Vision-+Andrea

Back to Teacher Planning My vision of a classroom of the future: When you walk into any room, elementary or middle level, students are all working in a variety of configuations. There are small groups, individuals, pairs of students working on different tasks around the room, like a "centers" model. The classroom teacher might be working with a small group at an Activboard; a pair of children might be sitting at a single laptop working collaboratively on a specific task or video conferencing with another pair of students in another state or country discussing a particular topic. A single student may be reading a book or working on a project that involves a combination of digital and traditional tools, or one or the other. Another students may be typing up a research paper, inputting a blog entry, uploading photos from a digital camera or recording their voice for a digital story or podcast. Any tool they want to employ is available to them at any given time. The teacher(s) move around the room helping different students with a variety of tasks. A student discovers something new while using a tool and the teacher invites everyone to learn about what the student has discovered; the student then demonstrates and explains it to his/her classmates. In addition, there are opportunities for the whole class to come together to participate in a video conference with a professional person, another class or watch a remote lesson; or they could watch a movie. They would also have the ability to watch an event take place in real time and possibly even be able to communicate with people at the event.

one thought - start keyboarding earlier - 2nd or 3rd grade - if they can type correctly, their ability to do more complex projects or just be able to do projects more efficiently by the time they get to 4th grade and beyond is enhanced tremendously.