What Does The Classroom of the Future Look Like?

Douglas Kiang Punahou School

Predicting the classroom of the future, 30 yrs from now, no one will remember what you said in the first place. So you can never be wrong. Funny "21st century classroom". It’s a pretty low bar. It’s the 21st century now. Every classroom is a 21st century classroom. To have the classroom of the future, you don’t have to do anything. You just have to wait it out.

1977So predictions of the future are only useful to the extent that they help us to reexamine the present. Take the classroom of the future, and make it the classroom of the present. This is a picture of the school that Punahou was to become. In 1978, envisioned by a child. This captivated my attention, and now thirty years later, I am back, wondering, “Where are the jetpacks?”

Classrooms

Curriculum

CommunityCharacteristics of the classroom of the future: It should have a flexible and adaptive curriculum. Classrooms and physical spaces should allow robust opportunities for creativity. And finally, it should emphasize relationships and community. Good teachers are an essential part of this equation.

What Does the ofthe Future

Look Like?

Curriculum

How do you learn something new? Our answers are different from our kids’ answers. I’ll show you how kids are learning today. I’ll show you what I’m doing in my own class.

When my son wanted to learn how to shave, he didn’t look to me to teach him. He turned to the YouTube to learn and found 800,000 dads willing to teach my son how to shave. How did he know how to do this? (Why did he feel he needed to?) I have failed as a parent. I have succeeded as a teacher.

My daughter decided to make her own Princess Zelda costume for Halloween. This led to a self-taught course in fabrics, paint, foam, stencils, and sewing, none of which she knew how to do before.

“Stop taking my picture, Dad.”

my daughter in her full gown and my son (clean shaven.)

diy.org

diy.org

The effect of audience on engagement

Different tracks for various skills give an overall context, or map, of how to progress.

Most of these games transcend technology. Technology is the medium for sharing and reaching a global audience. It is not the focus.

Like DIY for grown-ups. The Maker Revolution is in full swing. Knowledge is constructed together and shared. Physical spaces such as elementary school classrooms do this pretty effectively.!

How do your students share their work? How open and accessible is your curriculum to being modified, tinkered with, added to?

Many years ago a military patrol was caught in a blizzard in the Swiss Alps.

They were lost and frightened, but one of them found a map in his pocket. After consulting it, they built a shelter, planned their route, and then waited out the storm.

When the storm cleared a few days later, they made their way back to base camp. Their commanding officer was relieved that they had survived, and asked them how they had managed to find their way out.

One of the soldiers produced the map and he was astonished to see that it was a map of the Pyrenees, not the Alps.

It gave them confidence. It gave them an impetus to get moving — direction is sometimes more important than detail. The map rekindled their awareness of details. A good curriculum does this. Give kids a framework and they will improvise. They’re good at that. School is just a way of giving kids a map to find their way through the world. Sometimes they are trying to find something — a passion, a sense of self — sometimes they are the ones who are lost.

What Does the ofthe Future

Look Like?

Curriculum

How do you leverage kids’ ability to DIY? Involve them in creating something that’s never been created before. They still need a framework or a map.

Welcome to AP Computer Science_

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that one day in May.

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means lots of this...!primary form of assessment

Challenge-Based Learning

Big Idea Essential !Question

Challenge

Guiding!Questions

Solution

Implement

Evaluate

Guiding !Activities/!Resources

Ongoing Informative Assessment

Ongoing ReflectionOngoing Documentation

and Publishing

Challenge-Based Learning provides a framework -- a map -- but leaves flexibility for kids to chart their own route. Room to improvise! More info at challengebasedlearning.org

Challenge

Create an iPhone app that solves a problem or fills a need.

and we wanted to model what we do after what happens in the real world.

What if my course ran like a startup?

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What happens in a meeting?

What I asked myself…

Talk to

each otherShare data

Help solve

problems

Plan and coordinate

Ask questions

Show work

Draw pictures

you would do all of this in a department meeting

...not this.

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About the only thing we didn’t see was this. My classes should run like meetings, and the work should happen outside. That’s what the laptops are for.

Old

Some stuff we took from industry. Lists of deadlines…

New

became a Gantt Chart.

