The new Classroom

Olin Bjork, wow! Incredible ideas indeed for the new generation approaching the classroom transformed by the internet and computers. In the Article Writing in the Wild a paradigm for mobile Composition by Olin Bjork and John Pedro Shwartz delves into the depths of what students of the future and students of contemporary society face by the ever increasing influence of computers in our life. One important topic that this article covers is experiencing learning outside of the confines of the architecturally defined classroom. This concept like many contemporary artistic concepts is post modern. Essentially, questioning the very topic of learning itself, through the expansion of the activity in other environments. Learning occurs at every second of every day, of every hour, however, being taught in a formal setting is an incredibly different climate. For this, one requires supplies, texts, a teacher and a suitable environment for this to occur. Now-a-days people can take their laptops and find their ‘suitable’ environment in a coffee shop or directly from their messy college dorm room which smells of old taco bell farts.

This capability of learning in any environment is a positive and exciting new ability we as students have, however, taking learning outside of the classroom must be done with cautious. The rise in students with attention deficit disorder is cause for concern. If a student goes to a coffee shop with the lecture going on within the lap top, who is to say that the medley of distractions going on around the coffee shop isnt distracting him. Or the cute girl behind the counter is barely giving him attention, but just enough that he can get a quick glance at her ass without being barely noticed by all of his neighbors. These are some of the problems that students like me, doing my homework in a coffee shop face. By the way I too have attention deficit, and love the fact that I can do my class work outside of a boring and dry lecture at 12 pm on a gorgeous Santa Clara Friday.