Creating a flexible space

As well as developing computer mediated learning through the use of blogs and wikis, I'm also trying out a different way of organising the physical space in my teaching area. With collapsible tables and netbooks, as well as four small whiteboards around the walls of the room, I've been able to make the space far more usable, even though the space available for 14 students is limited. In past years the tables have been set out in a conference layout, with little movement of furniture etc for activities.

Now, we tend to keep the tables together in a conference format when in individual or paired work, like above. However, the students have been given the choice of how to set the room up for all learning activities, and as a result are using the space far more creatively, especially in conjunction with the netbooks available. this second photo shows how the students have reorganised the room to complete an exercise on designing an 'eco-city'. The activity had been uploaded as a basic website onto the VLE which they could access via the netbooks. They grouped the tables and then used the information from the website and links to the web with the whiteboards to note down ideas and draw their designs before coming back to the group to present their ideas - some using power point to summarise ideas through the digital projector. In talking to the students after the activity there was an obvious feeling that they played a large part in deciding the organisation of their own learning space and found the simple addition of whiteboards extremely useful to their learning. As such, they felt that the integration of ICT and flexible space is a real positive.