What’s the difference between a cook and a chef?

Marco Torres poses this question.

Cook

(really a cook)

Cook

Prepackaged, predone, premade. The value is in repeatability, its predictability. Not novelty. Not that it hasn’t been done before. You don’t want surprises from a cook. In the cafeteria you don’t want the surprise of the day.

Are you a cook, or a chef? Are we making cooks, or chefs?

Are you giving kids a recipe? Or are you giving them room to improvise?

Create chefsTrain cooks

I want to train cooks. And train chefs.

School athletes did an app about something they knew a lot about: rehabbing from injuries.

“Back in Action” app video shoot

Had to master skills not just of coding, but of directing, planning, scheduling. These are the right “21st century skills”.

“Back in Action” app video shoot

Direct a model who could do the poses and handle the shoot in a sensitive, professional, way.

Developer Day

We brought in experts from the local community and administrators throughout the school to test the apps and give feedback.

Developer Day

It was also a celebration of the collaboration between our students and developers, graphic artists, and teachers from the community.

Technology is most effective when it enhances and facilitates connection. When we are one pinpoint in a network, not an island to ourselves.

Technology is most effective when it enhances and facilitates connection. When we are one pinpoint in a network, not an island to ourselves.

One student worked with a parent to create an app for autistic kids to learn how to count. She developed it for her kid but schools across the country are using it. Schools, teachers, parents, therapists, etc that work with kids on the autism spectrum have all purchased the app and are awaiting more!

Challenge

Get everybody to master the AP Java subset.

What does this framework look like when applied to studying for the AP exam? This changed the dynamic significantly. We succeed when EVERYBODY succeeds. That means we all need to know our strengths and weaknesses.

So… what happened on that one day in May?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/48393303@N00/315335738

The Switch

Students collaborated more

Competition was minimized

AP Exam was marginalized

Achievement gap widened

Student felt that he didn’t need to do well on the AP exam since he already knew he could program.

Build something that matters.

Give them a map.

Involve the community.

Curriculum of the Future

Create chefs.

In summary, give kids a map that leaves freedom to improvise. It’s like giving them a recipe that they can work off of but add to.

What Does the ofthe Future

Look Like?

Classroom

http://www.flickr.com/photos/51035555243@N01/10504646224

Classroom

What kinds of physical structures can we design to support kids’ learning at their own pace? I’ll give you some examples, both from real life, and from kids themselves.

Where do you feel most creative?

The Coffee Bean.

“Lectures exist because humans didn't scale. Except now they do, thanks to technology.”!

Arjun Balaji

This has been the classroom of the future for a very long time. If we don’t do anything, the classroom of the future will look like this. Technology has changed, so the way we teach has to change.

The school of the future will be progressive not because it has a spaceship shaped dining hall, but because curriculum and the relationships and the ways that kids think will be different. Online schools don’t use classrooms. The notion of physical space is different.!

What do companies do?

Entrepreneurial in structure, whimsical in nature!Innovation and creativity everywhere!Open forum for ideas!Empowered employees!Lots of free food

Community herb garden in the common area. Employees can pick their own herbs to take home.

Snacks are available for the taking. Shelves are color-coded to indicate their relative healthiness.

A sense of FUN about the Google campus. Incongruous juxtaposition. Examples of public art. What is art’s role in setting the tone for the learning environment?

Fosters a sense of “play” - volleyball sand courts in middle of complex

Brightly painted Google bikes are placed around campus. People can ride them to a building and leave them outside.

The “mobile meeting” bike seats seven and qualifies as a “mobile collaboration tool”. Adds to a sense of whimsy.

Google newsletters are posted in conspicuous locations -- like this one, above the men’s urinal. News and info that people need to know are posted in a no-frills format. Everybody is a node for information. No central newsletter. Surrounded by information, all the time.

Google has set up a local network shortcut that allows redirects from goto/keyword.

Games and recreation area.

Employees take a much-needed break and go right back to work!

This is the Help Desk, set up like a college café or pizza joint. Notice how the tables allow people with problems to solve, to be grouped together while they wait. Sometimes problems are solved before they get to the Help Desk.

The Apple Store.

