The number of workstations in a room should be governed by the predominant use of computer resources for that subject and, where appropriate, teaching  strategies should be modified to maximise the use of the facilities available.  Far too often, when visiting schools, I see workstations unused - when other classes could be benefiting from their use.  This needs serious professional attention by Team Leaders and Curriculum Managers.  I like to see room-usage sheets for every classroom.

As suggested elsewhere I much prefer to see a full set of PCs in a room and will assume this is the case unless otherwise stated.  However, even then there can be problems.  For reasons of space, computers are often installed in back-to-back layouts on long benches.  Thus at any one point in the room the teacher can only see 50% of the screens.  Even worse is the scenario where ALL the workstations are facing forward and the teacher can only see that all students are on-task by standing at the back of the classroom!

In some smaller classrooms I have only been able to use 12-15 workstations around the perimeter of the room - mainly in Business Studies classes.  Here I have found it quite effective to plan, as it were, two sets of work:  one bookwork at the desks and secondly structured research on the machines.  -  Once students have settled into the regime of alternate activities there is no real difficulty.

In other classrooms, Humanities for instance, we were only able to install 8-10 machines along one wall.  Here, the teachers managed to structure their lessons so that short research or presentation tasks could be performed on a rotation basis.  Again, not ideal, but the machines were still being used to a near-maximum capacity.

Where teachers decide that the only way to use the machines is on a 1:1 basis then there obviously needs to be some sharing of resources.  And herein lies a serious point:  teachers must learn to plan ahead when they will need a full computer room and book ahead, arranging room swaps well in advance.  This can be done and the teachers of Computer Studies or Business Studies must support other subject areas in sharing rooms. 

The bottom line is that if this massive investment is to be made in the first place, staff must fulfil their end of the bargain and ensure that all workstations are being used to the maximum.

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