Zach Diamond 0:03 Welcome to the modern classrooms project podcast. Each week, we bring you discussions with educators on how they use blended, self paced and mastery based learning to better serve their students. We believe teachers learn best from each other, so this is our way of lifting up the voices of leaders and innovators in our community. This is the modern classrooms project podcast. Hello and welcome to episode 212, of the modern classrooms project podcast. My name is Zach Diamond, and I'm a high school media production teacher in Washington, DC, and, of course, a modern classrooms implementer and mentor. And today I am joined by alysan karavarani, co founder and chief revenue officer at Goosechase, the world's first interactive experience platform. Welcome Alyshahn. Welcome to the podcast. Alyshahn Kara-Virani 0:52 Thank you. I'm very excited to be here. This is something we've been looking forward to for a little while, since we got connected. Zach Diamond 0:59 Yeah, it's, it's we scheduled way in advance. So I've been looking forward to it, too. I'm excited to learn more about goose chase. That is our topic for tonight. But before we get into that, why don't you tell me and our listeners a little bit more about yourself, like, tell us how you wound up at goose I guess. So. You're a co founder of goosechase. Is that right? Alyshahn Kara-Virani 1:17 Yeah, Zach Diamond 1:18 yeah. So tell us the story. Tell us the story. Alyshahn Kara-Virani 1:20 It's a kind of a hilarious story. So Andrew Cross was our CEO and founder. Was my college or university roommate, and was in a entrepreneurial residence where he had to have a business idea. Came up with goose chase. It started as this idea for a platform for scavenger hunts, entered it into a startup competition one, and promptly had, if you guys remember BlackBerry way back in 2002 1011 coming to him, say, Hey, can we use this for team building? And the University of Waterloo say, Hey, can we use this for orientation? When will it be ready? And Andrew was like, you know, a few weeks, and that was kind of the inception. I came on six or seven months later, and the two of us just just grew it kind of in the background while we were learning about business and teams and what we wanted to do from a company perspective, how we wanted to build, and then in 2017 ish, the both of us just dove in full time, and now we're 30 people and a few million in revenue, and, you know, 1000s and 1000s of customers. So it's been a really interesting journey, honestly, right from the start, very unique. Zach Diamond 2:38 Wow, that's so cool. And Blackberry. I do remember Blackberry, but I have to say I'm gonna link it in the show notes, because I have some co workers at my school who might not be old enough to remember blackberries. Yeah, I'm gonna link the Wikipedia for Blackberry. That's something I never expected to link actually in the show notes for this podcast. But there you go. All right, cool. Well, thank you again, so much for joining us, and thank you for for the background. Why don't you just tell us what Goosechase is? You know, I guess that I put that first in the outline because I felt like it was a good place to start. What is goosechase? You said it started as a platform for scavenger hunts, but it's certainly evolved into more than that. Alyshahn Kara-Virani 3:19 Yeah, it just certainly hasn't. So like all, I'll kind of reiterate a little bit, but I'll try not to repeat myself too much. Goose Chase is an interactive experience platform that started as a scavenger hunt platform, but has really evolved into a platform or a technology that we hope allows audiences, that allows students, in this case, potentially parents, an opportunity to use technology to enable a physical experience. I think the biggest gap we see with technology and apps today is that the app is focused on keeping people on the phone. They want clicks, they want logins, they want you in their app consistently. They want you engaging with their content and their you know, their ads and whatever the app may do with goo chase. The whole idea is, can we use something that people are essentially have tethered to their bodies, always holding in their hands, as a way to connect them to their physical world, to allow them to have an experience, to allow them to build a connection with another human being, or with with with a physical surrounding. You know, like, for example, if you're in a museum and you have an app, typically, the goal is the app to teach you about the museum. For us, it's about getting to interact with the exhibit and to learn something and connect and build a memory, a little bit of a ramble. But that's, that's kind of who we are and where we started. Zach Diamond 4:52 So can you give me an example, like, what would be if I were, I guess, certainly from the, I guess, from the perspective of a teacher. Right? Like, how would I use a goose chase in my class? Alyshahn Kara-Virani 5:03 I love that. Okay, so there's a few different ways that that teachers will use this in the classroom. I think one of my favorite ways, my personal favorite example, is to take classroom learning and create engagement at home. So, you know, you could have a so goose chase. You know, fundamentally, the way it works is teachers will create missions for students to complete mission. That's what they're called, right? Yes, missions will be photographs, videos, text or GPS, and you might have a whole chemistry lesson on goose chase. And it could be like, you know, when you get home tonight, put a sugar cube in a glass of water, put a sugar cube in a jar of molasses, and take a short video