As we consider the needs of the twenty-first century classroom and the changes needed to meet the needs of all students, the proper use of technology must be addressed if we are to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse student population. We must carefully weigh the use of technology as an instructional delivery tool versus the very important element of teacher/student interaction and feedback. Twenty-first Century technology is a powerful tool and when combined with the instruction and feedback provided by research-based instructional techniques can provide an answer to the flexibility needed to teach to the many levels of today’s students. What follows in this article is a look at what a high school classroom might look like for both students and teachers using currently available technology that could be used both today and in the future. The ideas presented here would incorporate currently available hardware. Suitable software might be available, adaptable or need to be created. Parts of the process might be implemented in stages but should never lose sight of the need to allot proper time to teachers for lesson creation, assessment and feedback. Let’s take a journey to a flexible, twenty-first century classroom and see what it might look like.

Our student arrives at school a little later than usual today but knowing that the schedule is flexible has no concern about being able to get in the daily minimum required time per course and complete the tasks that need to be completed today in all her classes. Before leaving for school she has done a quick, real-time check of the number of students signed into each of the classes on her schedule with her cell phone application and determined that the day’s schedule she has set for herself should work out. She has chosen to head to her Algebra class first after noting that the teacher she is assigned to is available for a two-hour block that started less than thirty minutes ago. Since she feels that she understands the material she is currently working on in Algebra, she hopes to spend the minimum required time on it today so that she can devote more time to a chemistry lesson that she is having trouble with and may need that teacher’s help.

Upon entering the Algebra room, she grabs a dry-erase marker at the door, picks up a USB tablet and heads to an available workstation. She notices that the room, which is set up for 35 stations, is about half full and the teacher is at the teacher station working with a couple of students needing help. She sits down at a whiteboard topped desk, plugs in her school-issued, Wi-Fi-enabled laptop to the charging station at the desk, opens up her school application from the desktop and logs on.

The desktop application opens on her desktop and displays her schedule which shows that no time has been spent on any of her courses today, along with the number of students currently signed into each class. The numbers have only changed slightly since she checked on the way to school. She notes that all the courses listed in her schedule are green…well except for that chemistry course which is showing up in yellow…indicating that she is on schedule to finish them on time for the year. She makes another mental note that she is close on chemistry and will need to put in the time before that indicator turns red requiring her to put in additional time in a chemistry tutorial to get back on schedule. She scans the list, locates her Algebra class and clicks on it, logging her into her Algebra class and indicating on the teacher’s screen that she is present as well as adding her to the count of students currently in the class for anyone else with this class on their schedule.

As her Algebra class opens on the screen, she notes the now familiar list of 12 units in the course (each listed with the approximate number of days needed to complete) with those already completed in green, the current unit partially completed in yellow and the units still to be completed in red. Also at the top of the page is an alert showing that she has three current alerts for Algebra and a button to request teacher help that she can click to be added to the teachers queue for students needing help. If assistance is needed, she can click the button, type a brief comment on what she needs help on and submit to be added to the teacher’s queue. The teacher will respond when he is ready to help and she can take her laptop to the teacher’s help area. At the bottom of the page is a collaboration box and she notes that a student has asked for a discussion about a problem in the unit she has just completed but seeing that two people are already in the discussion, decides not to click the button to enter the collaboration.

She clicks the alerts at the top of the page and sees that one is a computer generated alert from a computer graded assignment completed yesterday showing her grade along with the problems missed. Another is a comment from the teacher on a teacher graded assessment submitted yesterday. The teacher has indicated her grade along with an explanation of one of the problems missed and a reminder to see the teacher if she still didn’t understand the missed problem as it was an important one to be able to do before the unit assessment. The final alert was a general comment from the teacher complimenting her on the work she was doing and informing her that her current progress was on target and her grade was an A. After reviewing the missed problems and explanations, she closes the alert screen and clicks on the yellow unit she is currently working on.

The unit page opens up, again showing completed lessons in green, current lessons in yellow and yet to be completed lessons in red. She clicks on the current lesson in yellow. The lesson page opens with the title of the lesson at the top, a list of required tasks at the left and links to additional resources at the right. Clicking on any of the required tasks, additional resources or the collaboration button at the bottom will start the timer counting toward the day’s required minimum time on the subject. She notes that the lesson’s required tasks consist of a teacher prepared video, a computer generated and graded problem set, a follow up video, a teacher graded formative assessment on the lesson, a teacher prepared video and narrative review of the unit so far and a cumulative unit assessment. The video, computer problem set and teacher graded assessment (the ones in today’s alerts) are green indicating successful completion. The computer would have immediately indicated success or failure of the computer graded problems but the teacher graded assessment would not have turned green until the teacher marked it green for completed, yellow to indicate the teacher needed to see the student for further explanation before marking complete or red if the assessment was not completed successfully meaning the teacher needed to review it with the student and the student would then need to take an alternate assessment before receiving credit for the unit. She clicks on the review and starts the clock. At the top is a video followed by a list of keys points covered in the unit up to this point.

