The school of the future is already reality. The classrooms with blackboards, dust from the chalk and students trying to stay awake during class is already in the past. Except for electronic books and interactive boards, the next trend waves are the “smart” desks, which are entering Greece. The work like the iPhone and have a sensor screen, which combines sound and image and students can work on them in groups.

The pencils, pens, and erasers are replaced by sensor index fingers. The traditional role of teachers disappears and the student who answers correct will not be only the one who raises his/her hand first.

All together and each one separately give their answers with a push of a button. Specially designed software recognizes student’s touch on the screen.

“We are talking about a modern means of educating, which works in addition to books in primary school. The students can use markers, in order to draw and write on the interactive desks; they can write with fingers and erase with their hands. Each desk has a computer, which executes 40 commands and this way, students are never bored,” says the director of the importing firm Mr. Panayotis Koutzis.

Few famous private schools already have the interactive desks and according to Leta Psalti, who is a manager in the firm importing the interactive education means, “private schools show great interest in buying interactive desks.”

The idea is for the teacher the control the whole system in the room from a central console, from where he/she can give different tasks. While students are working in groups of four, the teacher can track everybody’s process and give advises directly from the console.

The project is called SynergyNet and has been firstly tried out by older students for solving math problems.