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**AnnMarie Thomas:** Yeah. Someone thought I set it up, because we've realized the sound didn't work, and the first one was about a project with deaf kids... So actually, it was perfectly accessible without sound. But that wasn't true for the later stuff. |
**Jerod Santo:** But later on it was gonna get required. What were you thinking in that moment, like when the audio wasn't working? First of all, you handle it so well. |
**AnnMarie Thomas:** Oh, thank you. |
**Jerod Santo:** I want to pull up the Slack, because somebody gave you a very nice compliment, better than I can, about that... But what were you feeling and thinking? |
**AnnMarie Thomas:** Well, I knew it could work... Because we had tested it before when I went up; so when the sound wasn't working, I realized how lucky I was that it was perfect for what the topic was at that moment, the Playful Learning Lab's work in the deaf community. But I also -- yeah, I did know that the later ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I couldn't even tell that you were in the back of your mind thinking a Plan B, really. I mean, we all kind of do that, to some degree, when things go wrong... But your presence didn't at all reflect the internal "Oh, my gosh. Should I have a plan B? Could I just change my talk, basically?" which was... |
**AnnMarie Thomas:** Thank you. I mean, it was a talk on play, and process, and how it's about process and not product... |
**Jerod Santo:** Right. It really played to your strengths. |
**AnnMarie Thomas:** Yeah, someone did ask if it was actually intentional. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I'm curious about the Slack message, because I remember what she said. It was so good what she said, too. |
**Jerod Santo:** Yeah, so this was Mike English in the Strange Loop Slack... He said "This is the most gracefully I've ever seen someone handle such a major A/V issue mid-presentation." |
**AnnMarie Thomas:** Well, that was really sweet. |
**Jerod Santo:** Elliot Cable quoted that, and then like 38 clap emojis, eight plus ones, and then seven 100 emojis. |
**AnnMarie Thomas:** See, I never end up doing the thing I'm meant to do... So maybe my talk was about how to handle tech issues, but that wasn't what I prepped for. And if you learn anything from my talk, it's that things always go wrong in our stuff, and it's what you do with it. |
**Jerod Santo:** Yeah. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Do you remember what you said though? You said something about "When we play, we have to expect something or other..." I'm paraphrasing, but you said -- |
**AnnMarie Thomas:** Yeah, I must have said that things never go the way you expect, because if it's about process, not outcome... How can you do something new if you already know the outcome? |
**Adam Stacoviak:** That's right. |
**AnnMarie Thomas:** But I will confess that yes, in the back of my mind I was like "It's been a while, they're still standing there... We're not gonna go to OK Go... I think we're gonna do a talk about magicians, and magic, and attention... Where are my cards?" \[laughter\] |
**Jerod Santo:** "Where's my magic?" |
**AnnMarie Thomas:** "Where are my cards? I have cards in my backpack." So I don't know what I was saying, and I hope it was sensical, because I was -- |
**Adam Stacoviak:** No, it totally made -- and that hit me, because I was... So we -- it's on hiatus right now, but we have a podcast called Brain Science. |
**AnnMarie Thomas:** Oh, cool. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** And obviously, you learn much better in the state of play. |
**AnnMarie Thomas:** Oh yeah, absolutely. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** \[07:59\] You know this probably, as a professor; so you know this. But to me, I'm like hanging on to your talk, because I am a curious person who pays attention to brain sciency things. So neuroscience, those kind of things... And so to me, it's like, I'm hearing from somebody who's like steeped in... |
**AnnMarie Thomas:** Thank you. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It was good. |
**AnnMarie Thomas:** I want to learn more about your brain science stuff. Currently, I'm totally geeking out on magic. My daughter is a sleight of hand artist, and I can do a few tricks... But I'm on sabbatical, and originally, my whole sabbatical was going to focus on magic... And so I've been reading lots of books on... |
Also, if you go younger - and I work with kids, too - a lot of magic and sleight of hand is based on the idea of object permanence. Like, if it was there, it stays there. But it's also what magic is based a lot on. So I find it, as someone who wants to teach, better, always. I think there's a lot to learn there, plus t... |
**Jerod Santo:** Have you ever found that your playful aspects of your teaching - so like if you're teaching physics stuff, you're going to... You gave the example -- |
**AnnMarie Thomas:** Of a circus. |
**Jerod Santo:** Yeah, of a circus, or somebody spinning a ring... These things that are very visual, very interactive, and fun, and kind of whimsy, to use your word... |
**AnnMarie Thomas:** Yeah. |
**Jerod Santo:** Do you ever find that in that moment, or after that moment, when it comes time to actually then go apply the principle or the -- "Now let's do the math." Do you ever find there's like a come-down, where it's like "Ah, I'm kind of liking the play part, but not the learning part"? |
**AnnMarie Thomas:** I mean, hopefully not. I mean, that class was opt-in, and the math and physics was always there, because they were doing experiments. I mean, they were the pendulum; they were the bungee. I think the point for it is we're trying to use play as a leverage tool for learning. So in that case, you real... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. My son to this day knows -- he's seven years old, by the way. I think I taught him this at least two years ago, maybe three, about kinetic energy. And the way I taught him was because we have a swingset in our backyard, and I pulled him up -- and we call him Smoochy. So I held him close to my ... |
**AnnMarie Thomas:** Oh yeah, absolutely. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** ...the person wouldn't swing any further forward than they were dropped, and that's the way it works. And so I taught him about "I'm holding you, there's energy pent up, and that's kinetic energy." So he learned that in a state of play. It was a swing set. So just the fact that you can inject play, ... |
**AnnMarie Thomas:** When we did that class at the circus, the final exam was doing a circus about physics for sixth graders. But then we created a music video later, and the song that the music video plays to - and you can find it online - was done by a band called Mighty Fairly, and they took my course notes... And i... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** \[12:30\] Right. How did OK Go happen for you? The whole sandbox... How did that relationship happen? Do you know somebody? Are you in music? How did the relationship spawn and the partnership form? |
**AnnMarie Thomas:** Yeah, I went to a conference... I drink too much coffee, and I got in line for a coffee before heading to the airport, literally the last minute of the conference... And the person in front of me was the lead singer for OK Go. And I introduced myself and said they'd given a great talk at the confer... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Wow. And in your talk, you mentioned that OK Go's music videos are very playful. It's not something that they kind of recognize... Is that what I heard? |
**AnnMarie Thomas:** Oh, they recognize they're playful. They don't recognize they're -- they recognize that they're using education settings, like classrooms, but that was never something I worked on. And they have a model for how they do things, and they call it playing in a sandbox. That's why they say they play in ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Oh, yeah, I'm sure. |
**AnnMarie Thomas:** Yeah. So again, in play, who is it going to be playful for? Maybe it's playful for the audience. That doesn't necessarily mean it's fun or playful for you if you're facilitating the play... Which we spend a lot of time talking about in our lab - how do you make things fun for teachers? And then how... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. |
**Jerod Santo:** So you told the story of this amazing set of songs and videos that came out of this collaboration during the pandemic, with OK Go, yourselves, your students and like tens of thousands of individuals...? 15,000? |
**AnnMarie Thomas:** Yes, we say about 15,000. |
**Jerod Santo:** 15,000 people around the world who send in themselves singing, or... |
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