Happy Birthday, Classroom of the Future!
CET Thu Oct 28 2004

With a rather humble start in 1990 in an 88-year-old home equipped with two “state-of-the-art” Macintosh Apple 2E computers, the NASA-sponsored Classroom of the Future grew into the internationally recognized education facility that today serves thousands of teachers and students throughout the world each year.

On Oct. 25 the Erma Ora Byrd Center for Educational Technologies, the building that houses the Classroom of the Future, celebrated the 10th anniversary of its operation on the campus of Wheeling Jesuit University. Since 1996 when statistics were first compiled, nearly 156,000 students and more than 5,000 teachers have experienced the Classroom of the Future in person. In that time the Classroom of the Future web site (www.cet.edu) has received about 185 million hits from more than 10 million unique users.

Today’s center houses educational technology that still remains cutting edge. The 48,000-square foot facility on its three floors features such amenities as large meeting rooms wired for distance learning, computer lab facilities—including the newest feature, a room featuring wireless computers where training in handheld computers also takes place—a complete studio and video editing suite, and satellite transmission access in addition to the latest in educational software.

Life was a bit different, though, back in 1990 when the program started as a NASA teacher resource center. Supplied with about 1,200 pounds of paper resources and staffed by one person, the center took shape in an old Victorian home near the entrance to the Wheeling Jesuit University campus. The location was considered temporary, though, because U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia along with U.S. Rep. Alan Mollohan of West Virginia had already begun to set aside funds to build the National Technology Transfer Center and what would become the Center for Educational Technologies on campus. By 1992 the funding was approved, and ground was broken the next year for the two high-tech buildings. The Classroom of the Future also was designated as a site for a Challenger Learning Center, one of 50 planned across the nation, to honor the memory of the seven members of the Space Shuttle Challenger crew that was killed in 1986.

The Classroom of the Future was inspired by a situation that still exists in our country today—a deficit in students’ abilities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, the subject areas deemed especially vital in our high-tech age and of extreme importance for NASA in attracting the explorers of tomorrow. To that end, the teacher resource center sponsored presentations at area schools to demonstrate the marvels of space science and to serve as a way to spread the NASA vision. Summer workshops for teachers also were an annual outreach effort.

In 1992 Dr. C. Daniel Miller was appointed the first director of the Classroom of the Future. Within a year NASA had designated the Classroom of the Future as a key part of its education program and the linchpin for its research and development efforts in space science education. Miller shepherded the program until 1997, getting the Classroom of the Future off and running. During his tenure the Classroom of the Future became more than a repository of NASA teacher resources. It began to produce curriculum supplements, such as Astronomy Village: Exploring the Universe^®, BioBLAST^®, and Exploring the Environment^®, all of them award-winning offerings that featured a healthy dose of problem-based learning, a concept behind most of the products created at the Classroom of the Future.

Dr. Nitin Naik succeeded Miller and served until this year. His legacy is leading the Center for Educational Technologies from being purely NASA funded and focused to expanding the center’s portfolio, so to speak. Under Naik the Center for Educational Technologies became partners with the U.S. Department of Education and National Science Foundation on various efforts. The center along with the Classroom of the Future also rode the wave of the burgeoning Internet. In fact, the Classroom of the Future video streamed a town meeting of President Clinton’s, becoming among the first web hosts to provide that service.

When Naik left to take a job at NASA, Greg Meier was selected as the third director of the center. Already, he has begun to reshape the direction of the center and the Classroom of the Future to meet the needs of today’s learners by focusing on such cutting-edge areas as educational gaming. He also is focusing on partnerships in the commercial market to keep the Classroom of the Future a vital player in the educational research and design field.

“We’re proud of how much we’ve grown in the past 10 years,” said Steven McGee, chief research and development officer for the Classroom of the Future, who has worked in the building almost since its opening. “We first started with only NASA funding, then we’ve taken a diversified role with National Science Foundation and Department of Education funding as well. We hope to expand our portfolio in the next 10 years to have an impact in the commercial market.”

Meier says the future is bright for the Classroom of the Future and the Center for Educational Technologies. “With the new opportunities we’re opening up in the fields of advanced educational gaming and cutting-edge learning research for the private sector along with our renewed goal to help bring about the next generation of NASA scientists and explorers, we’re excited about the possibilities. And with the talented people we employ and work with, we’re poised to keep the Classroom of the Future growing.”

November 10, 2004