The future classroom

I recently read an article about how we have all this data that shows people are more efficient at the workplace if you give them a more comfortable chair, but yet our children still are expected to learn in the same old, uncomfortable furniture in the classroom. It argued if we gave children more comfortable and ergonomic furniture, they would learn better. While I agree that may be true, I see more than just this in the future classroom.

I imagine a different learning environment entirely. Instead of lugging a backpack full of text books and binders to school, they need only bring an ipad. All of their text books are loaded on digitally in full color, high-resolution, and all are kept up to date with the latest edition so nobody is worried their page 83 doesn't look like everyone else's page 83 and they can't find where we are.

I picture that they can annotate their pages and make notes as course material is covered, without fear that they are marking up their books. And the quality of text books will evolve. Instead of just being still pictures and text, they will contain video clips, and animations, sound bytes and links to finding out more on the web. Instill a sense of discovery in children!

So often a teacher will copy information out of text book into their notes, and then during class they spend the whole class with their back to the children writing their notes on the board. The children are so busy copying the notes off the board that they never stop to think, and when it comes time to do their homework, they have little but the rapid scratchings they did before they were lost or distracted and stopped taking notes to complete it.

Instead let the children's ipads wirelessly connect to the blackboard/magic-board, and what the teacher writes appears on the childrens' ipads. And if a teacher sets up an example problem on the magic-board, and calls on a student to complete the problem, the student can work directly on their ipad and their work appears on the blackboard.

Homework where possible would be in digital media entirely, and the ipads would connect at the beginning of class and register their attendance, and submit the homework wirelessly- be they video blogs of them sharing their thoughts, text that they have prepared, problems they have worked out, or whatever.

The ipads could function like a "clicker" and register student voting on questions presented to them. Software would tally the votes and show data plots of the census. Student answers could be logged and tracked, and a general trend as to whether the student was answering questions correctly, incorrectly, or if they used to be answering incorrectly but now are answering correctly, or if a particular subject is difficult for them.

And of course, the students would have better chairs and desks.

In conclusion, if the new iPad has a forward facing camera on it, I'm sooo getting one!