need to shift and change and pivot and adjust along the way – but that’s nothing new.

Some recent data on the state of world happiness shows growing evidence to support the counterintuitive notion that, the more you have, the less happy you are.

In a study by the Rand Institute which surveyed young people (defined as ages 16-32) in “developed countries,” it appears that these young people, in the most affluent circumstances, are less happy than people of the same age living in the developing world. And, further, the aforementioned young people in the developed world are significantly less happy than they were 10 years ago. Once again, we are reminded that having more “stuff” doesn’t make you necessarily happier.

So following that thought through, maybe the common parenting sentiment, “I give to my children because I just want them to be happy,” isn’t the best way to go about things. It appears that trying to make your kids happier can make them less happy.

The previous paragraph should hardly come as a surprise.