The Suitcase
A few years ago, an image went viral: a teacher in Africa was illustrating the Microsoft Word interface on a chalkboard to teach technology standards—without a single computer in sight. I could relate.
My teaching career has zigzagged between low-tech, no-tech environments and designing state-of-the-art digital learning spaces. Across the full spectrum of tools and technologies, one lesson continues to resonate: what matters most is not the tool, but the mindful use of it, the theory of learning behind it.
Learning spaces change. Methodologies change. Content changes. Culture changes. The constant through it all is the need for a theory of learning that can travel—rooted in the ideas of Vygotsky, Activity Theory, Gibson’s affordances, MI Theory, New Literacies, Reggio Emilia, Making Learning Visible, James, Dewey, Montessori, Barthes, Papert, Varela, Barsalau, Freire, Benjamin…
Not long after large language models exploded into the edtech space, I moved to a small community jungle school in Panama—with next to no tech. The problem was wicked clear - What good is Ai out here?
The Inventory
Viewing simulations of Mars habitats helped prepare for Manglares Discovery School—a cluster of modest local constructions and shipping containers from the Panama Canal converted into classrooms. It’s tempting to call this a no-tech environment, but there is internet.
The first challenge wasn’t digital—it was spatial: designing for the human behaviors around learning. I installed a projector and designated a central wall space as our “campfire,” a shared focal point for storytelling, discussion, and collaboration. I drilled holes in the walls to grid the students’ personal wipe boards making learning visible, he adjacent possible on display.
Students arrive with the essentials: notebooks, pencils, sketchbooks, and assorted colored pencils. We have a limited set of textbooks for reading instruction, an eclectic library of reference materials, and just enough fiction to support a healthy cycle of self-selected reading.
If you keep a glass-half-full mindset, it’s a school pared down to the essentials—stripped of all unnecessary excess, and dare I say, BS from the capital city corporate international schools where I have spent most of my career. My own hardware toolkit includes a MacBook, iPad, iPhone, and projector, all in constant rotation throughout the day for interactive instruction.
Framing the Problem
On my first visit, the half-empty part of me recalled a book once issued to every Peace Corps volunteer—Where There Is No Doctor, a DIY manual for health care in resource-limited settings. That first year felt much the same: one challenge after another, each ending in the phrase where there is no ____.
- learning support staff
- science lab
- librarian
- grade-level team
- counselor
- resource room
For a teacher used to sprawling international schools, abundant budgets, and a chain of command with a “yes—make it so” attitude, it was a humbling experience.
But then the shift to half-full.
The children’s minds—like the classrooms—were uncluttered. Most had never known any other kind of school. Their implied learning tanks were full, their senses tuned to the rhythms of the natural world. They build, invent play, rope swing, forage, point at monkeys in the trees—and at recess, even in second grade, asked the most unprompted, profound questions:
Are the patterns in nature infinite?
In this space, learning about learning was everywhere. One live hypothesis emerged and stuck:
How might AI connect students more deeply to the natural world?
Could their rich sensory knowledge of their environment be made visible and explicit—honoring Dewey’s view of learning as experience reflected upon?
Could iterations of sensory experiences become new lenses of inquiry—refining Heisenberg’s insight: “We have to remember that what we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning”?
How might inquiries—rooted in student observation—become the raw data for co-creating curriculum?
The danger of the live hypothesis is that it begets more questions than there is the time or resource to answer. It is a good problem to have.
Empathy and Understanding
Luckily, I had the students as guides. They taught me which fuzzy, multicolored poisonous caterpillars to avoid. They stopped me from stepping near scorpions and tarantulas, and delivered a dead-eyed stare as they explained just how dangerous the X-snake could be. (Adults, especially those like me, new to the region, are in awe of the biodiversity and often share it out on the community chat)
Froebel brought gifts to kindergartners as tools for inquiry. Here, the natural world offered its own gifts—a constant, daily broadcast across multiple sensory channels—and the students bring them: snails from the waterfall, tadpoles, tree frogs, and bugs.
“We are rich with bugs,” one student declared—the same one who later helped organize a funeral for a dead worm. (These wildlings have other curious rituals, like burying dried-out whiteboard markers in the field with full ceremony and eulogy.)
So the first couple of months passed in this total dichotomy: inside, we built literacy routines and practiced math; outside, the students kept filling their sensory tanks with tacit knowledge.
Until the katydid appeared on the rim of Mrs. Aya’s coffee thermos.
Classrooms Without Walls
