The 'Star Trek' style classroom of the future replacing blackboards and books

Multi-touch, multi-user smart desks have been trialed in a three-year project by more than 400 pupils, and have been nick-named the 'Star Trek classroom', The Daily Mail reports.

The desks and software were designed by experts at Durham University, and studies have shown they can significantly improve pupils' maths.

The studies also show that using an interactive ‘smart’ desk can have benefits over doing mathematics on paper.
Seeing what your friends are doing, and being able to fully participate in group activities, offers new ways of working in class, the researchers say.

Lead researcher, Professor Liz Burd, School of Education, Durham University, said: 'Our aim was to encourage far higher levels of active student engagement, where knowledge is obtained by sharing, problem-solving and creating, rather than by passive listening.

'This classroom enables both active engagement and equal access.
'We found our tables encouraged students to collaborate more effectively.
'We were delighted to observe groups of students enhancing others’ understanding of mathematical concepts.
'Such collaboration just did not happen when students used paper-based approaches.'

The project called SynergyNet set out to integrate a fully collaborative system of desks, building it into the 'fabric and furniture of the classroom'.

he new desks with a ‘multi-touch’ surface are the central component, and are networked and linked to a main smartboard.

In terms of current teaching, the new system means that the ‘move-to-use’ whiteboard is by-passed and the new desks can be both screen and keyboard.

The desks act like multi-touch whiteboards and several students can use any one desk at once.
The technology allows all students to take part rather than one individual dominating.

The teacher plays a key role in the classroom and can send tasks to different tables to individuals and groups.
The teacher can also send one group’s answers on to the next group to work on and add to, or to the board for a class discussion.

A live feed of the desks goes directly to the teacher who can intervene quickly to help an individual while allowing the group work to continue.

Professor Steve Higgins said: 'Technology like this has enormous potential for teaching as it can help the teacher to manage and to orchestrate the learning of individuals and groups of learners to ensure they are both challenged and supported so that they can learn effectively.'

The findings published in the journal Learning and Instruction, show that children who use a collaborative maths activity in the SynergyNet classroom improve in both mathematical 'flexibility and fluency', while children working on traditional paper-based activities only improve in flexibility.