Goodbye Desks

Last night, I started to thinking about one of the suggestions I had for improving the classroom with technology in response to the question posed to us at the end of last week's class. I came across a couple of interesting articles about classroom design. The first article, "Open-Ended Learning," takes a look at new school construction. Beyond the photos of the new designs, I found the theory behind them most interesting. In many cases, the buildings were designed to "become part of the learning." And spaces were designed specifically for flexibility. The article also quoted a 1999 study of more than 21,000 students that found a correlation between daylit schools and student performance. I chuckled when I heard this and memories of my teaching experience in a school district in Texas flooded my mind. When I originally applied to Lakeview High School, I imagined myself bringing students outside to read by the beautiful lake or at moments of stress being able to relax by looking out the windows at the sunlight glistening over the calm water. It wasn't until my first tour of the building that I realized that Lakeview not only had no lake, but it had no view...of anything! There were NO windows in ANY classroom. I wonder how this affected students and teachers. I mean, even prisoners get some light, right?

But, daylight or not, most classrooms look the way they did 150 years ago. In my opinion, this is a factor that is preventing us from teaching 21st century skills. Check out IDEO's Ten Tips for Creating a 21st Century Classroom. These are things you could implement in your classroom whether they are supported by technology or not.

In the future, however, we may just need to throw out all the desks! Of course this seems rather extreme, but new technologies like the iPad enable mobility. With this kind of mobility, classrooms no longer have to be confined to a traditional structure, learning environments, don't need to be defined to four walls, and students are free to learn beyond the school building.

Coercing Change

As we decide how we are going to affect change in education with respect to technology, we must recognize the challenges that exist with stakeholders, teachers, administrators, and government. Many districts buy technology and expect that the piecemeal change will eventually lead to a systematic change. However, we cannot expect that technology can just be implemented and that the system will change simply because of its presence.

I would posit that the reason why so many technology programs fail is because they are centered around the tool instead of the process and the environment. The change that is really needed is larger than just putting technology in schools and training teachers how to use it to enhance lessons. The change needs to be much broader. We need to focus on a new model of learning that uses technology to transform education, embraces 21st century skills, and prepare students for the future.

The draft of the 2010 National Technology Plan is on the right path, but it seems to be lacking a section on the funding that the government will be providing in order to achieve these goals. Indeed, they put forth some lofty goals, but I don't think they are impossible. No matter what challenges we face with implementing this broad change (financial, resistance of educators, unwillingness of administrators, etc.), we must recognize that it would be detrimental to wait any longer. As nations around the world continue to surpass the United States in education, we need to realize that not doing anything ensures our decline. Let us not forget that today we educate the leaders of tomorrow. We must make education a priority in order to secure our hegemonic role, remain competitive in world markets, and ultimately protect national security.