of yourself, telling us which one the sugar cube dissolved faster in explain why. Okay, and that's a great way for teachers to be able to understand if the student is comprehending, or they're able to extend learning or analyze learning. You know, I think I mentioned Bloom's Taxonomy later down in the notes. Or is it just simply remembering something and at the same time still engaging the parents? Because kids can obviously work with their parents to be able to answer some of these questions, if it's in classroom learning, teachers will often break up their lessons by having goose chases, either splitting students off into teams in order to complete challenges, or maybe just as an opportunity for students to be able to complete them on their on their own. If teachers are taking students out on field trips, they'll build goose chases as a way to keep students engaged. We often see it in museums, where teachers and museums will work together to create curriculums that take place in the museum, that further the learning that's happening in the classroom, and also as a way for chaperones to guide students around the museum, to maximize their learning, as opposed to like, are we getting what we need from being here? Can we find a way to show empirical based learning that we were having a positive impact by coming to this museum in terms of the learning? So, yeah, it really varies. The kind of continuum is quite long. Zach Diamond 7:18 This is awesome. Actually. It's funny, what I thought of as you were describing this in a museum, is, like, when you get one of those, like, handheld audio player things that you walk around the museum and, like, you play the thing for each exhibit, but like, so much more, right? Yeah, also we you get to design it, right? Like you tailor it to whatever lesson or unit you're teaching, Alyshahn Kara-Virani 7:40 and that's exactly it. So imagine you're, you're, you know, you teach grade six, and you have one class that is that you teach, that's biology, and you have another one that you teach, that is, I don't know, geography, and you go to the Smithsonian the learning that takes place for each of those classes when you're at the museum is probably a little bit different, right? So you can design a goose chase to enable being at the museum and supplementing or extending your classroom objective at the museum, instead of having students just like run around a little bit aimlessly, you know, and without any true direction or understanding of effectiveness. Yeah, Zach Diamond 8:21 yeah. This is awesome. And you know, I was thinking, as you were talking to about blended learning, which we're gonna talk about the three pillars of modern classrooms later. But blended learning, this is very it's in a way, like very explicitly blending learning, and not just saying, like, Oh, we're using a tech tool, so it's blended, right? It's like yes, blending learning with the world, right, in a very, like, explicit way, that's really cool. Yeah? Alyshahn Kara-Virani 8:48 I mean, listen like the truth is, and we hear this from teachers all the time, it's impossible to untether students from their phones. Yeah, they want to be they want their phones in their hands. So if we can give them the capacity to do to like, hold something they want, but but at the same time drive learning. But the one thing we didn't talk about that's really neat and is a really big component of goose chase is the social component. So there's a live leaderboard, and there's a live news feed for every Goose Chase, so students can see what their peers are doing. They can see how they're stacking up in terms of points on the leaderboard, if you decide to use it that way. But that social component is an awesome way to fill a need for students, which is to understand how they compare to their peers, or what their friends are doing, etc. And it's, it really is blending learning and social and tech. And so it's, yeah, it's really fun Zach Diamond 9:41 blending, like, in a real sense, you know, I like that. That's really cool. And I think that's an interesting sort of segue into the next topic that I wanted to ask you about, which is gamification. And I think now that you're describing goose chase to me in this way, I think that my view of it was a little bit too narrow. Row as I was preparing these questions, and I was thinking about gamification, like using it as a sort of tool to create a gamified class, but you made the distinction in our notes. And I know listeners are getting a lot of kind of peeks behind the curtain here as to what's in our notes, the distinction between gamification and experiences, so I'd love to hear you talk more about that, like the leaderboards and the sort of ranking that does sound to me like gamified learning, but it sounds like there's more. Alyshahn Kara-Virani 10:28 Yeah, I think gamified learning is, to a degree, overly simplified. And what I mean by that is like, you know, you're assuming that people want a very specific reward for an action, like in the case of goose chase, points. And certainly that can be the case. You know, people take satisfaction from being rewarded in different ways. And I think that's something that gets overlooked when we talk about gamification in that kind of, like, narrow, linear view, some people love recognition. You know, they love to be called out and said, like, wow, Zach, did a great job. Did everybody see his answer to the sugar molasses question in the goose chase? That's that's something that we can all kind of look back and learn from. And you can feel really great about that. Other people love the gratification of accomplishment, right? Of