The whiteboard is on a roller that allows the teacher to roll it out of the way when not needed.

Student-created flyers from the Grammar Club addressing some common frustrations.

Urban School has an Artist-in-Residence. She did portraits of all the students at the school without faces, just clothing and stance.

Students were surprisingly recognizable!

Closeness with nature is part of the school’s core values. Some of the school buildings have grass growing on them.

Purpose Relationships and Roles Space

Make the learning commons an expression of and service to Punahou’s philosophy of education.

Use space to celebrate individual learning journeys and weave them into a collective Punahou story.

Preserve the learning commons’ capacity to hold space for dreaming.

Enable discovery and inquiry in the many forms they take.

Strive to make the learning commons integral to Punahou’s schedule and campus.

Celebrate and scaffold the idea of everyone as teachers and learners.

Design and staff a hub of support and wisdom that teaches our community how to fish in a sea of possibilities.

Make the learning commons a place where teachers can be present for and contribute to students’ magic learning moments.

Create spaces for the contemplative, collaborative, and casual.

Design flexible, interactive physical and digital structures that adapt to student needs in real-time.

Create guided studios for inventive, experimental making.

Build age-appropriate student cafés.

Provide corners and comforts to build nests.

Design Principles Summary

Blend the library with its environment.

Challenge

Build your ideal "learning commons." Think about what you are asked to do as a student. Then think about what you want to see in a physical space that supports what you do.

I set up a Minecraft server at my school. My students are going to be assigned to embark on mini-quests with other classmates to learn how to trust and problem-solve together. It will also encourage their creativity and encourage visual self-expression.

Each group started with its own island.!(point out people working)

Flythrough

This looks a lot like the Nueva buildings.

Create spaces for play.

Bring the outside in.

Classrooms of the Future

Empower individual voices.

What Does the ofthe Future

Look Like?

CommunityCommunity

The community in the classroom is a hybrid, composed of the face-to-face time and the online presence of your course. GOA Experience, community, relationships, negotiating for understanding

What’s your fair share?

Community is represented by the whole of the interactions that occur within a group.!How much do you depend on others? How much do they depend on you?!Not a zero sum game

Create shared value together.

Shared value. Example from Back in Action app. The guys actually got an art student in another class to design their icon. She was thrilled that her artwork would be featured in the App Store, and they were relieved that they didn’t have to draw one themselves. Teaching is a negotiation. We are negotiating knowledge all the time. We can create value together.

Challenge

Create a self-sustaining community that reinforces trust among individuals and that rewards pro-social behavior.

I set up a Minecraft server at my school. My students are going to be assigned to embark on mini-quests with other classmates to learn how to trust and problem-solve together. It will also encourage their creativity and encourage visual self-expression.

Students also had to come up with their own rules that they thought would allow individuals to live together in community, respect each other, and minimize conflict.

Students also had to come up with their own rules that they thought would allow individuals to live together in community, respect each other, and minimize conflict.

Students also had to come up with their own rules that they thought would allow individuals to live together in community, respect each other, and minimize conflict.

Students also had to come up with their own rules that they thought would allow individuals to live together in community, respect each other, and minimize conflict.

It was raining.

An example of a community farm set up by one student for everyone else’s benefit.

Should it be banned?

YES! No one needs explosives that powerful.

No! I have the right to use it responsibly.

BAN THE USER, NOT THE MATERIAL!!!!!!!!!

In a supportive community with trust, failure is minimized. We as a community need to own our successes and our setbacks.

Create shared value together.

Own your successes and your setbacks.

Create safe spaces for failure.

Community of the Future

The student-centered classroom doesn’t happen without

Teachers facilitate student collaboration.Without the stranger, no soup is made.

The student-centered classroom doesn’t happen without the teacher!

Teachers are at the heart of the classroom of the future, even if you are not at the front of the room all the time. Empower the individuals in your class. Build a sense of community. Provide the stone and the map. Let’s take the best parts of the classroom of the future and make them the classroom of the present.

謝 謝

Teachers are at the heart of the classroom of the future, even if you are not at the front of the tool all the time. Empower the individuals in your class. Build a sense of community. Provide the stone and the map.