After scanning the key points, she puts on headphones supplied at each workstation and presses the video’s play button. The teacher has prepared a video highlighting key points in the unit and giving some example problems as reminders. She pauses the video at key points to make a few notes with the marker on the whiteboard desk and plays the video to completion (the computer will not give her credit until the entire video is watched). She reads back through the key points on the screen and compares them to the notes on her marker board desk. Satisfied that she understands the concepts, she clicks complete and the computer returns to the lesson menu. That required element now shows green. She glances at the additional resource links and notes that they include some additional problems, a link to a couple of outside websites that contain explanations and examples of the problems in the unit and several YouTube videos prepared by others that the teacher considers good explanations and examples. None of these are required and after looking over the notes on the desk one more time, erases the desk, plugs in her tablet and clicks the unit assessment. It opens on the page with the assessment title and a request to take the assessment button. She clicks on the button which alerts the teacher that a student is ready for testing. After confirming that the student has erased and cleared her desk, the teacher clicks a button to “push” the test to the student and it appears on her screen for her to complete.

The assessment consists of problems that must be worked out with work shown. This is done by writing on the USB tablet in the box supplied for each problem. When the student is finished with the test and has checked over it and is sufficiently satisfied with her answers she will click the submit button and it will be sent to the teacher for evaluation. The test will no longer be available on the student’s computer. Having completed more than the minimum time for today and not wanting to go on to the next lesson in the unit, the student clicks the logout button at the top to log out of the class and await results from the teacher and notes that there are not many people currently signed into her chemistry class. She unplugs the tablet from her computer, her computer from the charging station and returns the marker and tablet to their places in the room before heading to the dreaded chemistry class; her Algebra work completed for the day.

Meanwhile at the teacher’s station, the teacher’s time is spent monitoring students computer work, responding to student’s requests for assessments, responding to students’ requests for help and helping students at the teacher station. The teacher’s desk has a monitor screen that shows what each student is currently working on and time spent on the lesson as well as the day’s total, a collaboration monitor that enables the teacher to monitor (or participate in) conversations in the collaboration area to ensure students are on task, a request for help queue and a comment area to allow a teacher to send alerts or comments to an active student. The teacher can respond to a request for help by clicking on the request in the queue and either typing an immediate response to a question or sending a request to the student asking them to bring their laptop to the teacher’s help station. If several students are having problems with the same lesson, the teacher might request that all of them come to the help area together or even work a problem or problems on the smartboard with them. All student submissions, responses and collaborations are stored in a database for future reference.

A teacher’s time each day is divided equally between time blocks spent with students monitoring and tutoring and time spent in the teacher lab evaluating student submitted assignments, responding to students and preparing new lessons and videos as well as updating current lessons. In order for the system to work it is important that a teacher not only spends face-to-face time with students each day but also has sufficient time to respond to student submitted work in a timely fashion (normally within 24 hours) in order to monitor student progress daily and keep them moving forward. A teacher “lab” consists of a Wi-Fi enabled workspace for teachers to work, grading and responding to assignments and a video “studio” where teachers can prepare videos for students that will become part of the lessons they will complete. Since students will often be working on their own, teachers are able to have the same total number of students assigned to them with less hours of face-to-face time per day allowing teachers the time needed to prepare lessons and respond to students. This is essential in making a system like this work.

Would a system like the one described here work? Would it work in all areas; not just math? What computer hardware and software would be required? Could it be implemented in stages?

Students in a system like this would have a lot of flexibility to work at their own pace. Students who understand the explanations provided by videos and examples could progress at a much faster pace, and those who have problems and need more help can spend more time in the areas where they need help. It automatically solves many of the problems of differentiation, special education and at risk students through pacing. It allows students to learn the process of researching and learning through a computer and with online resources that will be required of them as an ongoing life skill. It simplifies evaluation, as the computer can track progress and “grade” many of the assignments. It allows students to review any lesson, at any time, that it may be needed. The system would be device independent allowing for review on any device, anywhere, anytime.

While this example was for a math class, this system should work equally well for other areas with minor modifications. For example, science classes might need lab stations where laptops could be set up next to experiments with results entered into the computer instead of problems for math. English classes might make more use of lessons that required a written composition to be submitted. A history class might need short answer questions. Classes like art might need to make use of scanners to scan and upload artwork or pressure sensitive pads to do computer drawings. Each area would require an evaluation of how the class is taught now and how it could be adapted to a technology driven system but it is hard to imagine an area of study that this could not be done.

The hardware required might be the simplest issue of all. A system like this would be online and pretty much device independent but would seem to work best on a laptop with a keyboard for typing and some kind of tablet for written response, diagrams, etc. Software is another challenge and might have to be custom written to get exactly what is described here but use of programs such as Google Classroom as well as others could work as a delivery system to students. Tracking and other parts would need to be accomplished separately.

A system like this could be implemented in stages by taking things that are currently done in the classroom and using available software such as that provided by Google to “digitize” current written work and YouTube to create video lessons. All of this could be linked by Google Classroom and supplemented by “regular” classes until full implementation could be accomplished. Key to all of this would be a teacher’s time available for planning, training and implementation without which the best hardware and software would not be utilized or certainly be underutilized.

In conclusion, a classroom in the twenty-first century requires the use of technology and today’s student is already comfortable with its use. The requirements of modern education demand that each student receive individualized instruction and pacing. This is a task that can only be achieved completely through technology. In addition, today’s students will be required to use technology to update skills throughout their lifetimes and skills required for this must be taught and utilized in today’s classrooms. The way classes are taught must change and the cost versus benefit must certainly be considered, but implementing an effective technological classroom is essential going forward in the twenty-first century.