like, Wow, I did that. And I can see my accomplishment as a function of the points that are that are completed. Other people like to win. And so I think when we talk about experiences versus gamification, I really encourage people to think of experience as like, how are you delivering feelings of value to all different types of people based on what they consider valuable, right? And like I said, those are just three examples of that, where gamification tends to be more simplistic, take an action, get a physical reward, a point or a badge or something like that, where we're like, hey, let's create an experience that everybody can feel something about. And when we say experience, we always encourage creators to think your goal is to have somebody learn something, remember something, and feel something. And if you can do that, then you know you're creating a connection that is going to last. There's going to be a memory that gets tied to what you've created. Or gamification can be forgotten very quickly, right? It can be like, Hey, I won that classroom mathematic monopoly kind of mix up. Zach Diamond 12:47 Yeah. I mean, everything you're saying that actually this whole time, everything you've been saying is really resonating with me, just because it feels like it's so grounded in, like, the real world and things that are authentic. I feel like, so gamification is this whole big topic right now, right? We've had a couple episodes of the podcast on gamification, and, you know, I like the way that what you're describing, it's like you're you're drawing on the same sort of psychological benefits of gamified learning, but in a way that feels authentic, that feels real. Alyshahn Kara-Virani 13:21 Yeah, that's a great way to put it. I mean, I think we take the approach that everybody is a human, and everybody is an individual, and you should try to meet people where they are. I think a lot of companies are very self serving. You know, they they want what they want, because it creates benefit for the continued growth of the company or the revenue. And we've always approached goose chase from the perspective of, if we meet our customers where they are and try to deliver to them what they want, then we will kind of benefit on the other side of that, as opposed to the flip of you know us, first, audience, students, second kind of thing, which is why I think, you know, we have that little bit of a flipped view of gamification, for example, yeah, and Zach Diamond 14:10 I think what you were saying before about students who, like, are glued to their phones, which they definitely are, you know, I've often, obviously, there's like, two sides. This is a debatable question, right? But sometimes I wonder, like, you know, are we, is this a hill that we're choosing to die on and sort of dying on it? Like, if we made the phone part of the lesson, could that just sort of obviate the problem? Right? I think there's, there's different answers to that question. Obviously it's a complex topic, but in whatever extent we can using that as a tool in a way that feels real, right, like, I think that if you just say, like, Okay, I, you know, I posted some stuff, and you can use your phones to access it, or whatever, like, that's but not the same thing as using the phone as a tool to actually accomplish some. Thing, and same with gamification, right? Like, if you can give them that gratification that comes from winning a game that's that's a hook, right? It's not just the fact that they won, like you said, like, it comes from doing something, Alyshahn Kara-Virani 15:14 yeah, there's a gratification of accomplishment that comes along as well, for sure. Zach Diamond 15:20 Tell me more about, like, the leaderboards. Like, what do the students and I say students, Goose Chase is used outside of classrooms as well, so feel free to talk about that also. But like, what do they see? Like, what what's being compared and what's being ranked? Alyshahn Kara-Virani 15:34 So, you know, we're firm believers that the social component of goose chase is critical to the success of success of the activation. Because, you know, without diving too deep into human psychology, I think there's a fundamental desire for people to see themselves in others and to see others in themselves, right? So it's like you have a lot of people that if somebody else is doing something, we'll do it as well. That, like, you know, I think we can all think of examples of that. So the news feed is all of the all of the pictures, all of the videos from the completed missions. And so you can actually scroll through the news feed and see, oh, like, Zach did a great impression of Elvis Presley. Maybe that gives me the confidence to also complete that mission. Or like, Oh my God, there is my friend Toni Rose, uh, completing a mission that I never thought they might complete. I think that I feel like I should go talk to them and congratulate them. Or, you know, kind of recognize that the leaderboard, because all the missions have points associated with them, the leaderboard is a cumulative score and then ranked in order from the most points to least points. Not all teachers classrooms will choose to use the leaderboard, and in cases where you're asking sensitive questions, in the missions, will not choose to display all of the news feed items, but we do encourage them to at least have some components or some missions that allow displaying of the news feed so that people can again react and engage with the content from their peers. Zach Diamond 17:24 Yeah, similar to how modern classrooms encourages teachers to use a public pacing tracker, right, or a public Progress Tracker, not