The Elements Of A Digital Classroom

What makes up a classroom?

Is it the space?

A room, for example?

Is it the purpose?

Can a regular meeting space in a garden be a ‘horticulture classroom’?

Is it the people?

Can a video conference with eight people gathered to study chemistry be considered a ‘classroom’?

Or maybe it’s the tools.

A woodworking classroom would have wood and saws and sanders and other widgets to shape the wood. It could be in a vocational center or garage or retail environment. A cooking classroom would most likely have pots and pans and a stove of some kind. It could be in a school or a restaurant or a home.

What about your average K-12 classroom? What are its parts? A teacher, students, books, paper, pencils, chairs, desks, and signage for the walls? Maybe shelves and scissors and, well, you get the idea.

The driving question here has something to do with purpose and tools and spaces. Compared to the the woodworking classroom above, what exactly comprises a ‘digital classroom’ is flexible because a digital classroom is a flexible idea.

Below we start the discussion by identifying eight critical elements of the digital classroom. Note, this mainly refers to the most common modern example of this: a physical classroom that extends into digital spaces. That said, most would apply to purely digital classrooms as well with only a few exceptions.