This is Our Classroom

Welcome to our classroom. Pardon the mess... we've been busy.

Our room is a large semi-industrial studio. The students in the foreground are sitting in our Blogger's Lounge while in the distance, two students are projecting student work and leading a peer review session, and to the right a cluster of students have a chat session around a table to plan for their presentation; two more groups hang in our mini Mac lab just to the left of where this picture is cropped.

We're a 1:1 school and all of the students have Tablet PCs. You'll notice the two cameras as well in the picture below; that's because we share this room with @schickbob and his fantastic TV and Film students; this area doubles as a soundstage for student-directed video and TV as well as a blackbox theatre during in-class student productions and performances. We've also got exposed rafters and a nice semi-mobile mounted lighting system that we use to give productions that authentic feel.

Here's our larger than life-sized class Twitter feed projected up on the wall. Students use this for everything from chatting and sharing ideas and links to organizing bibliographies and resources via hashtags.

During the class session when we shot these pics, the students were peer reviewing outlines and rough drafts of academic essays. Each group rotated into the middle of the room at some point during the class to post their work on the big screen and present their arguments. They used Twitter to organize their group efforts and they presented all of their work via Blogger.

Each student has his or her own Blogger account. The students keep all classwork as well as all notes and long-term assignments on their blogs, so by the end of a semester they have a complete portfolio of work. Students write daily blogposts on questions gathered from our crowdsourced wiki-syllabus; the best writing goes up on our public class blog.

With the exception of the sofa, everything in our room is either on wheels or light enough to easily move around. As a teacher, I've found that to be key. The more flexible your space, the more engaging your classroom.

And there's the authenticity piece. Life isn't an orderly row of desks. I want my students to own their room and be able to adapt it to their needs.