Monday, February 29, 2016

NMS's Take on "The Classroom of the Future"



NMS 8th Grade Students Go To Harvard

On Friday, January 22, a few of our 8th Students from the Apollos Team went to the LearnLaunch Educational Technology Conference at Harvard University with Mr. Redpath, NMS Science Department Leader, and Mr. Geoghegan.




The students: Aiden Gallagher, Aiden Croke, Matt Mokeler, Colby Little, Domenic Langton, and A.J. Wood, all wanted to present what their view of the future should look like for the classroom.

The Classroom of the Future was a session, where the students presented their vision and then had to talk with conference goers about their vision.  Here is the description of the event:  LearnLaunch is excited to introduce The Classroom of the Future! Sixteen teachers and student teams stepped forward to showcase emerging models of teaching and learning for the future. Classroom of the Future uniquely presents the voice of students and enables diverse groups – entrepreneurs, investors, policy makers – to see applications of edtech in real learning environments. We hope it will inspire you. At the same time, we all recognize there is still a long way to go to ensure all students have access to effective, cutting-edge educational technology that enables personalized learning.

Students from all over the country applied, and NMS was one project that was selected.  The description of NMS's project:  V.I.C.T.O.R.-E is below:

V.I.C.T.O.R.-E Classroom of the Future John T. Nichols Jr., Middle School – Middleborough, MA Lead Teacher: Scott Redpath

"We envision V.I.C.T.O.R.-E Classroom of the Future, which stands for Virtual Innovative Classroom Technology for Open-curriculum Education. It combines a state-of-the-art physical space that is adaptable for multiple uses including several types of vocational shops or “maker-spaces” such as electrical, rapid-prototyping, carpentry, metal working, CAD/CAM, research space, small group work spaces and most importantly a virtual, holographic learning space. It incorporates this “holo-deck” type space so students can participate in a virtually immersive environment of classrooms around the world, or participate in fully immersive 3D virtual field trips. Student will also take advantage of an “ala-carte” open-curriculum menu of class choices that are offered from schools around the world. We envision these classes to be more specific and focused on a student’s particular interests and demonstrated talents. Examples of class offerings could be: Math for Carpentry, Chemistry for Culinary Arts, Earth Science of the Grand Canyon, Literary features in Graphic Novels, History of the Pyramids, Violin with the Boston Pops, Renaissance Art in Venice, and Engineering for Theatrical Entertainment."

Students then presented to the MPS School Committee on Thursday, February 4, which they did a fabulous job doing.

Below are the students' slides and then pictures from the day at Harvard and from the School Committee Meeting.

Awesome job, TIGERS!  You are what we want to be in the future.





CHECK OUT THEIR GOOGLE SLIDE SHOW HERE AS IT PLAYS ...