The organization of the school over the last century has changed significantly. The activities that take place in the classroom today are affected by the presence of technology. Learning needs to be flexible so that it can offer students the opportunity to live the classroom as a place open, not restrictive.

New skills are required for the new century. We must provide teaching staff the tools to create a context in which to develop these skills

The Future Classroom Lab in Brussels

I'd love to organize my classroom as it is described in the video. Probably in the future the classroom will be a laboratory in which has six learning areas. It looks a bit like a disciplinary lab classroom where you make use of the phases of an inquiry based learning project and at the same time the students have an active role, work in group and share responsability.

Future Classroom Scenarios

To get a better idea of what we mean by Future Classroom Scenarios you can read scenario library where you can find all published scenarios. The link of project is

Developing a future classroom scenario: The Future Classroom Toolkit

The iTEC project developed the Future Classroom Scenarios Toolkit. In this video, there is an overview of the toolkit.

The role of trends & stakeholders

Stakeholders in the development and innovation of the schools play an important and positive role if they share a vision of the school as a common good, in which points of view, ideas, projects and roles are shared by all. Unfortunately the social reality in which the schools are located in bringing proceedings do not possess cultural tools to promote and require significant changes.

Trends & stakeholders: the classroom of 2025

In the video below the stakeholders describe their vision for the classroom of 2025 and identify some current education and technology trends that they believe will shape the future classroom.

The future classroom in 2025? Surely an open classroom, in a school 3.0, where students work to projects, interact with each other, produce materials. Am I dreaming? I do not know, in some territories of my country we are still at the "pre-history".

Tool for teaching: Slack

In this Future Classroom Scenario, you can utilize different tools for you and your students in your classroom. There a wide range of possible tools you can use in the classroom to develop competences, such as collaboration or communication. In this section, we present the tool Slack.

Slack is a cloud-based team collaboration tool for real-time messaging that brings all your communication together in one place, allowing archiving and search for modern teams. It is a very useful tool that you can use in the classroom to discuss a project, a topic, etc.

Slack is kind social learning. In Italy there is for example Fidenia, you can share files with your class, organize groups, start discussions etc.

Evaluating your use of technology: The Innovation Maturity Model

The Maturity Model has five progressive stages. As a school moves from one stage to the next, the maturity of the school, in its ability to be innovative in learning and teaching supported by technology, increases. Future Classroom Scenarios are used to create a vision of learning and teaching that moves a school to higher levels of Future Classroom Maturity.

Throughout the years and with the introduction of technology in Italian schools has been possible to deal with situations in which collaboration is fundamental to educational success. Working with others, share responsibility, make decisions, be aware that your work is interdependent are all essential elements to evaluate a learning activity in the 21st century school

21st Century Skill in Focus: Creativity and Technology in the Classroom

It is true, creativity and technology together allow you to interact with existing content or create new content. My students use various applications to create multimedia products where surely they can show their creative side

Using Technology in the Classroom: Example Lessons

The level of maturity in the use of technology is, in the examples proposed in the module, high but the example that is closest to my model to use technology and that I chose is: Beyond borders IWB for global collaboration

Our Innovation Maturity

For some years my school took part in a movement promoted by INDIRE, the Agency for Research and Innovation of the Italian school, adopting some of the ideas promoted. In particular, we are developing the laboratory classroom discipline in which we combine the activities of the chemistry lab with ICT.

Tool for Teaching: Thinglink

Thinglink is a beautiful app. I use it with my students in many situations, especially when you have to make a synthesis of a investigated content

Introduction to iTEC Learning Activities

The Learning Activities are simple stepping stones that provide concrete ideas of how we can achieve the scenarios in our classroom

Developing Learning Activities: The Edukata Process

As part of the iTEC project a suggested process for creating Learning Activities was developed. This is summarised by the Edukata document that you can download from here

Activity: Learning Activities for the Flipped Classroom Scenario

The flipped classroom vision was also part of one of the iTEC scenarios which you can access here

Module 5: From Learning Activities to Learning Stories

1. The Learning objectives for this module are:
2. Understand the concept of iTEC Learning Stories and how these relate to the iTEC Learning Activities and Future Classroom Scenarios
3. Explore examples of iTEC Learning Stories
4. Draft your own Learning Story using the Learning Designer tool

From Learning Activities to Learning Story: An example

How we move from Learning Activities to Learning Stories

GENERIC LEARNING ACTIVITIES:

DREAM

You present a design brief to your class that ties to the curriculum and the local community, but leaves room for interpretation. You inspire the students by providing them with the motivation for giving their best and by telling them about the ownership and freedom over the task. You present your schedule, and negotiate the assessment criteria with the class. Students form teams, discuss, question and familiarize themselves with the design brief. The teams refine their design brief, particularly in relation to whom they are designing for, initial design challenges and possible design results. Students record reflections and document their work online.

EXPLORE

Student teams explore the context of a topic or question either by observing relevant practices or environments using digital cameras, notebooks and microphones, or by searching existing works that relate to the topic or question by collecting relevant examples that they can use in answering the question or explaining the topic. They share their collected media files on their blogs and record a reflection. You guide their search and support them in the qualification of their material. Note that viewing and qualifying video material can be time consuming. Spending time viewing videos that contain inaccurate information, can be a detour from which a pedagogically meaningful conversation may arise, and may provide students with a first-hand experience about the appearance of an invalid source. Some students, for example younger ones, may need more guidance in performing this activity.

