At the end of August, the iTEC project hosted workshop on creating iTEC Learning Activities for the future classroom. Twenty-four teachers from 13 countries across Europe came to the Future Classroom Lab in Brussels to collaborate, share experiences and exchange ideas.
The teachers worked in groups to produce innovative classroom activities using methods such as the ‘flipped classroom’, ‘bring your own device’, and ‘environmental learning’.
Some of the key messages that the teachers participating on the course agreed upon was the importance of teamwork and collaboration activities, the need to redesign the traditional classroom’s ‘grid’ structure (i.e. rows and rows of desks facing the teacher at the head of the classroom), and allowing pupils more independence in their learning.
Carlos Cunha, who drafted the ‘bring your own device activity’, spoke on the need for schools to adapt their policies to allow teachers and pupils to harness existing technology for teaching and learning:
“I had a kind of battle with the board of my school - I had to convince them that in my classroom, especially in the lab, the cellphone – especially the smartphones - are very important to use, because they are incredible machines. I encourage students to bring their own laptops, their own tablets, their own smartphones, and use them in the lab, to photograph different steps of the work, to film, to measure…”
Participants were enthusiastic about the future classroom methodology, and many said they would share the tools and ideas that they had learned on the course with their colleagues during the coming school year.
