Designing the classroom of tomorrow Advanced technologies in education

Sofoklis A. SotiriouEllinogermaniki Agogi

Athens, November 13, 2004

Ellinogermaniki Agogi – R&D Department

Industry

Medicine

Education

Attitude towards S&T

• During the last decade some attempts have been made to evaluate the impact of efforts and investments made in Science and Technology Education worldwide, for example the two large scale studies [TIMSS, 1994 and PISA, 2000]. Among other things these two studies have explored the achievement and the attitudes towards S&T of the students’ population in many countries of the world. The main findings of these studies are that the average achievement of the students’ population is relatively low in most of the southern European countries.

• Additionally while the vast majority of students hold positive attitudes towards S&T at the early schooling stages (70-80% of the 4th graders in all countries), this situation is considerably moderated at the later stages.

Current practice is not adopting the results of research

• For many years a considerable number of pedagogues and educational practitioners (e.g. Comenius, Pestalozzi, Montessori and Dewey) have stressed the importance of visualisation and of hands-on experiences as vital components to the learning process.

• As a result of these perspectives, many different pedagogical methods have been developed, especially those to be used in lower grades at elementary schools.

• But as the age of the students increases, more theoretical and abstract the teaching and the learning tends to be.

Motivation – One of the most important parameters in the learning process

• Emerging trends in education are moving towards learner-centered approaches.

• In these, learning becomes an active process of discovery and participation based on self-motivation rather than on more passive acquaintance with facts and rules. The ideas of collaboration and joint construction of knowledge have also found their way into the school system.

• Still, this construction is often mostly theoretical and do not involve real products.

The role of the informal learning settings

Everyday experience suggests that students are eager to learn in informal settings such as excursions to museums and sciencecentres. This positive attitude is believed to have two main roots:

• The freedom of leaving the formal setting of the classroom and

• The students’ positive motivation towards informal learning beyond the school to a real life setting where contextual knowledge occurs.

In order to achieve the best results from informal education one has totake advantage of the motivating effects of freedom and physical context.

Main questions and concerns for the future

How will we apply what we have learned about teaching and learning to helpstudents prepare for their life in the information society? Will students be motivated to achieve better?

Will classroom environments promote outcomes like process skills, problemsolving abilities, teamwork, stronger self concepts, career goals that includescience and transfer of knowledge to novel situations? Will learning environments be enhanced by effective use of new tools?

What will be different and what will look the same in the

classroom of the future?

Working hypothesis

– Amending the traditional scientific methodology for experimentation with visualization applications and model building tools will help students and learners in general to articulate their mental models, make better predictions, and reflect more effectively.

– Additionally, working to reconcile the gaps and inconsistencies within their mental models, system models, predictions and results, will provide the learners with a powerful, explicit representation of their misconceptions and a means to repair them.

The visionWe should point to a future hybrid classroom that builds onthe strengths of formal and informal teaching and learningstrategies in ways that can support learning of all students.

Our vision for the school of the future is that it will not be anisland, a self-contained campus, a counterworld. The school ofthe future will be able to emit and absorb along differentwavelengths, be immersed in contemporary culture, be open tothe emotions, facts and news of its time. It will be permeated bysociety, but not unprotected: the relationship between schooland society will be one of osmosis, where the advanced pedagogical tools filter, guide, and act as a membraneand interface.

What will classrooms be like in the future?

This symposium along with the School

Foresight exhibition provides an opportunity

to dream how technology can not only

improve instruction, but also transform

what we think of as education.

Access to expensive Laboratories and facilities

Shared virtual environments

Field trips to science museums and centers

Kick life into the classroom

Three complementary “interfaces” will shape learning in the classroom of

tomorrow• The familiar “world to the desktop

interface”,

• Interfaces for “ubiquitous computing”,

• “Alice in the wonderland” multi-user virtual environments interfaces

The familiar world to the desktop interface, providing

access to distance experts, archives and experiments,

enabling collaborations, mentoring relationships, and

virtual communities in practice.

Access to unique resources

WebTV productions from students

Selling local products over the

Internet

Working with journalists

Interfaces for ubiquitous computing,

in which portable wireless devices infuse

virtual resources as we move through the

real world.

Kick life into the classroom

GSM networks

New cities on old cities

“Alice in the Wonderland” multi-user virtual environmentsinterfaces, in which participants interact with computer-basedagents and digital artifacts and avatars in real and virtualcontexts. The initial stages of studies in shared virtualenvironments are characterized by advances in InternetGames and work in virtual reality.

Teaching geometry

Teaching history on-site

Teaching and learning physics in Ancient Olympia

Images of plausible futures

The case studies that are presented during the symposium andthe exhibition are images of plausible futures that depict howapplying these interfaces might reshape teaching, learning, andthe organization of educational institutions. The objective ofthese case studies is not to detail blueprints of an unalterablefuture but instead to show the range of possibilities enabled byemerging interactive media and the consequences – desirableand undesirable – that may follow from their application insecondary education settings.

Still..

Many have to be done:• Solutions to technological constrains• Training of the teachers• Development of systematic evaluation

schemes for such activities• Wider application - Validation• Integration to the national curricula – Need for

educational reform…

Closing…

• All the computers in the world won’t make a difference without enthusiastic students, skilled and committed teachers, involved and informed parents and a society that underscores the value of learning.

• Finding effective ways to use technology to enhanced learning is a challenge that educators, academics, policy makers and the technology industry must work together to solve. The ideas and the concepts that will be presented in this symposium are just one step towards a better understanding on how technology can help everyone – from preschoolers to lifelong learners – to realize their full potential.

www.school-foresight.org