MAP

Teams analyse their findings on a given question or topic using mind-mapping techniques. They identify relations, similarities and differences between the examples and/or media files they collected. Based on their collected information and analysis, the teams refine their answers or explanations to the given topic or question. Then the teams record a reflection. Open ended questions can be challenging for students to answer initially. However, after passing the initial threshold, students are likely to have inspiring ideas.

REFLECT

Students and the teacher record, post and share audio-visual reflections and feedback of project progress, challenges and future steps. The students slowly build a shared collection of ways to tackle challenges, which can be used after the project ended.

MAKE

Based on a design brief and design ideas, student teams start making a product. They create their first prototype, and discuss it afterwards. The discussion especially relates to how well the design addresses the identified design challenges. They then record a reflection and document their activities. Careful guidance through the learning activities and the process of creation is indispensable for students to keep their minds on learning potential curricular requirements. Highlight the reflection after this activity and ensure that everyone focuses on addressing the needs of an audience. To avoid free-riders or unequal workload division, carefully divide tasks and roles within teams.

ASK

After having created a product as part of their work (prototype, presentation, design, etc.) student teams meet with 2–4 “experts”. These “experts” could be future users, readers, or recipients of the product created by the team. Expertise may be interpreted broadly, for example, a construction site worker can be considered to offer deep insight into the everyday practices of people on a building site. Other students or teachers can also be considered as “experts” in certain areas. The student teams communicate their ideas using prints, drawings, models or other supporting materials. The “experts” are encouraged to modify and comment on the product. After the meeting the students analyze the comments and decide how to interpret them for their re-design. They then refine their product, especially in relation to the challenges, context and added value of the result, record a reflection and update their documentation. This activity can happen more than once at varying time investments and can be conducted online or face to face.

SHOW

Students create a video with English subtitles presenting the results of an investigation, a product they have created or some other piece of work. In the video they also address their learning achievements and possible future steps. They share this video with other students in the school, their parents and their identified audience to transfer their learning, to communicate the background of their project, to let others know about the possibility to remix their work, and to receive feedback for improvement.

COLLABORATE

Students collaborate with students from other schools. Ad-hoc and serendipitous collaboration, driven by the students is encouraged.

A tool to create Learning Stories: the Learning Designer

Learning Designer can help us in creating and sharing something similar to a Learning Story

Activity: Preparing your Final Assessment

1. Prepare a Learning Story using the Learning Designer tool
2. Review two Learning Stories of your peers

LEARNING STORY CRITERIA

When you create your Learning Story try to apply as many elements from the course as possible. For example, try to integrate some of the Learning Activities and technology tools that were introduced throughout the course.

Here is a list of criteria you should consider when creating your Learning Story. You will also use this list to provide feedback to your peers in the 2nd task of the final assessment.

- The Learning Story develops 21st Century Skills: for example, activities develop collaborative skills in addition to acquisition of knowledge

- The Learning Story uses technology to develop 21st Century Skills: for example, technology is used as a tool to produce something (a film, animation, presentation, etc.) or is used for students to collaborate more easily inside and outside of the classroom

- The Learning Story is well aligned with its learning outcomes: activities and assessment clearly link with the defined learning outcomes and allow the teacher to determine by the end of the Story if the objectives have been achieved

- The Learning Story is balanced: there is a good mix of activities with at least four different Learning Activities used (TLAs in the Learning Designer) and none of the Activities taking up more than 35% of the time (see the pie chart for this)

Module 6: Have you seen the future classroom yet? The Learning Objectives for this module are:

The Learning Objectives for this module are:

1. Consider the advantages and disadvantages of peer review as a tool for teaching as well as a tool for professional development
2. Develop your Learning Story further so that it incorporates the key elements covered during the course
3. Reflect on the topics covered during the course by evaluating your peers’ Learning Stories

As part of the final assessment you will have to do a peer review of your colleagues' work. It is therefore important to consider the concept of peer review or peer assessment in more detail.

I think that the peer review process is very important if we want transform the our intellectual process in credible and effective plan from the educational point of view.

Final Activity/Assessment: Submission and Review of Learning Stories

CRITERIA FOR A GOOD LEARNING STORY Here is a list of criteria you should consider when creating your Learning Story and to use for your peer review of the Learning Stories of two other people on the course:

Here is a list of criteria you should consider when creating your Learning Story and to use for your peer review of the Learning Stories of two other people on the course:

1. - The Learning Story develops 21st Century Skills: for example, activities develop collaborative skills in addition to acquisition of knowledge
2. - The Learning Story uses technology to develop 21st Century Skills: for example, technology is used as a tool to produce something (a film, animation, presentation, etc.) or is used for students to collaborate more easily inside and outside of the classroom
3. - The Learning Story is well aligned with its learning outcomes: activities and assessment clearly link with the defined learning outcomes and allow the teacher to determine by the end of the Story if the objectives have been achieved
4. - The Learning Story is balanced: there is a good mix of activities with at least four different Learning Activities used (TLAs in the Learning Designer) and none of the Activities taking up more than 35% of the time (see the pie chart for this)