8 Critical Elements Of The Digital Classroom

1. The Spaces

Summary: The spaces in a digital classroom can be personalized or anonymous, static or fixed, open or
closed, responsive or mute. The main theme is potential, though that potential can be unrealized if there
is a lack of alignment between learning objectives and the technology used to achieve them.

Strengths: As described above, a digital classroom has the potential to be entirely personalized for each
student to connect with the right content, peer, or audience at the right time—and ‘scale’ insofar as that
potential can be replicated for every student every day without the direct and persistent ‘programming’
of a teacher.

Weaknesses: Spaces in a digital classroom can be difficult to align with specific learning standards. They
also can be full of distractions, notifications, temptations to ‘play’ (and not the ‘good’ kind of learning
through play).

Also, though digital work can be social and open and collaborative, in many ways it can be even more de-
personal and isolated than a student completing a worksheet sitting alone at a desk. In the former, the
student may be the only person that ever sees any of the work or progress, while the worksheet example
would at worst see the student turn in the worksheet to a teacher who would provide feedback and
often a grade, which would then be communicated to parent/guardians/family, etc.

2. The Tone

Summary: This one’s a little abstract, but the idea is that the tone of a digital classroom is one of its most
striking characteristics. From the aesthetic of the assignments to the workflow for teachers to the pace
of the assignments to the frustration of buggy software, digital classrooms have a kind of mood and tone
that make it striking in contrast to traditional classrooms, where assignments often begin here and end
there and all student activites are contained, finite, and often teacher or classroom-centered.
Strengths: It’s easier to put students, student progress, and student work on display in a digital
classroom

Weaknesses: Classroom management in a digital classroom is different—more challenging for some

students/teachers, less for others. The tone here can bring out the best or ‘worst’ in students and
student interactions.

3. The Feedback Loops

Summary: In a digital classroom, the feedback loops have the chance to be much faster than a traditional
classroom—sometimes instantaneous.

Strengths: See above—it’s instant. It ‘scales.’ It equally applies to all students in the same ways, allowing
for norm-referenced evaluation when that’s useful.

Weaknesses: While it can be more personalized in some ways (correcting a specific student error), a
digital classroom alone can’t reproduce a teacher’s knowledge of the history, temperament, affections,
gifts, etc., of each child the way the best teachers can.

4. The Technology

Summary: The fourth element of a digital classroom is the most iconic: the technology. Whether
hardware or software, WiFi or LANs, operating systems or social media channels, the technology of a
digital classroom is the most visible part for many, and thus can seem the most crucial.

(This, of course, couldn’t be further from the truth. The most critical part of any learning experience for a
child is the child—what they learn, and what they do with what they learn.)

Strengths: It never stops changing

Weaknesses: It never stops changing

5. The Workflow

Summary: In a digital classroom, the workflow shifts from teacher <—> student to the the student —->
everything else —-> student —-> everything else.

Strengths: The workflow in a digital classroom provides more opportunities for creative feedback, critical
evaluation, authentic ‘real-world’ contexts, psychological support, etc.

Weaknesses: It can be difficult to both predict and ‘contain’ the workflow in a digital classroom
6. The Data

Summary: The data in a digital classroom is crucial to providing precise feedback and personalizing
learning for students. It can be elegantly visualized and easily shared, though learning models and
curriculum must be flexible enough to abort and respond to a constant influx of new data on learning
progress.

This may not sound very ‘progressive,’ but in today’s public education environment few things matter
more than data. In a more Utopian view, I’d probably call this category/element ‘personalization’
(because that’s what data should be used for) and analyze it through that kind of lens.

Strengths: There’s so much of it, and it’s easier to visualize and share with other teachers, students,
parents, community members, universities, etc.

Weaknesses: There’s so much of it. Also, if a school is focused on a specific metrics to demonstrate
progress, even the most potentially useful and relevant data suddenly becomes unuseful and irrelevant.
(When you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail; when you’re looking for improvement in ‘fluency’
and have compelling metrics for that, it’s easy to lose sight of the reader as a whole.)

7. The Purpose & Audience

Summary: In a digital classroom, purpose and audience are the most powerful shifts as experienced by
the students. With the limitations of a traditional classroom removed, what the student is create and
who they’re able to create it for increases to infinity.

Strengths: The purpose and audience of a digital classroom can become almost anything with great
transparency and collaboration.

Weaknesses: Beyond the teacher, few people have the expertise (and often legal access) to evaluate
student work based on specific learning objectives that themselves are standards-based. Real-world
feedback can indeed support standards-based growth, but there are far better ways to promote mastery
of academic standards than turning students loose in the ‘real world.’
8. The Products & Opportunities

Summary: The products and opportunities in a digital classroom are closely tied to Purpose & Audience.
The idea is that because students are learning in digital spaces, they are able to create new ‘things’—
organizations, media, collaborations, brands, platforms, etc., which then yields countless new
opportunities for them in and out of the classroom.

Strengths: Quantity, availability, adjustability—if there isn’t already a digital ‘space’ well-suited to every
student, one can be made.

Weaknesses: Because of the sheer abundance of everything digital, there is constant need to reflect on
one’s own purpose, goals, ‘metrics’ (how ‘success’ is measure), etc., in addition to the always-on need to
evaluate the credibility and embedded bias in information and media discovered online.