Marcie Hebert said it’s not uncommon for her to point students to a company or instructional website and say, “there are videos on YouTube and their website, now, go and figure it out.”

Granted, she knows there are times when her students grow frustrated with her because teachers don’t routinely say “figure it out.”

“When they make it work, they totally get why I did that,” Hebert said. “It gives them a taste of what is possible. The jobs are going to change. Exactly how, no one really knows. Our kids stand a better chance if they can be creative and think outside the box. We’re going to continue to see these differences and what is required of kids. We’ve got to give them some space to try it out, make mistakes and try again, sometimes three or four times.”

Hebert works as St. Joan of Arc Catholic School’s technology director, and, although a veteran in the classroom, represents a new breed of teacher in St. John the Baptist Parish.

I was lucky to catch up with her for an afternoon chat Tuesday, because she is routinely busy in the local classroom or working on international projects.

In fact, she left Friday for Hong Kong to spend a week working with the American International School located there.

She also recently returned from California after working at Google’s headquarters.

Hebert’s journey with Google started approximately two years ago through participation in teacher summits.

She has earned her Google Educator Certificate and is Google certified as a trainer, allowing her to teach other teachers about how to use Google tools with their students.

“When we give our kids that real world audience and go beyond just little LaPlace or little New Orleans, they are blown away,” Hebert said. “They are excited when people answer them or respond to them or tell them something about their work. They are far more interested when they know it’s going to be shared beyond a teacher. We’re not preparing these kids to live in the world we grew up in.”

Hebert’s cohort at Google included 35 teachers representing Canada, England and South Korea. They gathered in February and will work together for a year on classroom concerns.

“I am very passionate about helping teachers learn to use technology, and not just for the sake of technology,” she said. “If we use the technology correctly, we can transform the things kids can do.”

Hebert helps a class at St. Joan of Arc participate in regular video blogs with a school in Hong Kong.

She also facilitates live calls with authors and different education sources to let students experience education outside the classroom.

“We do some things where the kids publish some of their work,” she said. “I share work through Twitter for the kids. They build robots in my class through cardboard and little circuit kits. They 3-D print. They have to design things.”

Hebert gets students to talk about their thought processes. She says those in education are so busy trying to meet every standard and fit everything they do into the school day that they don’t always have the time to let students think about their work.

She pushes her students through work on little, round plastic robots that can be driven with an iPad. She uses free apps where students program the movement. The students are required to take cardboard, pool noodles or anything else they can provide and build obstacle courses. A Google drawing program acts like paint, and students have to come up with a concept, get it approved and bring it to life with found materials before writing a program to get through it.

“Failing needs to be a first attempt at learning,” Hebert said. “We kind of take fail as always a bad word. When you look at the companies that are trying to do things differently, innovate and change things, they fail a lot. It is not always a bad thing. They learn from their failure and move on.”

Stephen Hemelt is publisher and editor of L’OBSERVATEUR. He can be reached at 985-652-9545 or stephen.hemelt@lobservateur.com.