Classroom for fidgety Boys and Girls uses Mobile PCs

The fidgety boys and girls in Phil Rynearson’s classroom in Rochester, MN get up and move around whenever they want, and that’s just fine with him.

(T)he (experimental) classroom at Elton Hills Elementary School … replaced the standard desks and chairs with adjustable podiums that allow students to stand, kneel on mats or sit on big exercise balls.

The classroom is the idea of Mayo Clinic researcher Dr. James Levine. He is concerned with young people leading sedentary lives, and if they don’t become more active, 50 percent of them could be overweight by adulthood. He reports that obese persons sit, on average, 150 minutes more each day than their naturally lean counterparts. This experimental classroom encourages movement.

These reports remind me of experimental classrooms without walls and pod rooms in the 1960s. I conducted one of those classes in Azusa, CA. Most of the class finished about 18 months of academic study in one academic year. That progress brought complaints from other teachers: “Now what will I teach them, since they already know what I planned for them.” The use of Tablet PCs and other mobile computers such as in Rynearson’s room would have provided even more options for student learning.