ABSTRACT
When we attended an illustrated talk entitled ‘The Classroom of the Future’ by Bridget Cooper of Leeds University, we expected to see pictures of somewhere very high-tech and a little austere. In fact the classroom that Bridget and her colleagues had created was as cosy and welcoming as any Key Stage 1 classroom we had encountered. This was perhaps an effect of the warm colours of cushions in the carpet area, the cheerful displays of children’s work and the way that the tables were arranged in octagonals for children to work around. Bridget’s focus on technology was tempered by a recognition of the importance of emotional experience in learning. Young children, she insisted, need to feel secure and valued if they are to be able to take risks and be creative (Cooper and Brna, 2002). The question that she and her colleagues had set themselves when they received an offer of funding to create ‘The Classroom of the Future’, was how best to integrate technology into an empathetic teaching approach. This led her to focus on using technology to support learning through dialogues: dialogues between the teacher and the children and amongst the children as well as dialogues with the computer. Her interest in learning through empathy also led her to concentrate on story writing. This was because of an interest in research findings which indicate that story-telling is the most fundamental way in which we convert our feelings into understanding (Damasio, 1999).
