For a start, we're going to talk about the old school.
Now, this sequence of images here shows you the architecture of the old school.
So, in the first image I'm the teacher at the front of
the classroom and I'm looking out at the students,
who you can see have got their heads down and they're doing their work.
When I turned around the other way and I look from the classroom,
I can see that the teacher is sitting up on a little stage.
And in a way what we have in this classroom is a kind of information architecture,
communications architecture and knowledge architecture.
And, what I want to do is pass that architecture in order to talk about
how these architectures in the near future could be quite dramatically different.
And in fact to becoming different day by day as we use
e-learning technologies and e-learning ecology
is the word we use, e-learning environments.
Now, let me talk about that teacher for the second.
The teacher is an expert.
The teacher brings in content knowledge, content understanding.
And one of the things about this classroom as a knowledge base,
as an information space,
as a communications space is the teacher is one of
the conduits from the outside world to the inside world.
One of the remarkable things about this classroom and any classroom,
there's nothing in the world that can't be taught and can't be learned.
There's nothing in the world that can't be spoken of.
And what we do in these classrooms is the thing that
Courtney Kasdan calls exophoric reference.
That we're talking about the solar system or we're talking
about 18th century poets or we're talking
about some aspect of the world across all the subject areas.
And what the teacher brings into the classroom is
a particular expertise and
a particular knowledge and a particular set capacities to speak to those things.
Now, as we go on to the next image,
it's not just the teacher that brings that knowledge into the classroom.
What we also had with the creation of
modern institutionalized education was an artifact called the textbook.
And what the textbook did is the textbooks summarize the world.
So, let's say we're doing some work about the solar system.
This is a chapter about the solar system.
And of course the solar system is outside.
It's hard to see.
You can't bring into the classroom directly.
But this book by virtue of exophoric reference can describe the solar system.
So, we have two conduits of knowledge into this space.
Two communicative forms.
We have the teacher, who speaks and we have the textbook,
which communicates in a written form.
Now, what we have now in the next image is we have a typical knowledge move.
The student is sitting there with their finger on the page of the textbook.
They're taking notes here.
And my rather facetious theory,
but it's actually not so facetious but it's
facetious for a start is that you have your finger on the page
and it comes up like this and you're writing
notes and somehow rather as it comes through here something gets remembered.
Now, the not facetious part about this is there's still prevalent definition of
learning and education including in e-learning environments
that learning is long term memory.
That's fundamentally what learning is about.
So, as I say what I'm trying to do here is pass
the structure of this particular learning environment.
Now, going on to the next slide.
I'm on the teacher now in
the classroom and we can see that all the seats are bolted to the ground.
They're not designed for pupil to people interaction.
And we can see this little girl in the front row here is looking up.
So, how do I interpret this as a teacher?
Well, in fact we don't know much about what's going on in the student's mind.
They might be just looking up to think about something they have
just read to figure something out in their minds.
They might be daydreaming but actually something terrible happens in the next slide.
The classroom was just not designed for this.
And the other kids you see are trying to do their work and
this kid looks like she's disrupting them in their work.
It wasn't designed for P2P interaction of this particular kind.
So, moving on now.
This is to make some generalizations about this classroom.
That what we necessarily have in this knowledge architecture.
The knowledge architecture is the textbook and the knowledge of the teacher.
And this communications architecture,
which is the written words of the textbook and the teacher speaking.
Well the first set of logistical reasons we have two essential confinements;
in one in time and one in space.
The time is, okay we're doing science
if we are doing the planets let's say between 9 and 10 o'clock.
And we're in the same room together where we can hear
the teacher speak and we can read the textbook together.
Preferably take the textbook home which creates a little bit
of a blurring of the edges of time and space,
but essentially for logistical reasons,
this is the way the modern classroom worked.
Dr William CopeProfessor
Dr Mary KalantzisProfessor