because we're trying to expose anyone, but because that social component, right? Like you can see sometimes students have expectations of each other, right? And they can be surprised by each other's progress. And, you know, a little bit of healthy competition helps, right? It can motivate students as well, Alyshahn Kara-Virani 17:47 for sure. And you know what? One thing I absolutely loved about the modern classrooms, methodology. I love the students face, you know, like, move your move your face. The next board. I love that example video, because I was really it was really cool to see that it drove kind of that, like helpful collaboration for students that were behind you. We get students that were ahead coming back and trying to interact with their peers to help them move along. And that level of engagement, I think there's a social component in all of us that is getting diminished because technology becomes a barrier to being able to have a conversation with somebody you know, like we see it all the time at conferences, which is big for us, chase people come to tell us and be like, I've met so many people here. I've been coming to this conference for 10 years, and I've never met so many people, or never got to know so many people. And the reason is, in my opinion, that technology diminishes our need to actually have human interaction. It's easier for me to sit on my phone and look at Instagram or, you know, flip through Tiktok, if you know I have Tiktok, than it is for me to be like, hey, Zach, where are you from? You know, have you come here often? I think that's kind of getting pulled out of us. So, yeah, the the progress board that drives that kind of human element was really, really neat. I love that. Zach Diamond 19:14 Yeah, okay, you can see Elisha, that I am here for the deep dive into human psychology. I think all of this does kind of do a really good job of addressing what I wanted to ask you about gamified learning. And I think that, like broadening the scope of that question definitely made sense. And I think that that's a lot of really cool, like sort of just a lot of really cool, or a really cool perspective on the topic. So thank you for that. We are going to take a short break. We have an announcement for this week when we come back, we're going to talk a little bit more about specifically how goosechase can integrate with the pillars of modern classrooms. Hey there, listeners. This is Zach recording. These announcements a. Couple weeks after recording with Ali Shan and I have a kind of a hoarse and less pleasant voice, so I'm sorry you'll have to bear with me just for a little bit, but we have some announcements for you for the upcoming week. First off, do you want to connect with educators of color who are creating a more student centered learning environment? You can join our monthly shades of excellence. Meet up on Monday, October 28 at 7pm you can join Rob's book series. Remember, Rob's book is called, meet every learner's needs, redesigning courses. The real magic of a modern classroom lies in self pacing. In a self paced course, every student can be appropriately challenged every day. Meanwhile, you the teacher, can spend your time where it's most needed, giving every student the support and encouragement they need. And this is on Wednesday, October 30, at 6pm Have you ever wondered how standards, new and old can guide your students learning experiences? If you're curious about how to craft a personalized educational path, Nicole coango is sharing the best practices from their computer science classroom and how they approached receiving new standards at the beginning of the school year. And you can join us on Thursday, October 31 at 3pm spooky. There are registration links in the show notes, and I'm gonna sign off now and get back into the interview with Alyshahn, so you can get back to hearing me with a fully functional voice, and more importantly, you can continue hearing from Alyshahn. All right, folks, we're back with Alyshahn, and I'd like to ask you more now about Goosechase, specifically in the context of modern classrooms. And I wanted to sort of structure this around the three pillars of the MCP model, which are blended learning, self paced learning, and mastery based learning. And we did already kind of talk about blended learning, and I think we can mostly kind of breeze over this topic. We've already talked quite a lot about how goosechase blends learning with tech and sort of the real world and everything. So I think there's more for us to talk about in the other two pillars of self paced learning and mastery based learning. So if that's okay with you, let's jump ahead to self paced learning. How do you think goosechase can support students who are working at their own paces and working maybe on different things in the classroom, and I guess I should also say support teachers who are working with students who are self pacing? Alyshahn Kara-Virani 22:22 Yeah, I mean, I've given this a ton of thought, and I think there's a few different ways, or a couple different ways that really stand out to me in terms of self paced learning. I think the ability, and, you know, this kind of, kind of, this first idea, kind of leans into the mastery aspect as well. But there was this idea of having multiple goose chases, and each goose chases missions have a increasing degree of difficulty. And so, you know, the goal for students would be to complete goosechase a, for example, before moving on to goosechase B, Goosechase C, and having the teacher or or the any member of the staff, I guess, and depending on the particular classroom that this is occurring, be able to