After clearing out the classroom we now have a large (almost) welcoming space at “my” school. The school’s groundsman (who was a learner at the school a few decades ago) tells me the room is part of the old school that was built in 1929.  Ironically, that means it is in better shape than the newer part of the school; it was truly built to last.

When I look at its weathered wooden floors and high ceiling I have this vision for it.  Here’s my outrageous dream…

1.  The class already has the shiny 42″ inch LCD panel on the far wall – this is our recently discussed OJ.  This end of the room ought to be surrounded by clusters of chairs like this:

Using nimble seating like this we could readily (re)configure the chairs into different arrangements in a flash.  The learners will still have a surface on which to take notes while watching the OJ dispense its rich educational resources.  And if they have to break into small group work it could be done with very little effort.  If anyone has 20-30 of these to donate please call me!!

2.  This is where things get really crazy…IMAGINE we had 20-30 of these:

Just imagine.  I think iPads are too expensive and the Apple “walled garden” is problematic for many educators (from lack of Adobe Flash support to being firmly “locked into” the Apple App Store).  Chromebooks which rely on cloud computing are a tantalising option (but then you need always-on internet connectivity to work on a document; at least for now).  Which brings me to these beauties…more “open” than Apple and more “flexible” than Chromebooks.

Imagine learners from low-income households also having opportunities of working on the latest tech.  Just imagine.

I see that 1929 classroom not being a monument to the Great Depression, but a glorious place of hope.  Where educators and learners can get a clear line-of-sight on the best futures that are possible…

I’ll keep on dreaming.

Carpe diem.

p.s. The school already has 26 desktop computers with LCD screens (decent, recent machines) in a computer lab.  Problem is:  with class sizes of 45, a whole class of learners cannot be working simultaneously with tech.  This way we could have half in the computer lab and the other half in the OJ room.

p.p.s I know one could have two learners to a PC (with each one sharing half of the earphone pieces) but this not ideal.  Also if one wants learning analytics on each learner, then each learner needs a login…

p.p.s.  With a school ratio(n) of over 20 learners to each computing device the school needs more computing devices!