The Microsoft Croatia company and the Croatian Academic and Research Network – CARNet, with the support of the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports, opened a new Classroom of the Future in the Metković High School. Metković has become the fourth city in Croatia, following Opatija, Mirkovci, and Zagreb, in which Microsoft and CARNet opened a Classroom of the Future, thus raising the number of Classrooms of the Future opened by CARNet and its partners to eleven.
Representatives from Microsoft Croatia and CARNet presented the principal of Metković High School, Professor Jozo Jurković, with a fully equipped digital classroom. This included 30 state-of-the-art Windows 10 tablets with keyboards adapted for students, one Windows 10 tablet for teachers, and an interactive touch-screen whiteboard. These resources will enable students and teachers to utilize modern technologies in their daily classes.
All the devices are connected to a network controlled by a specially designed system, and their operation was demonstrated to the gathered audience by the students of class 3c, who will be the primary users of this classroom in the school year 2016/2017. Using the tablets, the students demonstrated keeping notes, observations, and laboratory measurements with the OneNote tool, making interactive chemistry and biology demonstration experiments with the Sway software, and finally, solidifying their knowledge of the educational material by solving quizzes and questionnaires prepared for them by teachers using the Forms tool.
The Classroom of the Future concept is based on the implementation and integration of advanced hardware and software solutions in traditional classrooms to improve teaching. These solutions enable interactive teaching, the use of educational materials in electronic format, conducting dynamic tests and quizzes, monitoring individual student activities, collecting and analyzing individual student test activities and results, and communication between teachers and students.