Inside the classroom of the future

Tomorrow’s classrooms will be collaborative workspaces, featuring 3D printers  “immersive “ work stations and hybrid  textbooks in which content is generated on the fly.  By Mark Piesing

In  the classroom of the future, small groups of children work messily together on a number of “expeditions”  to create amazing machines out of LEGO , scan seashells to be printed in  3D to help them explore under the sea, and tell them their own stories using sound.

By using the latest technology , such as 3D printers, fully  immersive work stations – which are rather like working on two screens with one of them a touch screen projected onto the table in front of you- and hybrid text books, it’s hoped that teachers and publishers will be shifted from being providers of information to being supporters and  prompters of the learning experience.

The hybrid textbook is much like a traditional textbook with text and  pictures but also connects to a world of students -, teacher and publisher – generated digital  material with the wave of a smartphone over an invisible watermark.

Its creator Hewlett Packard believes  that this will help the students of today prepare for their own future  in the knowledge economy- if in a rather controlled way that keeps parents and teachers happy.

Education can be innovative and international, and publishers can find new ways of delivering material in the future.

Author:  Mark Piesing 

Source: Frankfurt Show Daily