No more classrooms, no more books, no more teacher’s dirty looks!

Ring . . . ring . . .  ring . . . ! The alarm goes off at 10.30am, but the teenager snuggles back into bed, deciding to complete the majority of her school timetable from home today, and link into the USA, as their school hours better suit her body clock. Her guitar classes will be with her instructor, residing in Korea, in one hour; drama online with another instructor in India, in two hour’s time. Ustreaming and virtual classroom software will be used from the plasma type screen in her lounge room. Students in the drama class include some from China, Bangkok and the Philippines. They are about to act out a play and stream it to other interested students and community members around the world.  As the geography class is currently studying Israel, she will delay that class until 6 pm tonight and logon to the online class with Israel, so that she can learn first-hand from the students who live in the actual country. The rest of her classes will be with the USA.

Welcome to the school of 2020, where schools, classrooms and desks will no longer exist as we know them today. Instead, teenage students will be able to choose to:

• attend local learning resource centres
• stay home and learn online through virtual classroom software, videoconferencing, streaming, chat rooms,  social networking software
• teleport to a ‘second life’ school
• work from home, for local industry, solving some of their problems using gaming software.

The school of 12 to 20 years time will be unrecognisable from the classroom today. Resource centres will take their place. These will have few walls, ample points for charging mobile gear and portable plasma screens for timetable offerings both locally and globally. Hot spots for internet access will be available outside for those who wish to work in groups in an outdoor setting. Students will be required to attend a learning centre for at least one day a week (a day of their choice) in the transition phase.  All work will be recorded on blogs, wikis or nings. Live blogs will allow group work from around the town, country or globe and enable the sharing of multimedia and participation in polling. Books are rare, found online and can be accessed by a reader or listened to via a podcast. Assessments may be textual, multi-media or aural, via an interview.

Little furniture will be needed due to the high level of virtual learning, but what does exist will be portable, adjustable and modular, allowing placements that suit the learning needs for the day. Adjustable stools will convert to wii type controls. Small, private tutorial rooms will also allow for small group work, online learning or teaching. All desks will be interactive with multi-touch devices.  See a post by Tom Barrett, UK.

Student personal learning spaces will exist primarily in homes. Demands will be few, as students are able to access all their learning needs from their small, portable ultra mobile PC - a device which will display all or some of the following features:

• smart phone
• smart pen
• mp3 player/recorder or iPod (or equivalent)
• digital and video camera
• digital recorder
• Wii control
• digital data logger and microscope
• detachable keyboard.

Young people, or ‘netizens’, will continue to socialise and learn in open spaces. Several continents may be represented in online classes. The changing concept of nationhood and current global problems may be resolved through student group cohorts.

Bells no longer exist; learning is available 24/7. Authentic audiences abound and student-directed learning is evident. Teachers become facilitators and mentors for local, countrywide or global students. Physical desks will disappear and be replaced with virtual desks in a ‘second life’ environment, a plasma top monitor for videoconferencing and streaming, found at strategic locations in the resources centre. Staff will have access to multi-directional whiteboards and virtual classroom software on their ultra mobile PCs. Staff meetings will not be confined to people within the same country but will comprise global counterparts. Lesson plans will be developed as part of a team that may be global in composition. Wireless internet access and hot spots will abound.

‘Yard’ duty will include supervising the virtual classroom worlds for an hour at a time. Other duties may include monitoring blog, twitter, ning and social networking site updates and welfare duty – mentoring those who are suffering cyber bullying. Working hours are flexible and may be 24/7. Part of the facilitating role will involve setting quests for virtual worlds and arranging experts to speak ‘live’ and online to global student groups. Micro-blogging (for example, twitter or plunk) will allow instant help and feedback from all manner of experts who are online.

In conclusion, schools as we know them, will disappear, and 24/7 learning will take its place. Mobile technology will be in full use, and virtual school rooms become the norm. Online and on-demand learning will increasingly exist and the use of virtual worlds means that learning spaces will alter completely in nature.

The interview of some of my global educator friends at the Learn2.008 nonferrous in Shanghai, including Julie Lindsay, who is responsible for the global flat classrooms project, Teaching Sagittarian, (from Bangkok) and Jess McCulloch (a technolote from Australia) and Tim (from Hong Kong) has been uploaded to teacher tube and the link is provided here.  

Additional internet resources

1. See Tom Barrett's blog at: http://tbarrett.edublogs.org/2008/09/27/the-philips-entertaible-in-our-school/

2. Interviews on ‘What will school be like in 15 to 20 years time?’ conducted at the Learn2.008 conference, in Shanghai, including Julie Lindsay from Bangkok, who is responsible for the global flat classrooms project, ‘Teaching Sagittarian’; Jess McCulloch (technolote) from Australia; and Tim, from Hong Kong. These interviews have been uploaded to Teacher Tube at: http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=18ebada604f4e75fff8e

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ms Anne Mirtschin is a teacher at Hawkesdale P-12 College, in Hawkesdale, Victoria, Australia.

 

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