www.avnetwork.com: The building blocks for the future of learning space design are already around us. Exploring five key areas will highlight the challenges our industry must overcome to make that future a reality. But first, one must understand the overarching educational trend that is driving the process: the collaborative classroom.
7 comments:
Eh. That's all I can really say about the "innovative" new teaching styles discussed in this article. I understand, obviously, that this article pertains to the AV industry's reaction to new educating styles, not the author's opinion on them or not. That being said, flip teaching, collaborative learning, and MOOCs have been kicking around for a while now with honestly what I perceive as middling to mediocre success. Each teaching style has alleged massive benefits, but I have yet to see a highly successful implementation that truly has taken off. "Innovative" teaching styles aside, I think the author makes a good point that AV technology in general must be pushed and explored further to potentially accommodate changes in the way education is handled. I am particularly interested in the exploration of standardized wireless video and display outputs. If there was a quicker way to hook up personal devices to display or projection systems than by having to plug them into a cable each time, I would be quite excited.
I think these are all really interesting classroom ideas, though I worry about the expense for the schools and that some schools just won’t care enough to try to invest that much money to change just a few of their classrooms, especially when they have been doing it the same way for decades. For instance, my mom is a relatively new fourth grade teacher and she actually is trying some of these ideas, especially the flip classroom, and it is going really well, but they are having a lot of trouble trying to get other teachers to try it, especially the older ones who have been teachers for years. Then again education is really important as that is kind of the point of schools, so hopefully some schools will really go in for this.
I know this is geared a lot more toward colleges because they have a lot more money than most high schools and the American Graduation Initiative is for colleges, but it would be really cool to see this in high schools and middle schools, but I think this is just a lot of change for many schools to take on.
I really don’t understand why people are trying so hard to rearrange classrooms and technology in order to make students learn more. Adding more screens and giving people devices is not going to make student want to learn more. And changing the orientation of your body to see a screen is not that hard to do. I actually preferred having to move slightly as it often times kept me awake in classes that I hated. Instead of classroom arrangements and technology, why don’t people think about the real reason why students aren’t focusing as well? Maybe because they are bored and don’t care? Moving my seat to a U formation is not going to make me like history class. If a student is not interested, and can see all the faults in the learning system, they’re not going to focus. In most of my schooling before college, I learned enough to do well on tests, and that’s it. I didn’t care enough to learn more, because the only thing that matters in American schools is standardized testing. I spent my free time learning what I wanted to learn which never helped for any test I took. I also very much hate the incorporation of technology into school because I am very light sensitive and constantly looking at a screen gives me migraines. I know that I am not the only person who experiences this, and so I am very opposed to what this article is attempting to implement.
I agree with the first comment. Although this article poses a new and innovative approach to teaching, it might not be as effective as the article leads the readers to believe. From my experiences in many different classroom setups throughout high school and college, I found that the most important factor in the quality of learning are the abilities of the professor. This article leads its readers to believe that the professor is becoming more and more unnecessary and that students can learn more from discussion. But although that may be true in some cases, the most successful classes I've ever had were ones that mixed lecture and discussion evenly. And as long as the professor knew how to lecture and they found the topic interesting, the students will too.
With respect to the way the classroom was physically set up, it might be more effective if the screens that were depicted as being set up at every table, were instead set up in a manner where they can be moved up and down. Although that might cost more, and be slightly more effort to install, it will be more effective as to not undermine the importance of the professor and put a screen between the students and the speaker.
But overall this design has some promise and with a little fiddling and more attention put to more lectures in class, it could be highly successful.
This article may seem like it has a lot of good ideas, but this really doesn't even seem realistic. Schools budgets and funding are not nearly large enough to support this kind of technology. Just the amount of tech support that would need to be on site for a large high school to support that many displays would never be able to fit into a budget. Not to mention, while it may be effective for learning to be more “self-guided”, I personally feel like the best learning environments come out of the abilities of the teacher/professor. Personality is super important, not the quality of the technology in the classroom. Beyond that, technology is still rapidly developing, so it would be a little ridiculous for schools to be investing in technology that will most certainly become outdated relatively quickly. The payoff just doesn't seem large enough, quite yet. I think that once enough studies have been done on the way students interact with tech in the classroom setting, I then think we might be able to start moving towards these kinds of developments.
I think that this article was just another thing for people to read that said the classrooms of america are changing. I really hate articles like this because we as students see that there are never really results. I think these things are more like a kind of set dressing that makes people feel better about where their tax dollars are going. maybe seeing the material results make people feel like they got more for their money?? I for one went to a school where we all were issued Ipads as a way to learn interactively. A way to carry no textbooks. And a way to make all our notes accessible on the go. after we got them they didn't put any of the books on them and had to carry both an Ipad and books. They put so many locks and censorship on it i couldn't do any research on those "deep english readings on race during the 1950s" etc... We just used the Ipads to play games and text each other in class because the teachers had to believe we were taking notes or something. If you want kids to pay attention, make the lessons about them, make them entertaining and immersive. The best class i ever had involved my history teacher lecturing in front of the class and adding in timed jokes and asking us questions throughout. We were so happy to be there we didn't want to miss anything about what he was saying or what he asked us.
I come from a very old school teaching environment, where were strictly not allowed to bring any electronic devices even inside school property, so seeing this 'new wave' of teaching is a little bit terrifying. I think that though technology can be extremely helpful in the learning process, what we need are better teachers, not better equipment. More time and money should be spent trying to teach these people how to teach kids, how to allow collaboration and fun and happiness while also maintaining order and structure. I have to say my favorite classes came from my being in a circle having a discussion about math with my fellow classmates, watching as my teacher took in what I said as if I were an adult and then adding onto my comment with her own knowledge. That's what I think we need in schools. Not technology, but a good understanding between teacher and student and the ability to speak your mind and learn how to voice your opinions well.
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