Looking back from 2012, in 1998 there was a LOT of debate about what a Learn Zone might be like - it ended up as a rather disappointing walk through trees (tree of learning? ugh) with a few glass-fibre "stumps" that had interactive questions on them. The entrance was through a "giant" school corridor with huge r adiators and lockers and actors br andishing canes in mortar boards and gowns (why? what on earth were they thinking?) but early on it was all heading in a rather more interesting direction.
Here were my initial thoughts - unedited - about the learn zone's sections (and I think it would have been rather good to be honest - not bad for the 1990s!):
As I recall, the key things are that the visitors' experience should be delightful, that visitors get to play a bit, watch a bit, and leave the Dome reflecting on the debate about what the school of the future might look like, maybe voting / choosing scenarios in some way.
Meanwhile the learners - school students for example - who in some cases are located in the scenarios all day - are engaged doing something meaningful that is easily understood by visitors. All this in an inclusive way that is aware of multicultural issues, gender, etc.
The three or four scenarios should therefore be provocative rather than definitive, indicative rather than prescriptive, which leaves room for lots of fun in the design stage I hope! By the way, my short 3 minute School of the Future TV programme shown a week or so back on Channel 4 can be found on the web as a thought provocation for us now.
So, here are my four suggestions to add to the pile, all have a reflection on how they look (important), are to visit, can be achieved, and on follow up activities and the debate that might be provoked:
1 Learning through doing and making:
Activity
Take a product that children use. I suggest the bicycle. Learners would be testing different frame geometries (plug together components real size etc) including some bizarre ones - three wheels, prostrate, etc. and would obviously get an insight into engineering, design, physics, etc.Also having a simple CAD machine set up with choices at a menu (How many wheels, what colour? What frame shape? Name? etc) could do printouts to take away.
Also investigating material science - strengths of carbon vs alloy tubes, etc.
Bikes are not too gender specific in a way that cars might be.
Visitors would have fun watching and could do the CAD printout thing up on the balcony too (take away your sheet as you leave).
Appearance.
Room would look very visual with loadsa bike stuff on the walls - Lotus carbon bike, Tour De France clothes, old boneshakers etc, videos. Learners experimenting all over the floor, riding, testing, etc. Idea can happen in time because: For certain we would get immediate support for the frame components and learner stuff from the young engineers at one of the big bike (or car?) companies (= visibility) and the software would be easy to develop - again any CAD manufacturer would be delighted to have the visibility (Hewlett Packard?)Curriculum follow up?
Loads of extension activities for before or after - bounce and springs, lights, gears, structures. Easy to imagine a pack (I believe CIBA once produced a Bicycle Pack? for schools science and technology)Key debate question?
Revealing the processes is important - when we see a Formula 1 car or a Walkman we see product but should see design and engineering. Process not product debate.
2 Teaching machines?:
There are those who think computers can be a teaching machine rather than a learning tool. We show how bad it could be, but with good humour!
Activity
Learners would be working at banks of drill and practice machines, highly competitive (make your choice now... B?.. Wrong, review evidence...) noisy, hectic. Robot like figures with voice recognition (Star Wars type look and feel?).Can't do ANYTHING without answering questions - use toilet, pass through doors, open window, etc. Credit points all over the place. We must take care not to scar anyone's self esteem and this means a wide diversity of activity (not just read and respond, but listen and sing, watch and do, etc, etc). Remember inclusion and multicultural, etc.
No one would do this room for more than two hours, they'd be exhausted! Visitors would have fun watching - the whole room would be very, very visual. aural and busy; some of the consoles would be on the balcony where visitors watch from so that they could suffer too!.
Appearance
I imagine something like a blend of Metropolis, Brave New World with C3PO wandering round - seedy and techie all at once. Very very visually busy. Lots of announcements about (fictitious) student failures (Melvin Smith will not longer be with us after his week 43 semester 19 scores slipped below a moving average of 75%...) and successes (use real learners names for these). etc.Idea could actually happen in time because: There is plenty of drill and practice type software and the extra code to generate the more extreme stuff would not be hard (voice recognition is here and now, text to speech is easy, etc). We can fake up a few robot teachers (actors). The skill would be getting the right level of obsession with technology and humour in the design.
Curriculum follow up?
