What a Difference a Technological Revolution Can Make
If there’s one thing that continually amazes me, it’s how much
K–12 learning environments have changed since I was in school.
I went to elementary school in the mid-1990s. Our desks were
arranged in rows facing the front of the room. Teachers explained
our lessons using chalkboards and chalk—or, at their most advanced,
an overhead projector with transparent, laminated pages
and dry-erase markers. We knew there’d be a video component to
the day when the teacher rolled an AV cart with a big, boxy TV and
a VHS player through the door. And we affectionately called the
single desktop computer in my fifth-grade classroom “the Oregon
Trail machine” because that’s the only thing we ever used it for.
This is all to say that during that time period, all the ancestors of
today’s modern education technology—the Internet, computers, even
cell phones—very much existed. But the technology and infrastructure
hadn't developed enough for its presence in the classroom to be
much more than a gimmick.
Last November, I was lucky enough to attend the EDspaces
conference in Pittsburgh, Pa. Likewise, earlier this year, I spent a
day at the TCEA (Texas Computer Education Association) Convention & Exposition in my hometown of Dallas, Texas. I spent
both events attending sessions and wandering the show floor,
marveling at all the ways that today’s classrooms look nothing
like the ones I attended. And it’s not just the way technology has
advanced in the last 20+ years, although that’s certainly part of it.
It’s the way the learning spaces themselves have transformed.
Gone are the desks lined up in rows facing the blackboard. The
new standard is “active learning spaces,” classrooms designed
to let kids be kids—and equipped with the kinds of tables and
chairs and other furniture to let them do so. It’s not dumbing
education down, and it’s not patronizing students; it’s a genuine
movement to meet students at their level and find methods of
imparting knowledge that might actually stick.
I think it was my third-grade teacher who brought in an old
couch and set it up in the corner of the classroom. (And by “couch,”
I mean a rear-facing seat that had been removed from the back of a
station wagon.) That couch was the most valued piece of real estate
in the entire classroom. In our eight-year-old brains, there was
no greater privilege or triumph than to study times tables on the
couch. To sit quietly and read a library book—but on the couch. To
brainstorm our science fair project—from the comfort of a couch.
That little bit of comfort and agency worked wonders. Something
about it made us feel a little less like we were trapped in school.
And I can’t help but feel a little jealous of today’s students,
whose classrooms seem based off the idea that kids really are more
willing to engage if you just let them sit on a couch.
This article originally appeared in the Spring 2022 issue of Spaces4Learning.
About the Author
Matt Jones is senior editor of Spaces4Learning. He can be reached at [email protected].