determine whether or not the student has demonstrated success in in that area before, before allowing them to move on. And the way it can benefit teachers is one, they're going to get all the content directly to them, and so they can review it, either all at once, or they can actually review it in real time, which I think is a really great tool, because it doesn't allow the student to get too far ahead in terms of their learning if they're if they're being challenged by the by the curriculum, or the material in the material in the curriculum. And I think that's really important, right? Is you don't want to get too far down the path without having the opportunity to understand where there's opportunities for improvement, Zach Diamond 23:52 right, to receive feedback from the teacher. I think from the teacher's perspective, the way that I would frame that is, like we don't want students, even if they're doing it right, like we don't want them getting too far ahead without me being able to lay eyes on it. Alyshahn Kara-Virani 24:03 Yeah, thank God you're here. That was way more articulate. Well, Zach Diamond 24:06 no, but you, you put it from the students perspective, which I think is also equally valid, Alyshahn Kara-Virani 24:10 yeah, absolutely. And I think the nice thing then is the content that's being created can then be recognized by the teacher for other students. You know, you can, you can easily pull a piece of content right off the platform, or share your screen, your computer screen, right there in the classroom on a projector, and say, Hey, look at the great work Zach just did in chemistry. Any students who are still in lesson one and struggling with this concept, I would encourage you to talk to Zach. We'll go back to that idea of rewarding a student, and that would be so specific to we know that Zach loves recognition? We know that one of the things that motivates him is the ability to help others. So we're going to use this as an opportunity to boost his confidence or give him that that chance. So I think that that really is a big opportunity with goosechase as it relates to self paced learning and Mastery. The other idea was, was, you know, when you talked about mastery, the one thing that came to mind was, was actually video games. So video games are really cool, because you can demonstrate mastery, yeah, through levels, right? Like you're progressing through the levels and ultimately, like, there's no test, quote, unquote test. It's just, did you beat the level? You're showing that you're progressing towards mastery. You beat the game, you show that you've progressed to mastery. And so with goosechase, and we go back to that idea of gamification. For example, you can add taxonomy in the way that you write the mission. So are you again looking for student to remember something. Are you looking for them to understand something? Are you looking for them to apply, analyze, evaluate? And then ultimately, you can ask a student to create something on goosechase. And I think once we get to that kind of, you know, top of the pyramid on Bloom's Taxonomy, we can, without a shadow of a doubt, say that mastering was achieved in a specific topic. And I think that combined with that, like degree of difficulty of questions, or degree of difficulty of goosechases, like you could have a goosechase a, be all about remembering and understanding and goosechase. B, be all about application and analyzing, etc, etc. And so if we kind of put that in a real world example, you know, one of the missions in goosechase at the remember level might be something like, what predators live in the Amazon forest? If we're like, okay, we want somebody to apply it, we might say, what are the prey of the predators that live in the Amazon forest, and why are they prey? So you're literally now, like remembering something and then applying the knowledge of the why. And so you can kind of continue, and then you could say the last one, maybe if we think about create, would be something like, take a short video of the diorama you built showing the Amazon ecosystem, right? So it can be an integrated experience as well. It doesn't always have to be about the goosechase. It can be about other projects in the classroom that you use the goosechase as a way to drive feedback, drive recognition, and those are the way, like I said, I think I've kind of combined the self paced and the mastery. Zach Diamond 27:29 Yeah, I think, like they are two separate pillars of the modern classrooms project, right? But in another sense, they're very integrated, right? Because in order for students to be able to this is from the modern classrooms and sort of teachers perspective, right? In order for students to be able to self pace, we can't just let them go. You know, this is what I was saying before, like, we need to have sort of, like touch points where we see their work and make sure that they're doing the work correctly, that they've mastered it before we let them move on, right? So they're definitely integrated. And that's why I think that, like, the answers to these two, I separated them as questions, but they're not really separate, like, from the perspective of goosechase. Like, it's not, it's not for tracking their progress. There are, there are there features for tracking their progress through, like, the different activities and the missions. Alyshahn Kara-Virani 28:18 Yeah, absolutely right. Like, you can see when they're completing them. Okay, what time they've completed them you're gonna get you could look at the Submissions tab and see, like, Okay, show me all of Zach's submissions. Wow. Zach Diamond 28:32 So it's almost like