The Desks Will Hover

I like to pose some tech-related questions to my students each year, just to get a sense of where they are at with their own use of technology. I usually tack on this question: What will a classroom of the future (say, 50 years from now) look like? The answers are always amusing and interesting. This year, a big theme — floating chairs and desks.

Check out some of the student responses:

  • The desks will hover
  • Floating desks and robot teacher
  • High-tech pens.
  • A bunch of jet packs.
  • Exactly the same, but all electronics smaller.
  • The same
  • It might have floating desks, electronic chalk boards,and other things like that
  • I think they wouldn’t have chalk boards anymore; they would have the kind of board we have in the library — the “Alive” board or whatever; and they would have a computer attached to every desk and an electric pencil sharpener. The children would have personal white boards so they could envision what they’re learning. They would also have better heating and Air conditioning. 😉
  • A classroom in the future will have a robot teacher. Hmmmmm, maybe we can break it.
  • Cool with hats that tell you stuff
  • The walls might be made of slate and instead of desks we could have the teachers desks.
  • The desks will float, the chairs will have rockets on the bottom of them, and everything will be chrome.
  • robots take over the world
  • An old cob web place like very haunted house
  • There will not be school so there will not be one (classroom of the future)
  • There would be lots of Mac’s and no chalkboards. (there would be no chalkboards so teachers couldn’t write down homework :D:D:D)
  • It might be all white, have solar panel windows and desks and chairs that hover in the air
  • Flat screen computers that hang on the wall, floating desks, and animated teachers
  • Who knows what it could look like? It will be surprise. Hopefully the fab Mr.H will still be teaching.
  • White walls — fake windows — robot teachers —  smart-boards in every classroom —  all desks will also be computers
  • I hope Dr.cool is still teaching!!

I also took all of the answers and threw them into Wordle:

It’s nice to know that teacher will still be needed, although a few of them have converted us into robots.

I wonder what your kids think if you pose the same question.

Peace (in a robotic voice),
Kevin

4 Comments
  1. Hi Kevin,
    I saw some of your survey results over at the Electronic Pencil and it really caught my eye. I regularly give reflection surveys to my students throughout the year and I am always finding something surprising about them (I’ve got a blog post in draft form at the moment that is just about this topic). However, I’m currently struggling with the basics of giving the surveys, mostly because of my lack of tech knowledge when it comes to this kind of thing. I have in the past used Zoomerang to give the surveys but I’m struggling to manipulate the data that comes from that. It looks like you did yours in GoogleDocs… I’m familiar with GoogleDocs but not Forms… any chance you could give me a tip or two? What I really want to do is what you’ve done — take the survey results and put them into a visual (graph, Wordle, etc.) — and this is where my knowledge falls short. Any help / advice appreciated!

    P.S. I am also thinking about starting a class blog modelled much after yours at The Electronic Pencil. My students have been exposed to “in house” blogging for a while and I think some of them are now ready to go “public.” Thanks for keeping yours so open and fresh! (Please thank your students, too.)

  2. Hi
    What is great about Google Forms is the simplicity.

    Open up your Google Docs, and under “new”, click “Form.”
    Now, just follow the directions for creating questions.
    You can then use the embed/share button to put it into a blog post or webpage.

    The way you can see the results visually is to go back into your Google Docs and click on your survey (it will look like an excel sheet) and one of the options will be “form.” Then, click “analyze” and Google will spit your data out as graphs and charts for you. I then just take a screenshot and share it out. (This feature from Google is new).

    Good Luck
    Kevin

  3. Kevin,
    I use to do open surveys with students for years. We would create lists on chart paper and my of these lists lived in different places on the wall around the room. Many times ideas from the list would become stories during writing workshop and the ideas for writing usually swelled. Sometimes the lists would be made into poems and find other ways to stretch beyond the walls of the classroom. Reading post like this make me really miss the classroom. Thanks for pushing my thinking….

    Bill

  4. Pingback: Reflect, Feed-back, Repeat | connect. create. question.

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