Inside the St. Louis classroom where students design businesses and tech-powered prototypes.
Students in Lani Reeder’s class proudly show off their VR farm environment.
Lani Reeder’s students were working on an entrepreneurial lesson about marketplaces in ancient Rome when they had a bolt of inspiration. “The kids started asking questions: Do we still do this today, in modern times? Why can’t we make our own marketplace with our own goods and have our own system?” says Reeder, a Verizon Innovative Learning Schools Coach and Lab Mentor at Long International Middle School in St. Louis, Missouri. She said yes and watched them run with it.
Working inside the school’s Verizon Innovative Learning Lab, the students wrote business plans, prototyped products, created branding and even built their own currency — using emerging technology as their toolkit. Reeder sourced the original lesson plan on Verizon Innovative Learning HQ, which is “a hub of lessons and projects that you can choose from. You can use a little bit of it. You can use the whole thing. You can use it as a jumping-off point,” she explains.
Many students chose to create projects that would make life better for others. Eighth-grader Oghuz Erkin launched Grow, a concept bringing fresh fruit and vegetables from farmers directly into communities. Along with classmate Kenny Nguyen, the pair built a QR code-accessible, VR farm environment and designed a branded logo. “Using VR is very realistic and interesting. I’ve had a lot of fun doing this,” says Erkin.
Classmates Dawan Womack and Daniel Gadafi focused on disaster relief, engineering a delivery vehicle to transport essential supplies to people in need, such as those affected by a natural catastrophe. The device, built with pocket-size computers, could be controlled via tablet and programmed to return on its own. “[The computer] sends us the message that it is doing the task,” Womack explains. “And once it does that, [the device] will come right back to us using the same code that we use for delivering the items.”
Projects like these strengthen multiple skill sets at once — not just tech literacy but collaboration, problem-solving, communication and motivation — all of which contribute to students’ future endeavors and show them what they need “to be successful and college ready,” Reeder explains. “I think these engaging lessons are impacting their attendance. They want to come to school. They’re actively learning. They are learning how to communicate with one another. Their critical thinking—I see it blossom every day."
“I think these engaging lessons are impacting their attendance. They want to come to school. Their critical thinking — I see it blossom every day.”
Lani Reeder
Verizon Innovative Learning is a key part of the company’s responsible business plan to help move the world forward for all. As part of the plan, Verizon has an ambitious goal of providing 10 million youth with digital skills training by 2030. Educators can access free lessons, professional development, and immersive learning experiences to help bring new ways of learning into the classroom by visiting Verizon Innovative Learning HQ.