an LMS, like, it's almost like a whole learning management system. Alyshahn Kara-Virani 28:36 It is. I mean, I think LMS tend to have a little bit more specificity in terms of, like, learning management, and, you know, there's a lot more tools, but certainly, yes, if it can be used in that way, especially as it relates to modern classrooms, like I said, you know, if it's, you know, hey, Mr. Diamond, I've completed goosechase a and you're like, Okay, great. Let's take a look, and we pull up, we go in, we pull up all student A's submissions. And we're looking at the videos, we're looking at the pictures, and we get to a point where, like, oh, okay, let's take a look at this. Okay, talk to me about your answer. Why did you record the video in this way? Super neat. Okay, cool. I want you to go back and try that again. Zach Diamond 29:18 For me, that's definitely the mastery based aspect of things, right? It's like looking at something, giving students feedback, having them revise if they need to. Alyshahn Kara-Virani 29:26 Yeah, no, I see what you're I see where you're going with that. Yeah, I would even say so, so much so that like, and again, I really want to avoid feature jumping, because it's not about features. It's more about like, tangible ability to, like, achieve an objective, right? Like, that's what we're trying to do. But even to the point of, if a student submits a mission and you view that mission immediately because you happen to be on the news feed, you can send that student a message directly through the goosechase platform, saying, Hey, you're on the right track. Just try. Record that one more time. Here's a quick note. And so you don't actually have to physically interact with that student, if it's just a quick note, and you'd like them to, like, I said, try it again. So there is that opportunity. We always, we always talk about goosechase as a continuum of engagement. And so on the one end is like, we can have the student come and we can review, we can go over that one to one, or on the other end, it can be a quick or it can be a thumbs up, right? And a thumbs up would indicate you're doing a great job. Keep going down the path. So we can kind of have that opportunity for students to get the feedback in very different ways, depending on where they are in the curriculum or the nature of the feedback that needs to be given, Zach Diamond 30:41 yeah. And I think that that's what I was trying to say, is like the two self paced and mastery based, they are integrated, right? The fact that modern classrooms calls them both out separately doesn't mean that they're not both deeply connected. And it sounds like if students are working through a goosechase, if they're doing missions, if they're doing activities, right? We can see them, they can work at their own pace, and we also have tools to give them feedback. So So it definitely connects with with the whole model, in that sense, cool. Can I ask you a question that's not in the outline? Absolutely. Yeah, just if you were to imagine like a classroom that was working on a goosechase, right? What are the students doing? Alyshahn Kara-Virani 31:25 Yeah, great question. I think this answer is very broad, and let me the reason I say that is because the power is in the hands of the Creator, and in this case, the teacher, right? So sometimes teachers will use goosechase as a way to like, I said, integrate other opportunities in the classroom and then use it as a way to like, track those activities. So for example, if it's okay, we're gonna break into teams, and you'll have pipe cleaners at your desk, and you have all these items, and it's like, I'm gonna ask you to build a house from the book. Like, visualize the house from the book we just read. I want you to build that pipe cleaners. Once you're done, I want you to take a video of of of the house on the on goosechase. Or maybe it's like, get together as a group and maybe for a little bit of an older class, talk about How To Kill a Mockingbird applies in today's society as a group, and I want you to film a 32nd recording of one parallel in today's society and that we read in the book. And so those are good examples of kind of combining opportunities for student interaction in a very specific way, you know, again, analyze, create, understand, apply taxonomy, and then have a way to like, gather that information from the students, and then also for students to be able to share their answers easily with other students, without occupying like, Okay, I want you to come up to the class, front of the class, And tell us, right, what you've learned, right? It could be like, Okay, we guys, we have, like, silent time. I want you to continue with the research that we started, open your goosechase and answer some of the text based questions. And it could be, again, like comprehension based, or it could be finding something, like, you're trying to find an answer to a question in a textbook, and when you find that answer, answer the question in goosechase the text based question, or take a picture of it. Zach Diamond 33:28 That's the scavenger hunt part. Alyshahn Kara-Virani 33:30 Yes, yes, exactly. So I think, okay, yeah. I think we tend to because scavenger hunts are at the basic level, like, you know, go here, find this, take a picture, right? Go here, something. Do this, you know, go find this person. Ask them this, write their answer down, yeah. But for us, it's like we can be more driving of the outcomes that you would like to see. And in a lot of cases, it's like we would like students to critically apply knowledge to real world situations based on the items taught in the classroom, not in theory, but