Craig Vezina Interview with Vicki Phillips, June 14, 2020

Craig Vezina: Really interested in the important work you’re doing and I think that’s probably a great place to start. What are the projects that you’re focused on right now?

Vicki Phillips: Well, it’s been such an awesome opportunity to be at National Geographic’s. It’s such an iconic organization and last fall we adopted a new education strategy designed to focus on scale and impact and to be global for the first time because most of our work previously had been in the U.S. And we’re really focused on three things: one is movement building for solution finding among youth and educators; game changing tools for teachers, so equipping them with some of the latest technologies and innovative curriculum; and then helping to contribute to the field in new ways. And particularly in this time of the pandemic we’ve been curating resources for educators and families to use during remote learning and making other immersive learning experiences available to young people. And when we think about our work we sort of are thinking about areas of outcomes for learners. One is certainly academic outcomes, but also habits of learning, the contemporary skills that students need to be successful in future careers and the kind of community skills that allows students to be part of something beyond themselves, to contribute to something that is larger. So, we think all of their skills are important and we think developing that kind of curiosity and thirst for learning that our explorers have is a great thing for kids to develop as well.

Craig Vezina: And you’re definitely hitting on another important area in terms of breaking down sort of the artificial world of school and the real world and allowing young people to actually get their hands dirty so to speak in real world problems and I wonder if you have an expiring example of what that could look like?

Vicki Phillips: Been doing a lot with immersive learning experiences. So, VR, for example, via our explorers and inside a lot of our curriculum work so that kids can swim with the manta rays or explore the Galapagos. We have students exposed to citizen science where they actually get to collect data and analyze and ask questions and be part of the contribution to our larger scientific knowledge and to our explorer’s work. In fact, we love it when things like bio blitzes happened and everybody looks for a moment in time that all of the species, whether it’s in their backyard or in a national park when it’s safe to do so. We’re working on a virtual interactive globe that kids can query. So, we believe in this notion of immersive learning experiences providing those in all kinds of ways, both on mobile technology as well as on VR goggles that are at this moment not quite as accessible as mobile technology is. And we are learning and growing and evaluating and iterating rapidly on our understanding.

Craig Vezina: Excellent. I have a special interest as I mentioned in immersive technology so I want to just ask another specific question there. As a technology what is I think powerful is the experiential nature of it and for many people who might listen to this they haven’t tried VR or maybe it’s very new to them so I wonder if you could just maybe introduce the technology and why you think it has a special potential for education.

Vicki Phillips: Well, National Geographic is fortunate in that we have a big theater and we have goggles to provide everybody who comes an immersive experience. So, in addition to using VR on mobile technology we actually offer student matinees on our campus. And it’s fantastic to see students, again, with those goggles on actually seeing things that they might not ever have experienced otherwise and feeling like they’re incased in that opportunity. Like I said, one of our explorers recently helped kids swim with manta rays. We also have expeditionary kits where we take kits out into classrooms and let kids experience what this is like. And with the help of our explorers we’re using 360 video as well as VR experiences to help put kids in these opportunities, as I said, that they might never have had access to before. So, we think it’s a fantastic emerging technology and one of the things that in my experience in education technologies like VR are often ubiquitous in other fields before they ever hit the classroom and one of the things we wanted to do is to be able to make it faster, more accessible, more impactful and it’s why we’re working with our explorers to push the limits I guess of what’s possible.

Craig Vezina: Thank you for that. At the end I might ask you one more question about VR, but getting to some of the questions that everyone is fielding so what do you think is the greatest human superpower?

Vicki Phillips: You know, I was thinking about this in two aspects: one is sort of what’s most important to learn and the other is what’s the superpower to reflect it? So, one thing that I think is most important to learn is geography actually, but not geography as I learned it and often we learn if we're seen as these kinds of tasks, what capital is of a country or what river flows into what ocean. Instead, geography is really about seeing patterns and understanding the connections in the world. And if there’s a discipline that is appropriate to problem-solving in the 21st century it’s the art and science of understanding how things impact each other and being able to make change. So, I think that’s a really important thing to learn, but I think combined with that a real superpower, particularly one that we believe in deeply at National Geographic and we would say is one of our superpowers is storytelling. So, that ability to combine scientific evidence and data and an understanding of geography and patterns and connections with the ability to tell the stories of how those impact the earth and its inhabitants, that’s just priceless.

Craig Vezina: I love that answer. And what is the biggest question on your mind right now in terms of the future of learning or the future of work or simply the future?

Vicki Phillips: Actually I have two big questions. One is how to enable this up-and-coming generation of planetary stewards. We’ve been working a lot with the young people around the globe seeking to understand them and their ability to enact change, to understand these problems, to see them as interconnected and related, to believe in the power of a collective is quite powerful. And so, one issue is how do we all surround this generation and help them put that solution seeking orientation that they have into practice and give them the knowledge and skills they need to do so. And then the second issue for me is thinking about all those jobs of the future. Digital agriculture, drone tree planting, new forms of healthcare, energy, next generation transportation, all of those require that I think robust combination of outcomes that I mentioned earlier from academic outcomes to good habits of learning to contemporary skills to the understanding of how to be part of a larger community and contribute in a way that is beyond just your own self.

