Baby Boomer Turned Digital Native: One Teacher's Journey into 21st Century Learning

Educational spaces need to be smart, technology rich, adaptable, and configurable in order to meet the needs of today's students. If the desire is to put students first, it has to be more than just unloading crates of technology into a room for the teacher and saying, Have at it! At the same time educators must provide inspirational learning spaces on a limited budget. Technology is everywhere in today's educational environment. This technology is important not only for engaging instruction, but also for creating a collaborative environment with other educators both inter-school and intra-school. This well planned environment allows the teacher to individualize both manner of instruction and type of technology appropriate to the student. Solutions that address these needs are imperative to give educators the tools and facilities they need to assist learning, and students the tools necessary for engaging learning. When all these needs are met classrooms become collaborative student learning places. Let the Journey Begin As an agriculture educator who never used a computer (because they were not available) for his undergraduate and Master's studies, or first two years of teaching for that matter, it seems an odd fit to be what I call a digital adoptee in my high school. Even though many the same age and older in my profession are apprehensive of technology, I have always been a believer in what it can do for the student. Experience has also taught me how important the physical layout of the room and furniture is to the educational experience. I recently had a graduate student visit me for a day, and she said, Coming to your class is an event! It is an event because students love coming to class and immersing themselves in the educational process through collaborative learning and use of technology. When I started the agriculture science program at Lebanon Community School Corporation eight years ago the goal was to give our students the technology and environment they deserve for maximum learning. The environment, not the technology is what is most important. I was able to provide our students with one-to-one classroom wireless laptop capability, but I also knew that the old five by six (five student desks in a column by six student desks in a row) model would not fit my pedagogy either. The ultimate goal must be that instruction and student learning drives the design, and that the classroom inspires learning (Demski, 2009). Therefore, we kept this in mind when designing our model-learning lab, which I call the SWELL (SMART Worldwide Effective Learning Lab) classroom. In my room it is tables with rollers and swivel chairs on rollers that give the students the flexibility to configure and reconfigure multiple times during our 87-minute block classes. Tables with four students each allow the teacher to pull up a chair and give assistance, monitor learning, and differentiate activities. This configuration also allows for readily forming important relationships with the students. Dr. James Comer said, No significant learning occurs without a significant relationship (Payne, 2005, p. 9). When designing learning places we must remember that positive relationships between students and their teachers are crucial to learning. Designing SWELL Because of SMART Technology's generous donation of SMART Board technology to me as the 2010 Indiana Teacher of the Year (SMART donates these packages to all State Teachers of the Year each year), my school decided to use my room as a model for designing a learning lab and for action research (Stringer, 2007) to help guide technology decisions for our school corporation. The decision was made to gut the room, which was formerly a science room, and start from scratch. The goal was to design an environment where students use the technology to carry out collaborative lessons not being taught by me, but being facilitated by me for student managed learning. …