New technology at its best in Stanford classes

It’s 9 a.m. Tuesday morning and Vered Shemtov’s beginning Hebrew students are already deeply engaged in class. While a Hebrew song emanating from one computer fills the air, Shemtov’s students identify the words they recognize and write them on a giant digital white board that will capture their work for eventual upload to the course Web site.

Perched in state-of-the-art lightweight chairs, they glide together to collaborate, checking their work against the instructor’s notes, displayed on another wall-sized “smart” white board that can bring up pages from Web sites, PowerPoint slides and even student notes that they beam from their individual iBook laptops.

In Room 127 of Wallenberg Hall, the newly renovated research and teaching facility on the Quad, teachers can enrich their classes with a broad range of technically advanced teaching tools. Altman’s Bioinfomatics, a Shakespeare workshop, Negotiation, Cultural anthropology, Classic Greek, Introduction to Botany, and

“ These classrooms allow me to put everything together, the writing, the visuals, the audio, my slides, Web site pages and notes,” says Shemtov, who is teaching in Wallenberg for the first time this Fall. “The flexibility of the classroom and the visual capabilities are something I have always wanted.”

Designed as a teaching and research facility offering the best technology to University faculty, Wallenberg Hall was renovated in 2002, funded in part by a grant from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg and Marcus and Marianne Wallenberg Foundations of Sweden. Today, just one year since opening, the four-story building is filled with lively classes testing and analyzing the limits of teaching in a “loaded” classroom. “ My experience has been tremendously positive all around,” says Stan Christensen, who teaches “Negotiation” under the

A Typical Day in Wallenberg

On a typical day in the two-story Learning Theater (the largest of the customized Wallenberg classrooms), where Christensen’s Negotiation class meets, the day’s agenda appears on one of three large overhead screens. The slide listing key points for the day displays on an opposing screen, and in the center, a video clip plays.

In a recent discussion of how to negotiate in the job market, students watched a clip from “The Graduate,” then moved seamlessly to the main points on the adjacent screen. No lights on and off, no starting and stopping a VCR, no hard-to-read overheads.

Around the corner in one of the smaller, but equally well equipped teaching rooms, Greek Classics Professor Richard Martin uses what appears to be a normal pen to records writing on what looks to be a regular white board. But Webster operates two computers hidden behind the classroom walls, allowing the instructor to change the color of her marker, use it as an eraser, highlight or move text with the tap of the pen.The room’s SmartPanel, similar to those found in more than 90multimedia rooms across campus, provides quick access to video clips, audio tapes

After assigning reading by a colleague at Rutgers who had written a book on Horace, Martin held a videoconference with him so that students could ask their questions first-hand.
“ He was on one screen and on the other, I could ‘Google’ and pop up encyclopedias, dictionaries and other Web sites to look up his references,” says Martin. “The technology allows you to bring collaboration to formerly solitary activities.”

Learning to Use the Classrooms

Learning to use the rich technology of Wallenberg Hall classrooms should not be a deterrent to anyone who is interested in teaching there, says Dan Gilbert, Academic Technology Specialist. The first step to teaching in the facility is contacting Gilbert to discuss course goals.

With more than forty classes under his belt, Gilbert is adept at taking ideas and translating them into practice based on three key concepts upon which Wallenberg was designed: the ability to be flexible, to capture work and save it, and to enhance collaboration.

Wallenberg classrooms provide a platform for a new level of teaching at the same time they create a laboratory for testing and analyzing the value and potential of new technology. In one course, Tablet PC’s donated by Hewlett-Packard allow a graduate student team to design original software. Some of the tools will prove invaluable, researchers believe. Others may not be worth the money. One goal of Wallenberg Hall is to act as an evolving laboratory where such information can be obtained.

Wallenberg Residents

On the second floor of Wallenberg, home to the Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning, Media X, the Stanford Humanities Lab, and the Wallenberg Global Learning Network, collaborative, multi-disciplinary research is underway to explore new ways to transfer knowledge from professor to student, from colleague to colleague, and among international affiliates at universities and corporations.

The expansive fourth floor serves as a laboratory and think tank for visitors and students conducting research on topics ranging from new video technology for training teachers to simulation medical models.

“ The multimedia classrooms compel both students and faculty to be more creative,” says Tina Seelig, executive director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, which sponsors the Mayfield Fellows Program and offers through Management, Science and Engineering.

“These resources have turned classrooms into laboratories where anything is possible.”

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