Creating smart classrooms to benefit from innovative technologies and learning space design

When the discussions about bringing changes and innovations to colleges is invoked, administrators and academicians often either refer to curriculum and program reforms or updating the Information technology (IT) resources and labs to address the needs of industry and government agencies. But there is another area equally important where changes are needed to take place in order to create a more innovative and engaging learning environment. It is the classroom design and infrastructure. Currently, classrooms are designed in such a way to provide face-to-face and group work learning experiences to students. Though most of them use laptops and hand-held devices including iPads as computing devices and enjoy a multitude of apps to interact with teachers and peers, all of this is still happening in the cyberspace. There is a need to move to the physical world of smart spaces in order to create smart classrooms. Our learning environments including our desks, whiteboards, classroom walls are all expected to come alive with technology. This can happen by integrating smart boards and walls, interactive projectors, new input and output devices, and sensors. This paper proposes a framework for modeling and understanding smart classrooms that are effectively and flexibly designed as spaces, student-centered, integrated for collaboration and information capture and sharing, and which take advantage of social networking.