Computer Lab Seating Chart

It’s even more important here than it is in your classroom.

photo credit: Extra Ketchup

When going to the computer lab, it is really helpful if you have planned a seating chart that helps the struggling student get help as quickly as possible. You are only one person and you don’t want to style yourself the tech expert, because that causes learned helplessness and makes you a bit crazy trying to help everybody. Instead, promote peer coaching and independent problem solving.

Especially with older students, you can get a quick technology literacy score by simply asking them to rank themselves between 1 (computer phobic) and 5 (technology geek), based on how comfortable they are with computers in general. Students are generally pretty honest, and are more likely to rate themselves lower than their skill-level than rate themselves experts.

If the computer lab is laid out in a U-shape, with the computers along the walls, distribute your experts at intervals of three to five students, so that in the worse case scenario, a student who is not technologically literate has a peer coach within a seat or two, if not right next to him.

If the computer lab is laid out in rows, place your experts the second or third seat from each end. And place the students with a self-score of 1 at the ends of the rows, where they are easiest for you to reach without a lot of pacing the rows.

One thing that’s nice about technology peer coaching is it often provides students who struggle in standard literacy skills a way to show their expertise. My best helpers in the computer lab have consistently come from among the ranks of the most needy at reading/writing desk work.