in practical, real world applications. So we're going to write missions that allow students to be able to apply that and then have like, the connection, so that when they see it in the real world they can, you know, hopefully apply what they learned in the class. Zach Diamond 34:24 Yeah, and that's, that's awesome. That's cool, because I feel like in all of those sort of, like hypothetical classrooms that you came up with, even the one where the students are working solo, like they're either collaborating, or they're at least talking to each other, or they're, like, doing something in the physical world, right? Like there, even if it's looking in a book, and I guess the book might be on their computer too, but like, it's, it's not just like the it's not like a two way street between the person and the computer, right? There's something else. There's a third thing or more, right? The pipe cleaner was like, What a cool. A What a cool activity, right? Alyshahn Kara-Virani 35:02 Yeah. And giving students an opportunity to use their phones, we've heard, we hear from teachers all the time, just, just the extension of giving students an opportunity to use their phones is huge, because it connects to the desires that the students have, right? They want to be on, right? Yeah, and, and it's such a tough thing to be a teacher that says, we don't use phones in the classroom, but you're gonna get students trying to sneak out to the bathroom or, you know, lookinto their desk or Zach Diamond 35:29 and it puts you in opposition with with what they want, right? Even if what they want isn't necessarily what's best for them all the time, like it's still, it still puts you in opposition with with them? Alyshahn Kara-Virani 35:41 Yeah. And I should say that all the stuff that we talk about here, none of this is really any of my ideas. We have so many teachers that are so smart that just tell us all the different unique ways that they've used goosechase. So I'm drawing on all these teachers like this, like vast pool of knowledge of teachers trying all these different things and telling us their success and what they've learned, and so, um, you know, I just want to call that out, because these are certainly not my my ideas, yeah. Zach Diamond 36:10 I mean, yeah. And I think that the cell phone thing, it's like, it's another one of those debatable questions. I don't think that either of us is going to come out and say this is the right answer, right because if anybody knew the right answer, we would be solved, like we would, this wouldn't be a problem anymore. Yeah, but, but, like, it's tricky, right? Because when you're doing something that's not on the phone, you want the students to put the phone away, but then if you get on their case and keep telling them to put their phone away, then you're the bad guy, right? And, yeah, and you don't want to be the bad guy, like it's, I've talked a lot on this podcast about relationships and being positive with students, right? And so it's really hard, honestly, to be able to do that. And so I agree. Like, if there are opportunities to use that phone, I'm teaching a video production class now, and we let students film on their phones, and they love it. They do the filming, they come up with ideas, they plan in documents, they do everything they need to. And they get to have their phone, and it's, it's just a very positive sort of environment, right? There's other things, obviously, besides cell phones that influence the the vibe, the positivity of the environment, right? But like giving, like what you said, I agree completely. Like giving students a chance to use their phone legitimately, like, not because the Wi Fi went out, not because their computer is dead that day, but because the phone is part of this activity. It's like, it's you're giving them that recognition, right, that we talked about before. You're giving them the recognition that, like, I know you want this, but I don't know. I want to sort of temper what I'm saying and say that there is another side, right? Like, we don't want them on phones constantly all day, and there are limits. Alyshahn Kara-Virani 37:49 I think that that's the again, we go back to this idea of the theme of this show seems to be like, reward like, like reward mechanisms, or reward based systems, if you will. And it's just this idea of like guys, like a lot of teachers, will tell us they use goosechase as its own reward. So they will say, like, hey, if we can focus for 30 minutes, we'll be able to complete five or so we'll have time to complete five or six missions of goosechase. Some teachers have made goosechase like a month long or a semester long activity where students are competing with each other through the entire active or some schools have done it, where classrooms are competing with each other through the entire semester, and the goal is like, if they behave, they can get on the goosechase, and they can maybe complete more missions and get ahead of their peers and in school or in the grade. And I think when it is its own reward, because students want to be on the phone. There's that opportunity to say, Guys, no phone time is right now, because we're working on, you know, language comprehension, for example, for the next 30 minutes. And if we get it done, and we can make sure that everybody's gotten to the end of this chapter, we'll be able to do goo goosechase for 30 minutes, kind of thing. So, yeah, I think what you're saying makes total sense for me. I probably would say we, you know, let me be so bold to say we probably have similar ideas on phones in classrooms based on what you're saying. So, but, but I won't say