Technology & Classroom Layout.

Since taking part in the PG Cert observed practice sessions with photography technician Reinis Lismanis and my tutor John O’Reilly, I’ve been thinking a lot about technology and classroom layouts. I’ve also been pulling up some interesting studies on classroom layout for some inspiration for some tech feng shui!

Both Reinis and John commented that perhaps I could use a secondary monitor on the workstation desks for teaching – An apt observation as I had been discussing this subject in the staff common room some weeks earlier with Marius Simkus, an excellent technician on the Illustration course at Camberwell that has already built a monitoring system like this.

Reinis and John also both focussed on my physical teaching positioning in the room and in the debrief I held with Reinis we went into detail on the placement of desks. I really liked how during Reinis’s workshop everyone sat around the same desk. This created a more inclusive feeling to the workshop and seemed to help focus attention. However in the FACA computer room this is hard to achieve because the PC’s have complex setups and are arranged around the perimeter of the room to help with cable management. This formation is also known as a ‘peripheral lab’ setup (Tondeur, De Bruyne, Van Den Driessche, McKenney, & Zandvliet, 2015). This means students are required to look around from their desks to follow along with what I’m doing on screen and at times might miss what I’m doing.

I plan to go and check out Marius’s set up for some ideas on how something like this could work in Computational Arts. He uses Cintiq Wacom tablets (visual drawing tablets) as a second monitor for mirroring his screen, which sounds perfect for assisting students to follow along during workshops. John also mentioned having an extra screen for Microsoft Teams which could alco be used for communication and something like Marius’s setup could work well for that too.

References.

• Tondeur, J., De Bruyne, E., Van Den Driessche, M., McKenney, S., & Zandvliet, D. (2015). The physical placement of classroom technology and its influences on educational practices. Cambridge Journal of Education, 45(4), 537–556. https://doi.org/10.1080/0305764X.2014.998624