Andy made his final school visit and Merge Cube donation on Thursday as he left New York City and headed back to his home in southern Rhode Island. The donation was just outside New York City at the Amani Public Charter School in Mt. Vernon, NY. Andy met with one of the school’s administrators, Harvey Zuckerman, who applied for our grant just a couple of months ago. Since he had tried to find another educator somewhere along the route to donate a Merge Cube to, but was unsuccessful, Andy was able to give Harvey two cubes to cap off his final donation! He’s now home and ready to get back to his day job, but had some great experiences on the road especially with visiting so many great educators at some great schools.
At the Amani Public Charter School, Harvey works with a number of middle school students in a variety of ways. He’s always looking for new technologies to engage and excite them and even stopped a couple of students in the hallway to have them check out the new Merge Cube. While at the school, Andy met with Harvey and showed him how to set up the cube—specifically with using the Merge Explorer app. He was immediately excited after seeing how the cube and the technology could project images like the inside of the human body and the solar system.
After learning the basics of the Merge Cube and brainstorming some ideas for how he might use it with students, Harvey brought Andy around the school to meet with some other educators. This included one of the school’s tech specialists, who was equally intrigued by the Merge Cube and was eager to set up some time to get it into his instruction. When Harvey applied for our grant, he noted the importance of STEM at the school, but admitted that they often lacked the resources to create high-quality instruction. We’re hoping that the Merge Cube and the content within the Merge EDU platform can help make things more exciting!
Harvey also mentioned how naturally inquisitive so many of the school’s students are—something we think the Merge Cube will bring out even more. One of the students he stopped in the hallway even had a pretty good idea about what augmented reality is, surprising Andy, though he was still surprised at how the cube was able to create an augmented and rotatable image on the paired device. We definitely think that Harvey and other teachers at the school will be able to leverage the Merge Cube to teach students in a new way.
A lot of the work Harvey does is part of the school’s Extended Day program, which many families need due to parent’s work schedules. He is always looking for new tech tools to use in this program and the Merge Cube should fit right in. He estimated that just under 100 students would be able to benefit from each new piece of technology that he’s able to bring to this program—no small number! Whether it’s Harvey or Amani’s dedicated tech teacher, we’re grateful for the opportunity to donate the Merge Cubes and hopefully impact education in a strong way!
Ultimately, Harvey just always strives to introduce his middle school students to new technology and new fields of technology. Since AR is such an up-and-coming area of technology and EdTech in particular, we think the Merge Cube will be a great fit at the Amani Charter School. To keep up with any updates shared by Harvey, be sure to follow us on Twitter and Instagram. And, for the final time, we sincerely thank the Merge VR team for donating the 10 Merge Cubes for Andy to hand out around the country. If you’re keeping count, he made school visits to teachers in Vermont, Illinois, California, Alabama, North Carolina, Delaware, New Jersey, and now New York! Thank you for following along with this unique initiative and to all the educators who welcomed Andy into their schools!