Innovative learning environment

[theaksy]

Hi!

Hoping for some edugeek inspiration. Been asked to look into creating an innovative learning environment crammed with IT equipment that teachers can use to enhance teaching an learning.

Unfortunately I was ill when BETT was on so didn't get to go see what's new and amazing, but have scoured their site for ideas.

Obviously got the standard interactive whiteboard (prob the dual touch smartboard) with projector and speakers, and we'll prob have a trolley or cabinet of laptops/netbooks.

Wondered what everyone else had seen/currently have that is proving amazing in the classroom?

[SimpleSi]

If your talking one classroom then turn it into a 3D one - tablet pcs for every pupil (fizzbooks) - and a voting system.

Make your own TV/video green screen video studio.

regards

Simon

[theaksy]

I'd thought about the 3d route, I saw a supplier on the BETT website but couldn't see how developed their solution was or the availability of resources. Don't suppose you know of anyone with 3d running in a classroom?

[dhicks]

Obviously got the standard interactive whiteboard (prob the dual touch smartboard) with projector and speakers, and we'll prob have a trolley or cabinet of laptops/netbooks.

What is it you plan to do with a dual-touch Smartboard once you've got it installed? I read this month's PC Pro, with the reviews of multi-touch all-in-one PCs, and had a quick play on a couple in PC World over the weekend. Fun, but I fail to see so far what, exactly, you would do with one in a classroom. There are simply no applications that I've seen at present that do much with multi-touch. What do you plan to do with multi-touch?

Instead of a bunch of laptops, you could go for multiple projected screens around the classroom. Smaller, cheaper, energy-efficient, long-life LED-based projectors are now coming out, letting you spend £400 on a large screen that can appear and dissapear as needed. Probably a similar price to kit out a room as it would be for a laptop trolly anyway, or even cheaper as you could easily use one projected screen between two pupils. It'd make for a very flexible classroom space - no power cables anywhere other than up in the ceiling, you can move the furniture around as much as you like. I'd run the displays with either an NComputing-like multi-seat system or simply with Debian and multi-monitor / multi-pointer support, which would allow pupils to pass windows between displays for collaberative work.

You could combine the above approaches and have touch-screen PCs around the edge of the classroom. These wouldn't require keyboards or mice to operate, pupils would simply use their fingers and an on-screen keyboard to type with. I'm not sure how well on-screen typing would work, though, and I don't know what the expected lifetime of a touchscreen is if it's being hammered by grimey little children all day long.

--
David Hicks