Smart Music Classroom

c ClSmart Music Classroom
As we started the Smart Classroom Project, I always had the idea that music classrooms would be very different. The most obvious reason is that the classroom is already very engaging, with each student participating, but the center of the class is audio and not video. The elements of our smart classroom are all visual elements. We needed to design something that would be very different.

I started work with a vendor who had ties to the music recording industry and two teachers who were very tech savey and had already cobbled together a set of microphones, cassette recorders, and speakers into the first smart music classrooms. The first meeting was very exciting. How to get multiple recordings, immediate playback, mixing various levels of audio, music editing software and studio speakers to represent sound at high quality levels. Lying on top of all of these elements would be the trademark of our smart classrooms: ease of use.

We decided on a cart that would contain a mixer, a processor for recording\, a power supply, various microphones for recording sections, two omni directional Microphones, music software, a mounted projector, a cd burner, and 1400 watt studio speakers. This will have the ability to record a band and drop out different sections so that kids can go home and hear the rest of the band as they practice their part. A teacher can record on the fly and play back to class providing immediate feedback or display notes on the projector as the students play the notes.

A Decision Has Been Made

I met with our engineering firm today and they have completed the site work and drawings for Glenknoll Elementary School and Yorba Linda Middle School.  We will need to put these specs and drawings into a bid document.  We met with our purchasing manager and it appears that we can have the bid out next week.

Although we could probably get the bidding done by the end of September, there is only one school board meeting in September and the next board meeting is October 14^th  We fully plan to make this date, so the work could begin thereafter.  

Casework Update

Good meeting this morning with the our casework company that constructs the teaching walls.  Our big issue has been on how to mount the interactive white boards (iwb)  on the teaching walls.  Teachers are concerned about the loss of storage with the 75 inch board we used in the pilot.   We are trying to design a mount for the iwb that would swing or pivot upward like a garage door to allow access.

A secondary, but equally important issue is what size iwb to use.  I would like to use the 95 inch board that has the 16/9 high definition aspect ratio.  Although not much of what we use in the classrooms is in that format, in 5 years it will undoubtable dominate the landscape.  The bigger board is heavier and more diffcult to mount and it would obscure more of the storage.  

Our best thinking is that we would like to have 95 inch board installed in a demo classroom at Valadez Academy nest week.  I provided them with a board to use in the demo.

Last year we set out to define what would be the focus of a smart classroom, a classroom that was focused on Active Learning and Student Engagement. We visited several districts, went to conferences and concentrated on sessions that focused on technology in the classroom and took a trip to the NSBA model school visit at Minnetonka Minnesota. You can see my report on Minnetonka at: http://www.portical.org/stories/minnetonka/

Each of these added information to our concept of what direction we would go with our classrooms. Finally I met with every vendor that I could find, because they do this stuff everyday and usually have the most up to date information.

From this investigation, we compressed the ideas and decided what elements would be part of our version of the “Smart Classroom”. Now I have to say that I really don’t like the “Smart Classroom” name. Obviously it connotes visions of the SMART brand of products and we really have not used them in our project. I didn’t want to call it the classroom of the future because I don’t believe it is the classroom of the future, it is the classroom every teacher should have NOW. Plus, I did not want anyone to say that we do not need some futuristic classroom, but something more pragmatic and grounded. I could not think of anything that resonated with people except for “Smart Classroom” and started to use it. Now everyone in our district uses the name, so now it has “legs” and there is no stopping it now.

We had to decide what different inputs we wanted to bring into our classrooms. Most of the off the shelf systems are designed to accommodate 4 different inputs. We decided that we needed six to provide the flexibility to bring any instructional resource into the classroom. Our inputs are:

• Broadcast video
• Desktop computer (side of room)
• Laptop computer (front of room)
• Document Camera
• Auxiliary video (RCA inputs)
• DVD Player

The only real twist that we added, was that we were intent on making the system easy to switch from one source to another. I guess that this came from my home experience with our home entertainment system switching from the DVR to the Cable box, to the DVD player. Each switch requires powering up a new device and switching the audio and video inputs. It wasn’t until I discovered the Harmony remote, that we had harmony at home. This remote had buttons that read “play the DVD” or Watch TV” and the remote makes all the correct changes in the audio and video equipment to make it happen. What we designed was the Harmony remote for the classroom. When you have a classroom audio system and a number of inputs, you need to switch things seamlessly.

Here is a link to a Slide Show of the Smart Classroom Elements

Simple Things

I recently went to Minnetonka Minnesota to look at a model technology district there. To say the very least the visit was very, very interesting. What they had done was work closely with the community to pass a 20 million dollar levy to fund technology as a accelerator of learning. The purchased white boards, mounted speakers, and projectors, invested in staff development in a culture of professional learning and used BlackBoard as content management system. None of these things is especially special, innovative or unique. They just used the technologies together to form a synergy that had a dynamic effect in the classroom. In every classroom, the kids counted on the basic tools of electronic learning.

The project was not about the technologies they selected, standardization or any other of the customary magic. What they had really done was invest in tried and true educational techniques that have been around for years. The project was not about interactive white boards; it was about student interaction. The students used the boards to share ideas not perpetuate the teacher presenting to the class. It was not about BlackBoard; it was about home to school communication. The mounted projectors were used to engage the students. They had gone to the educational well and found things that we know work: student engagement, interactivity, and home to school communication. The real magic was the simplest of things.

Illusion of Control

In the last few weeks I have given several workshops to school site administrators on the resources of Web 2.0 and how the Internet is not just an information source, but is evolving into a knowledge source. It is always interesting to see how people deal with new information and change. While most people are very reflective and take in the new information and then need some time to match the new information to their belief system. There are few people who just reject the change. This is really not unusual change in not popular with everyone and many people are just threatened by change. Several went so far as to cross their arms, completely tune out and say out loud that they are not going to allow it.

When you think about the absurdity of this position in educators, it underlies a core belief that any educator can control the information and resources that learners use. That a site administrator can somehow determine how students learn in the vast information landscape that exists today, or how learners interact to form their belief and value systems. I call this the illusion of control that persists in education. When faced with change that they are not prepared to deal with, they retreat into the administrative control mode. The scary idea that the world is under our control.