December 2007 — Features
Print this articleClick here to receive your FREE subscription to T.H.E. Journal
A Movable Feast
Furniture on wheels! Wireless islands! Cutting-edge K-12 classroom design marries digital technologies with thoughtful architecture, challenging traditional ideas about where and how learning takes place.
BACK WHEN MENKO JOHNSON WAS TEACHING sixth-, seventh-, and eighthgraders
about computers at Crestview Middle School in Columbus, OH, he
spent most of his time in a gymnasium that had been converted into a computer
lab. The students' desks were arranged along the walls, and when they worked
on the computers, they faced those walls.
"It was a classic computer lab environment," Johnson recalls. "It meant that 80 percent of my students had their backs to me most of the time. The room was arranged that way, not because it would be a good teaching setup, but to accommodate the wiring."
It is also a classic example of a learning space made less effective by technology.
Today, Johnson is an instructional technologist at San Jose State University in California, where he focuses his time on the effective integration of technology and learning spaces, with an emphasis on collaboration and flexibility. Johnson is part of a team supporting SJSU's state-of-the-art, 10,000-square-foot Academic Success Center. At the heart of the project is an incubator classroom that combines movable furniture with an array of audiovisual technologies designed to enable collaborative classroom interaction.
"In the old days, we let the technology dictate the configuration of the learning space," he says. "Now what we talk about is a flexible classroom that can be arranged any way you like into a teaching environment that suits you. In our case, that means that we use tables and chairs instead of desks. And just about every piece of furniture is on wheels so that the space can be easily reconfigured. Think of the classroom as a grid on which you can move the tables and chairs anywhere you want."
Johnson believes that the lessons learned at SJSU can help K-12 districts design more effective, tech-enabled classrooms. In elementary classes, for example, where the younger students stay in one room all day, movable furniture and wireless computer stations could allow the teacher to reconfigure the space on the fly to support different activities. The SJSU incubator classroom features three projection screens: a large one in front and two on the sides. This configuration would allow, say, a high school teacher to display multiple pieces of information to different work groups collaborating within the same classroom in what Johnson calls "micro-environments." A central server, like the one housed in the incubator space, could facilitate collaboration in any classroom by connecting wireless laptops.
