MBE special education department launches immersive classroom

During the 2019-20 school year, Mountain Brook Elementary’s special education department will launch a pioneering new pilot project: an immersive classroom. In 2018, MBE’s special education team — teachers Betsie Boggs, Mary Catherine Clark, Mackenzie Eden and Cynthia Maldonado, and technology coordinator Thea Patrick — was awarded Mountain Brook Schools Foundation’s Institute for Innovation grant to fund an immersive classroom. This type of classroom has been successful in the U.K. but will be the first of its kind in a U.S. public school.

An immersive classroom uses technology to create a completely interactive environment for students to explore. Through the use of technology, images are projected onto walls and floors. The cameras track human movements, which allow students to co-exist with digital projections. The goal of an immersive classroom is to allow students to explore the world through an adaptive lens. The MBE immersive classroom will allow for touch interaction on three surfaces of the room: two walls and the floor.

This summer, the MBE special education teachers practiced at the Mountain Brook Board of Education with new immersive software developed specifically for this classroom. With the help of Paula Stanbridge, technology coordinator at Crestline Elementary School, the MBE teachers learned how to navigate the technology, manipulate software and start creating lessons. 

MBE teacher Betsie Boggs said the hope of the special education department is for this project to “allow us to help our content come alive through multiple modalities in this classroom and provide meaningful shared learning experiences for many different groups of students throughout the MBE community."

For those interested in learning more about this project, the MBE special education team has a blog detailing the classroom’s development, which can be found at mtnbrook.k12.al.us/Page/17953.

Submitted by Carla Ward.