I’m fascinated by how difficult it is to design an instructor’s desk/podium so that it does not present a barrier between the instructor and the students, but has sufficient space for instructors to put whatever they need.
I came across the “Transformer” instructor’s station at Singapore Management University and thought it was a very nifty design.
Fully extended, there is clearly room for a laptop, document camera, and keyboard and mouse for the room computer. Though in my experience, even fully extended, many instructors would request much more space to be made available.
The nifty part of this station is that the quite large document camera actually folds down into the desk itself to be packed away. The side panels (with the laptop and the keyboard/mouse) fold down – leaving a fairly small podium.
