The Hechinger Report – Nichole Dobo
MENTOR, Ohio – A two-way mirror was a window to the classroom of the future.
A kindergarten teacher worked with a small group of students. Other children worked independently throughout the rectangular room. Some held tablet computers with special devices to scan letter tiles. Some sat on the floor playing an educational game.
Unnoticed by the children were the adults on the other side of the frosted glass windows that lined one wall. This is a laboratory classroom, offering teachers the space and training to test-drive new technology. Teachers from around the district bring their students here to try experimental lessons that blend in-person instruction and digital tools.
“When people can see it, that makes them a believer,” said Matthew Miller, the superintendent of the Mentor Public School, and a proponent of what’s known as blended learning. “They need the proof. How many times in education have we gone after the big, shiny toy, and it isn’t what we said it would be?”
The school district in Mentor, a working-class city in northeastern Ohio near Lake Erie, has committed to a plan that will require all teachers to use technology to enhance teaching and learning. As it is phased in, the project will mean creating new classroom designs that are influenced by the new learning style. The norms that most adults remember from their own school days — rows of desks facing a chalkboard, podiums for lectures — are being discarded to make way for soft seating, nooks for group meetings and desks on wheels. And, of course, computers everywhere.
by MindMake via MindMake Blog
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