What’s NEXT?
Educational Technology Services (ETS) has been working over the summer and the fall term to plan and design the New, Emerging and eXperimental Technology/Techniques Classroom – AKA the NEXT Classroom.
The NEXT Classroom provides Pellissippi State with a test bed environment for trying out technologies that are cutting edge to explore their efficacy in higher education as well as a place to install higher cost technologies that could not be deployed in every classroom. Moving beyond the technology, the vision for the NEXT Classroom is also as a place to test new teaching techniques and approaches. The work of the SCALE UP project at North Carolina State University was influential in the planning of the NEXT Classroom even though the scale of their work was for much larger classes as was Designing Learning Spaces for 21st Century Learners by Diane Brook and Learning Spaces, an EduCAUSE book edited by Diana Oblinger
The room is being designed to allow maximum flexibility and adaptability to meet needs both known and anticipated as well as respond to situations that have not yet even been imagined. The furniture will be mobile and flexible with desks that are able to be grouped easily and chairs that transform into “game chairs” and tables so classes can configure the room as they need. The walls will be painted with whiteboard paint to create surfaces for instruction, brainstorming and other work that are not limited to normal whiteboard sizes and shapes.
The teacher station will be a dual boot computer so an instructor can teach with Mac or PC. There will be two projectors that will allow for input from any video source in the room in a mirror (both projectors showing the same input source) or in tandem (different video source to each project)
Students will have access to a laptop cart with dual boot laptops so they can work in PC or Mac environment as they wish or need. The room will be served by wireless networking to keep the layout fluid and flexible.
As many avenues for bringing in connections and media area also being planned including:
- webcams for all laptops and the teacher station
- microphones for all laptops and teacher station
- central sound system for all audio sources and teacher voice amplification
- media card readers for all laptops and teacher station
- iPod docking station for teacher station
- guest computer port for the teacher station
Teaching in the NEXT Classroom will be assigned by a competitive process that will be adminstered by the Instructional Development Committee (IDC). Faculty who wish to teach in the room will develop a proposal for testing new technologies or techniques and/or action research within the room. Future additions to the NEXT classroom will be based on criteria such as:
- Faculty request
- Demonstrations of new technologies at conferences or meetings
- Research based findings on the needs for the next generation of learners
What else does the NEXT Classroom need?
What else does our NEXT student generation expect?
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