Collaborative effort

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Researchers say all British classrooms will be equipped with interactive desks in 10 years.

The world's first interactive classrooms will feature Star Trek-style digital desks with touch screen tops, say experts at Durham University. Several students will be able to work together at a single desk, using their fingers or pens to control the screen.

By observing student-teacher interaction in classes and looking at the ways that ICT can improve collaboration, researchers at the university set out to create a technology that facilitates natural interaction between students and their teachers.

The system encourages collaboration between students and teachers, and is a move away from teacher-centric learning, said Dr Liz Burd, director of active learning in computing at Durham. "We can now by-pass the ‘move-to-use' whiteboard," she added.

"The new desk can be both a screen and a keyboard, it can act like a multi-touch whiteboard and several students can use it at once. It offers fantastic scope for more participative teaching and learning."

Integrating ICT into the fabric of the classroom, the desks will be networked to a central server and to each other, offering new opportunities for teaching and collaboration.

Teachers will be able to instantly display examples of good work by students on the main interactive whiteboard, while tasks can also be set for each individual desk. Numeracy tasks could include exercises where pupils have to split a restaurant bill by sliding visual representations of money into a central space.

"The system will also boost equal access in schools," said Burd. "It will enable disabled students to participate in lessons more, and allow more personalised learning."

The new desks were developed in response to the government's vision that ICT should be used to engage ‘hard to reach' learners, provide more exciting lessons and find different ways of motivating students to learn.

Researchers at Durham have been awarded £1.5 million (US$2.73 million) to design and test the software with primary, secondary and tertiary students over the next four years. After testing, the software will be given to schools free of charge as open source code.

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