Classroom of the Future...?

I'm currently thinking of the class I will have next year.

17 children aged from 9-10. Enthusiastic and motivated in the main. They'll be moving into my classroom which is big enough for 17 but only just.

So what can I do in the classroom to give me the spaces that I want for teaching? What kind of space do I want for teaching? Firstly I've started brainstorming features of my 'ideal' classroom space.

Here's my start:






Many of these things are obvious and would be included by any teacher in a wish list for a classroom space.

I searched this morning for the classroom furniture of the future online. Mostly i found desks that were square and individual but perhaps had some 'system' to incorporate a desktop or laptop computer. See below





Is this really the classroom of the future? To me it looks like the classroom of the past.

Now, the technology is not king, finally, the learning is king, and how we achieve that learning.

So many of these solutions claim to be 'the future' because they are obviously built around the computer on the desk. I can't see that it would be easy to form a working co-operative learning team around such desks or clear them away for challenge based learning activities, for example.

So what is it we really want? Flexibility, the ability to adapt and change the space depending on the task and the chance to use technology to achieve the learning we want.

I know that whatever my classroom looks like next year it will not be a perfect solution.

But it will be a start.