The Holy Grail is of course to get children to learn about learning and that would be the feature's role. Getting them to think about what is effective learning and thus become aware reflective learners would be a wonderful, wonderful outcome.Key debate question?
Do we think computers should be teaching machines? Or learning tools?
Why do we need real teachers? Why do people matter? etc.
3 Action researchers:
Computers in this school scenario are just tools but the environment and the challenges are the key features in this one.
Activity
Learners would be arrivals in an unknown place, which has clearly been abandoned. Their task would be about deciding its suitability for habitation. They do this by data logging temperatures, light metering, etc, humidity, investigating their environment and (crucially) comparing it to what they can find from databanks about what plants need, what people need, etc.They do this in small collaborative groups and come together at the end to discuss their views. There is no right answer, just opinions backed up by what they have discovered, and researched.
The learners carry little computers around with them - to do the data capture and give them network access at all times, etc, etc. Not so much teachers as expert witnesses around to be interviewed and questioned.
Visitors would have fun - the set is highly visual and there could be monitors around the wall provoking them to reflect - talking heads - catastrophists, eco warriors, scientists - it makes good TV and would make a disturbing, reflective gallery too.
Appearance
... would be effectively lots of small spaces (more open to the air?) with plenty of green flora (and maybe fauna too?) and aged walls.The abandoned motif lets us leave interesting and puzzling artifacts around to set off chains of questioning (why an oxygen bottle?, why fragments of notices with some (can't quite read it) warning? etc., why a sack of nitrogen? or whatever.
Use little eMates for the computers because they already have lots of data logging software and equipment and look futurist. Idea can happen in time because: It's really a big set design with great curriculum challenges. Coordination would be the biggest bit of the task.
Curriculum follow up?
Again, loads of extension activities for before or after. The great thing would be what the groups of learners do in the Dome with simple hand held computers that they can do later at school too, looking at ecology and other data from their own environment.Key debate question?
This really is the school of the future - collaborative groups, personal technology, ubiquitous networking, problems and challenges carefully mediated, etc. One debate is about how we get to this? Does it fit the classroom organisation that we already have? Or our assessme}nt system? What are the issues? What about the have nots?
4 Virtual walls, real classroom:
This is a BIG communications scenario.
Activity
A simple school room but with two of the three walls made up entirely of video linked to elsewhere. Learners would be taught in a conventional way, but would be in a virtual class that had one wall of other students elsewhere (in another otherwise-conventional-school-room).The second video wall would then be showing whatever the subject of their shared lesson was. This video could be anything not easily achieved in the actual classroom: perhaps a look at Volcanoes, or a sports match (netball coaching) or even raw footage from a TV programme (how they edit East Enders, or the News?).
Visitors would walk along a gallery designed to overlook the two video walls but also their gallery would be awash with video images from broadcasts all round the world - cable, satellite TV, etc in many languages to emphasis the richness of content available.
Appearance
... would be quite conventional apart from the vast video wall (!).In fact the more conventional it looks the better. The visitors gallery of course is much richer with 100 screens (little, big, etc) embedded in the walls.
Idea can happen in time because all it needs is:
Loadsa bandwidth to connect two classrooms. Fixed at the Dome end but with a mobile connection (moved monthly only?) at different times at the other end.I imagine that the not-at-the-Dome end of the video link could (slowly) tour the country (Manchester, Newcastle, Penzance, etc) which would help the too far from the Dome to care about it apathy problem.
Would need sponsorship/support from BT or the Cable companies to keep the bandwidth costs down to zero. Secondly it needs some good rich video content and guest experts to talk about it - easily sourced from the vast amount of good TV and the small army of subject organisations (Association of Science Education, BAFTA, British Film Institute, Netball Association, ... etc). Thirdly it needs a big video wall but these are easily tiled from current kit (visit any big show... to see them). All very achievable.
Curriculum follow up?
I dont need to spell this one out do I? - but the learners could certainly take away the video and each curriculum activity will have its own follow up.Key debate question?
Is this really the school of the future? If so it could be a lot smaller than it is today? Why does it still need teachers? (it does though), can TV be a learning resource (with good mediation it might be in part), etc etc.
Hope these suggestions are useful. In time I think they will be seen to have been the right debates and they should be a lot of fun.
Personally I can't wait and think the whole idea is blindin
Cheers
Stephen