Just back from Villars, Switzerland, where i participated to the workshop “Classroom of the Future: Orchestrating Collaborative Learning Spaces” during the CSCL Alpine Rendez-Vous.

This workshop has been simply great: caring organization by Kati and Frédéric and cool interactions with everyone, but mainly with Giulia, Nicolas, Lily, Jim, Martin, Paul, Do Lenh. We also had a lot of fun creating our future classroom prototype along with Joanna, Tash, Andreas and Khaled.

Out of the many ideas, one aspect regarding technology enhanced classrooms has popped in my head.
The problem is not technology, indeed, neither are the students: the missing link between usual teaching and the future of education are the teachers.
This makes a lot of sense, as they are the main orchestrators of the education process. How can they teach with technology they don’t know well? So the problem goes back to teacher’s training.
The talk from Jeffrey Huang, about connected classrooms and augmented environments also made somewhat clear to me that in such a new space, where social interaction is entwined with new technology, the role of the facilitator is more and more important.
Just a tech person? No, someone following the group dynamics and presenting them with the right interactive experience, then letting them play freely with it.

Looking forward for some kind of follow-up, in the meantime we’ll try to keep in touch.