It may be the schools and districts that invite me in to teach. It may be my own preferential perspective. I don’t have any supporting statistics, but it seems to me that ceiling or wall mounted computer projectors are becoming ubiquitous in U.S. classrooms. If this is not the case, then it should be. At any rate, classrooms without the ability to project, for group consideration, abundant, networked and digital content is more and more obviously out-dated, designed to prepare it’s children for a world that we have left behind.
I understand that the recent focus on classroom projectors and especially interactive whiteboards, has been questioned and the the source of many contentious conversations, and I agree with most objections. Any focus on any one information and communication technology as “the” solution to the “ed tech problem,” is narrowly considered and jeopardizes the effective and appropriate education of it’s children.
But that aside, if you do have a classroom computer, projecting its images to a wall of your classroom in some way, what is that wall doing when you’re not teaching with it. It’s a question that has occured to me before, but this morning, as I glanced at Martin’s (my son) Video-A-Day posting, I began imagining a classroom, before the bell rings, students walking in for 50 minutes of instruction, and a video playing, with no audio besides some appropriately spacey music, illustrating The Known Universe. How compelling can you be?
Does this even have to be a science class? Can’t it be a communications class, where students communicate their impressions of the message, or math, where students are asked calculate relative distances?
The term that floated out of these thoughts was Class Dashboard. It may not be an entirely accurate description, but I wonder how your projector and wall might be utilized to facilitate learning between and beneath the bell schedule?