The interactive digital teaching space – teaching “from the front” at critical times

If your classroom looks like those seen in the popular TV program “Home and Away” then your students are missing out. Why?

How long ago was it when people began talking about “dismantling the four walls of the classroom”?

This has not come to pass. Most classrooms have four walls, one teacher, 20–30 students and are resourced from well to poorly. The walls have not been dismantled and many more decades will pass before they are.

However the walls have become porous. Assisted by today’s technology, many classrooms are now reaching out through the four walls to expand learning opportunities.

As long as we have classrooms with four walls and a teacher, there will be a need to teach to the whole class “from the front” at critical times. Gone are the days when this style of teaching is the only style of teaching. However no-one can say that it is a thing of the past. It is not! Nor should it be! It complements other current styles such as mobile learning, flipping, iPad programs, one to one laptop programs and individualized and personalized tuition. It has an important place in effective teaching and learning.

When teaching the whole class “from the front”, hopefully teachers will use more than a blackboard or an ordinary whiteboard and they won’t do it 6/5 (6 hours a day 5 days a week) like depicted in “Home and Away”.

The community expects teachers to use technologies that reach beyond the four walls to bring the outside world in, to improve teaching and learning.

A teacher’s teaching space that is resourced only with a blackboard or ordinary whiteboard has not been designed for 21st century learning. It must be an interactive digital teaching space.

Currently, an interactive digital teaching space is usually resourced with an interactive whiteboard in one of its many forms. In the future the interactive whiteboard or its successor will still take prime position.

How will the interactive whiteboard evolve? Will it morph into interactive walls, interactive projectors, 3D or holographic technologies? It is hard to tell, but we can be certain that what teachers will still require is a piece of 21st century technology that will allow the teacher to teach “from the front” in their own interactive digital teaching space at critical times during the day– very different from the classrooms seen in “Home and Away”.

We are interested to know - in relation to an interactive whiteboard:

Are you using one?

Is yours in moth balls?

Are you dusting one off?

Are you considering buying one?

Or have you skipped the interactive whiteboard era altogether?