Sparking a Passion for STEM, Part 4: Q&A with Charter School of Morgan Hill’s Kevin Olson
Earlier this week, we shared Q&As with Ryan Stagg and Betsy Huynh, two high school teachers who spent the summer at Oculus as part of a Summer Fellowship Program with Ignited, an education nonprofit focused on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math). Today, we’re talking with Charter School of Morgan Hill Math and Technology Teacher Kevin Olson to learn about his experience.
Kevin Olson: My name is Kevin Olson, and I’ve been teaching for 12 years. I finished my undergrad studies at University of the Pacific and obtained my teaching credential from San Jose State. I taught sixth grade for seven years at Silver Oak Elementary in San Jose, CA. I then became an Instructional Coach in my district, supporting staff at both Silver Oak and Norwood Creek Elementary. This was around the time we moved to Common Core standards and began to use more technology in class, so I focused on helping teachers integrate technology into their lessons in a meaningful way. I started learning how to code myself around the same time and quickly became hooked.
I learned what I could and applied for the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s Picademy training program. I was invited to join the first US Picademy, and I’ve helped facilitate other Picademies around the country. I’ve helped train over 240 educators since then. Today, I teach at Charter School of Morgan Hill in (you guessed it) Morgan Hill. We’re a K-8 independent public charter school with a focus on Project-Based Learning (PBL). I am lucky to teach technology enrichment classes to fifth and sixth graders, as well as math support and a tech elective for our seventh and eighth graders. I teach my students block-based coding, HTML/CSS, Python, 3D design, and robotics within the context of meaningful, cross-curricular challenges.
KO: Teaching is incredibly fast-paced and dynamic. Every day is something new! My typical day includes planning lessons and experiences for students, teaching courses, monitoring student performance, collaborating with colleagues so my lessons support their work in core classes, and attending staff meetings. We also perform yard duty and parking lot duty. On top of these responsibilities, I troubleshoot and repair devices for my classroom and others. This includes flashing SD cards for our Raspberry Pi computers, fixing a colleague’s projector, or confronting the bane of any IT worker: the copy machine.
The time I spend with my students is by far the most rewarding. I try to make lessons engaging and interesting and strive to ensure diverse interests are addressed—not just for those who already love tech. I look for ways to incorporate audio or visual design to demonstrate that computers and coding are creative platforms to express ourselves and improve the world. It’s amazing to see students’ faces light up when you hook them into computer science and design!
KO: My fellowship at Oculus is the third Ignited fellowship I’ve done. I’ve previously worked at FX Palo Alto Labs and Synopsys. I heard about the Oculus fellowships from the Ignited folks, and although I hadn’t planned on working this summer, I immediately knew that I had to take this opportunity. The QA Robotic Programmer position screamed my name, and I quickly finished the necessary steps to submit my application.
KO: I tried Tilt Brush at a teachers conference and was blown away by the immersion, sense of scale, and creative possibilities of VR. One of the teachers I met through Picademy brought his equipment and had it on display for folks to try. As soon as I put on the headset, I was transported somewhere else. It piqued my interest, and I started looking for ways I could bring VR back to my classroom.
KO: I think VR has the power to engage learners in a meaningful way. Particularly in the humanities and sciences, VR can immerse learners in historic time periods and provide access to tools that are otherwise too costly—or dangerous! For many students, history can be hard to grasp and may not seem particularly relevant. With virtual reality, students can experience events of the past to see how attitudes, behaviors, needs, and desires have contributed to outcomes and what lessons we can learn from reliving these experiences.
For example, none of my students were born when the events of September 11, 2001 took place. It would be immensely powerful for them to be able to experience life before, during, and immediately after that day, to see how people’s attitudes and beliefs changed, to reflect on the consequences of that historic moment, and to draw parallels to events happening today. In the sciences, virtual reality can put tools, materials, and locations within reach. I foresee students’ understanding of chemistry and physics being enhanced by VR once students can mix reagents and examine bonds more closely or when they can play around in a physics sandbox to reinforce their understanding of inertia or conservation of energy.
KO: My project was to create a Python library that Oculus could use to control Rosita, an animatronic RoboThespian robot from Engineered Arts Ltd., to automate the testing of current and future VR headsets. I wrote a Python library the team can use to generate animation sequences rapidly. I also created an end-to-end procedure for testing a build of Dead and Buried on Rift, worn by Rosita, to play back animation sequences generated by the team, collecting device performance and tracking data to identify a wide range of issues.
KO: I have learned so much about how software engineers work this summer. All of what I know about coding has been self-taught, so of course there are many gaps in my understanding and I don’t always follow best practices. This experience has helped me deepen my understanding of the concepts I teach my students, as well as shown me how to work on a large-scale project. I’ve learned how to document my code more cleanly, how to research and use new libraries, how to structure files, how to identify and address inefficiencies, and so much more. I’m going back to my school this fall with a wealth of knowledge and experience I can share with my students!
KO: I’m thankful that part of the Ignited fellowship experience is the creation of an Education Transfer Plan (ETP) that outlines how we teachers will bring our Oculus experience back to class. Some teachers will implement new classroom procedures and lead professional development courses for their colleagues, while others will create lesson plans for their students. I chose to write a week-long unit of study in robotics. Given my project’s emphasis on Python coding and robotics, I thought this would be a perfect tie-in.
In my lesson plan, sixth graders will build their own Raspberry Pi-powered robots and code them to move around. They’ll start with tracing simple shapes to practice using libraries and learn basic structures like loops. Afterward, they’ll incorporate information from sensors—we have infrared light sensors that we’ll use to detect lines on the floor—and students will develop their own algorithm for following a line. These lessons will help students understand and incorporate Python libraries, just like I had to do during my time at Oculus.
KO: This summer was filled with awesome moments—and nearly all of them involved meetings with teams like Core Tech. Although I didn’t always understand what was being discussed, I really enjoyed seeing these creative, knowledgeable experts discussing the latest breakthroughs and challenges they were facing. It was a great opportunity to see how teams interact and collaborate in the workplace, and I can return to my students in the fall to reiterate the importance of working together, relying on each other for support, and listening to others’ feedback and ideas.
