Tuesday, December 19, 2006

The classroom of the future?


While getting my daily dose of news at the BBC site I came across this story about the Broadclyst community primary school in England that claims to have on of the most technologically advanced classrooms in the country. While you have to applaud any educational authority that invests so heavily in technology for learning I'm not sure if this my idea of the perfect classroom.

For me it's layout betrays a very old fashioned idea of what a classroom is all about as everything is focused on the teacher and the positions are fixed. This means that group work is made more difficult and movement between places is hampered. If you keep in mind that the school if for 7 to 11 year olds it seems to expect a high degree of regimentation from learners so young.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

For language teaching this room pretty much blows. For other types of courses it has a lot of potential.

However I really don't see what 7 year olds are doing in a room like that. Well the girl reading a comic book says it all to me anyhow..

teacher dude said...

My thoughts exactly. There's something vaguely Orwellian about the whole set up. Web 2.0 meets 1984?