much more than that, because I think that risks contract. Zach Diamond 39:17 Think I might have already said too much. Honestly, it's just, it's just, it's complicated, right? All right, let's get ourselves out of this hornet's nest and move on. So we always like to ask our guests this question as we're closing out, and it's always a little bit funny to me to ask, like, I'm gonna ask you what you hope to see in the future and what goals you have. And I feel like I'm not asking you to, like, reveal your secret roadmap, or any new features that are coming that you haven't told people about yet. So this could also be a personal goal. And also it sounds like GooseChase has quite like it's well established at this point, right, going all the way back to BlackBerry. I mean, come on. But so you. Yeah, like, what's what's next? What do you hope to see in the future, and what goals do you have? Alyshahn Kara-Virani 40:04 Great question. So I think for us, the goal is going to continue to be to create and put out a platform that allows all types of organizations, nonprofits, Edu, universities, enterprise organizations an opportunity to give their audiences a chance, to create a lasting memory between them and the organization. I think, I think people, you know, let me say, maybe controversially, I think people are desperate for experiences. They really want to experience the world. And the world exists outside of technology. In my opinion, you know, I go to a museum, I want to engage with the thing. I want to understand its history. I want to know why I should care. I want to feel something when I go there, when I'm in a classroom, you know, I have friends still that I met in elementary school, and I feel like those connections are being diminished. And maybe that's a bit of a stretch, but, you know, at the same time, like, I think we want to create a product that allows people to break down walls between each other, break down walls between themselves and the organization. And so everything that we're building is in service of experiences, and using technology to enable experiences versus being about the technology. One thing we always say internally is that people use goose chase in an environment, and they leave and they say, Oh, my God, that was so much fun. What was the app? Again? That's a huge win for us, because it connected with the physical space. It didn't connect the app. So I think my personal goals and my company goals are very tied together, because I believe in this a heck of a whole lot. Yeah, did I answer the question? Zach Diamond 42:01 Yeah, totally. And I'll just echo right back to you what you said before. I think you and I agree on sort of just at a high level, philosophically, like it's important to be authentic, the real world matters, right? And yeah. So thank you so much for that. How can our listeners connect with you? I'm gonna obviously link goosechase in the show notes, and I strongly encourage listeners go and check it out. I've been poking through it myself. It's very cool. But yeah, Alisha, and specifically, how can listeners connect with you? Alyshahn Kara-Virani 42:31 Yeah, I'm on I'm on LinkedIn. Alyshahn. Alyshahn. Kara-Virani, my email, Alyshahn@ goosechase.com and then you know, if it's goosechase specific, we have goosechase edu, which is K 12 focus. And then we have our other channels which are goosechase. But anybody who has heard this podcast and is interested in connecting with me personally, drop me a line. I mean, happy to chat, happy to help, happy to answer questions. Wax philosophical, whatever you want. I'm always happy, Zach Diamond 43:02 awesome. Well, I think I did think I wax philosopher. We did together, and I have to say, I was not expecting that. So thank you so much. Thank you for joining me, and thank you for waxing philosophical and and I think it really gives us a good sense of where you're coming from with, with the platform, to like, what the platform is, and where it's like, where it's where it's foundation lies, right? So thank you so much for joining me. Alyshahn., I appreciate it. Alyshahn Kara-Virani 43:27 Thanks so much for having me on. This was awesome. I gotta say I love the modern classrooms, project methodology. I think it really spoke to me when I when I reviewed it. And I love the video. So it was really fun for me to be here. Thank you so much. Zach Diamond 43:41 Awesome. Yeah. Thank you so much. Listeners. Remember, you can always email us at podcast@moderntonclassrooms.org and you can find the show notes for this episode at podcast.modernclassrooms.org/212, we'll have this episodes recap and transcript uploaded to the blog on Friday, so be sure to check there or check back in the show notes for this episode if you'd like to access that. Also, we're asking listeners to leave a review if this podcast has been helpful in supporting you to create a blended, self paced, mastery based learning environment, because that does help other folks find the podcast. Thank you all so much for listening. Have a great week, and we'll be back next Sunday. Thank you so much for listening. You can find links to topics and tools we discussed in our show notes for this episode, and remember. You can learn more about our work at www.modernclassrooms.org and you can learn the essentials of our model through our free course at learn.modernclassrooms.org you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @modernclassproj, that's P, R, O, J, we are so appreciative of all you do for students in schools. Have a great week, and we'll be back next Sunday with another episode of the modern classrooms Project podcast. Transcribed by https://otter.ai