The classroom for future students in a normal school system or a post-secondary institution could look drastically different in the next millennium.
As computers become more accessible to students the traditional classroom, which is where the instructor stands at the front of the class and writes on the chalkboard, will become obsolete. I vision a classroom that Claudia Wallis describes in "The Learning Revolution". In this article Wallis is describing a classroom that allows the students to finds the answers and gain "hands-on" experience. The instructor is still a valuable asset in this classroom, but the role he/she plays will be very different. Instead of just reading the answers from a book and giving them to the students, the instructors new role will be to guide the students into the right direction and allow the students to find the solutions by themselves. These new classrooms could also be important educational tools for the instructors. The reason for this is that as the students are doing their studies they might find a solution that is new or a solution that is not known to the instructor. If this was to occur the instructor would be able to improve their future teaching practices. The significance of this is that the instructor will also be learning from the students as well as guiding them.
These classrooms will continue to allow students to gain the education that they deserve as well as allowing them to gain the knowledge and skills work within a team environment. This will help the students to develop important social interaction skills. These interaction skills are also important to develop because in the job market of today and the future, working in teams is becoming a normal practice.
The "hands-on" experience is also an important asset because it is giving students the skills to learn how to use the theory they are learning in a practical sense. This will play an important role when the students are seeking employment after graduation. The reason for this is that employers will seek graduating students who have experience in solving problems by using they theory they have been taught.
The distance factor will also be erased because computers make it possible for students to be taught without actually being in the classroom. This makes the learning experience more accessible to a greater amount of potential students. This will be achieved by allowing students who reside in smaller cities or towns access to courses that are only offered in larger cities. An example of this is the ITV room that is offered at the Kamloops campus of University College of the Cariboo. This classroom allows students from outlying areas of Merritt, Williams Lake, and 100 Mile House access to classes that are being taught at the Kamloops campus.
The problems that will exist with the classroom of the future will usually begin with the raising of the necessary resources to invest in the equipment that would be needed. The cost of the new equipment that would be necessary to have these new computers and increased access for students will be a great strain on local school districts or post-secondary institutions. The cost of the new hardware could cause some school districts to cut funding to other programs or supplies for other courses. I do not agree with this practice because students that are in elementary or high school should be able to experience a lot of different subjects such as band, art, etc. Universities also have to deal with the high cost of computers and software. The problems that universities have to face also include raising the needed funds without raising tuition. These institutions can not look towards the governments for increased funding because in today’s government policies, fiscal restraint is a high priority.
A solution for these problems could be to allow corporations to donate the funding that is needed to for the new equipment. Another positive to the donation solution would be that the company that is making the donation could be responsible for the costs that will occur due to equipment failure or replacing obsolete. This will save the institutions the added costs of having to replace hardware every two or three years. For this donation the corporation would be allowed to have exclusive advertising rights around the equipment. The detractors of this solution think that educational institutions should be free of advertising but the reality is that hallways of a majority of today’s schools are advertisements for various sport logos. Some institutions have already accepted this practice for funding to build new gymnasiums.
Another argument that is against putting computers into a classroom is that the gap between societies "halves" and "have-nots" will become greater, Clifford Stool argues this in his article "Computers in the Classroom". In this article Stool argues that the money that would be spent on new computer equipment could be better spent on improving the discrepancies between schools in the inner-city and schools in the suburbs. I believe that if you are able to prove to students that attend inner-city schools that computer knowledge will increase the chances of them receiving a better paying job, they might be willing to learn basic computer skills. I think that this will cause the gap between different levels of societies to become smaller. If students are able to interact with other students that live in other levels of societies or cultures, I think that prejudices will be reduced. The reason for this is that students from different cultures will be able to see that the differences between them are very small.
I conclude that the classroom of the future will become a place of learning for all of the occupants. The students will learn from the instructors as well as the instructors learning from the students. This will become a reality due to the advancement of computer access to all regions of the world. The classroom of the future will also be a lot different then the traditional classroom that previous generations have grown up with. The reason for this is that the students will be learning the theory but they will also be learning how to use this theory to solve real-life problems.