Electronic Classroom
Living and Learning

1996

No society in history has even come close to matching ours with respect to the quantity of information available and the speed of its transmission. Acquiring the capability of orienting oneself within this enormous flood of information and learning to separate usable information from that which is superfluous has become one of the most pressing tasks of the Information Society.

Lifelong Learning

The tools that will be necessary for success in the society of the future are materializing ever more clearly on the horizon, and this is being accompanied by new demands on the educational system of today. The accelerated development of hardware and software as well as the ever more rapid emergence and disappearance of fields of employment and computer applications are increasingly transforming working life and life in general into a process of lifelong learning.

The Ars Electronica Center works closely with schools, universities and other institutions of learning to create a user-friendly, future-oriented foundation for this process. The most outstanding facility that the Museum of the Future makes available to schools is the "Electronic Classroom," in which a computer network can be utilized as a learning and teaching tool.

The Electronic School

The "Electronic Classroom" offers students and teachers a working environment outfitted with state-of-the-art equipment. Here, Ars Electronica Center staff members lead sessions to teach students the fundamentals of dealing with computers. However, in this classroom the computer is purposely reduced to its function as a tool - it is designed to be imbedded in a learning environment without becoming the center of attention.

Even the most cleverly designed programs for imparting knowledge cannot - and should not - replace the human teacher. The computer network is there to function as a high-performance tool to perform work and enable communication which makes the learning environment more productive and more multi-faceted - no more and no less. In the "Electronic Classroom" - as in every other classroom - the prime determinant of the success of this process is the level of commitment of students and teachers.

Equipment

Students learning in the "Electronic Classroom" have leading-edge ergonomic infrastructure at their disposal, including 16 Pentium PCs outfitted with flat-screen monitors. The processors are linked to one another through the Ethernet and to the outside world by means of the Ars Electronica Center's ATM network. The workstations can be arranged any way the participants desire - in a circle or semicircle, in clusters or dispersed throughout the room.

Pixel Board and Video Wall

Like every classroom, the "Electronic Classroom" is equipped with blackboards; however, the ones in the Museum of the Future are two so-called "Smartboards," an entirely new type of presentation surface which allows computer files to be displayed. To do so, the lecturer does not have to be seated in front of a monitor, since the Smartboard's touch-sensitive surface enables him/her to control the program's operation by touching the screen.

Special colored pens can be used to write directly on the image appearing on the electronic blackboard. In addition to these conventional characteristics of a chalk-and-eraser blackboard, the Smartboard also combines the advantages of modern projection and presentation technology. The "Electronic Classroom's" Video Wall can be used for video displays as well as video conferencing. The non-flickering, high-resolution picture provides outstanding viewing even at extreme angles, making the Video Wall an important and versatile teaching tool in the "Electronic Classroom".