Craig Vezina: So, sort of mixing the question of if you could wave a magic wand with sort of your theory of change and how we create this global movement or ecosystem that kind of matches what you hope to see, how does this come together? Like as opposed to just individual schools, how do you see sort of more global movements coming together? If you want to answer that question, otherwise you can just take the magic wand question wherever you want.

Vicki Phillips: Well, we are actually as I said working with a lot of young people around the world and actually helping them engage in movement building and solution finding. One of the things we found as we’ve talked to young people is the fact that they are really hungry to be able to help and they’re kind of dismayed that many of the movements that are out there are more about admiring the problem than it is about finding the solutions and so they’re hungry for those opportunities and we are trying to step up and help them take leadership and we want to continue to do that. So, for example, one of the things we’ve been doing is providing grants to these up-and-coming young explorers, these impressive young people who are trying to enact change and seek solutions. In the words of one of those young people recently they said young people are the worlds most untapped resource for hope and I would have to agree.

Craig Vezina: You just hit on something so important in terms of young people who are actually an untapped resource in so many communities and I wonder is there, and storytelling I do agree is one of the most important superpowers and I’m not very good at it, but do you have a story of a young person just sort of illustrate what this can look like when they use their creativity and ingenuity to tackle a real world problem?

Vicki Phillips: Well, I think there’s several examples but what comes to mind are the four young explorers that we funded last fall; we’re about to fund 25 or so more. But among the four we funded last fall one of the things I thought was so interesting is that they all started exploring this passion and then acting on it between the ages of eight and 14. And, you know, by the time they’re 17 or 18 it makes me wonder what I was doing when I was that age because they are quite remarkable. And one that comes to mind: a girl and her sister started working on these issues at around age ten and by the time she was 17 had actually been able to rally young people and get single use plastics bands from their country in Indonesia. So, they are tackling many things out there and their passions range from planting trees to tackling climate to plastics and other issues, but all of them focused on solutions and having started becoming passionate about this work at early ages, which means that we need to keep exposing young people to these real world problems and giving them opportunities to be part of a solution.

Craig Vezina: Absolutely. And I think one of the things that trips people up is they agree that that is important and yet how to do it well whether it’s a control question or just providing the right mix of total freedom and structure that they trip up. And so, I wonder if you have any thoughts on if there needs to be a structure in place to bring people to those problems that they want to solve and if so what it could look like?

Vicki Phillips: Well, I think one thing it requires is a lot of listening and trust and I think that’s true of both young people and it’s true of educators as well that we have to listen to both and trust that they can be part of this solution and bring fantastic ideas to the table. From our perspective there’s a number of things that we want to do. In addition to giving grants to these remarkable young explorers we’re also creating a leadership institute for these young people so that they can learn leadership skills and storytelling; we’re working with lots of other youth serving organizations as we do that. We’re offering up global challenges that enable students to work on problems that are pressing and real. We are planning to develop content specifically geared to young people. So, there’s a number of things that we can all as adults engage in that will help this next generation thrive.

Craig Vezina: And in terms of your personal experiences that have been powerful, if you could go back and talk to yourself at age 18 or sort of formative years and share anything that experience has taught you what would you want to share?

Vicki Phillips: I think at that age one of the things that was happening to me was this issue of being unprepared. I am one of those kids who grew up in very challenging circumstances, my teachers, while they were well meaning, didn’t expect me to go to college or even leave my community. And when I eventually did make my way to college I was totally academically unprepared to be there and really had to work and struggle. And it wasn’t that I wasn’t capable, it was that I was unprepared. And I think what I would tell my 18-year-old self, maybe I would tell it to my 12 and 13-year-old self is to become more of an advocate, to become a stronger participant in my own learning, to help drive that in ways that I didn’t feel equipped to do at that age.

Craig Vezina: If there is something that gives you special optimism or particular concern about current constructs what would you say?

Vicki Phillips: I think one thing I’m optimistic about at the moment is watching what’s happening in this unprecedented time. I mean teachers are on the front line of this pandemic right now and they are in many ways the architects of this new normal. I mean the rest of us can talk about it all we want but they are the ones really trying right now to figure out what remote learning looks like, what powerful remote learning looks like. And so, they’re experimenting, they’re testing out new ideas, they’re pioneering new ways of doing business and they are I think worth watching and listening to and understanding what they’re learning, they too are understanding that the status quo that has so long kind of hampered education doesn’t have to be the status quo going forward. And I think we should be learning those lessons, understanding those and using those to drive a new model of education forward.