"I've waited 30 years for this!"

There are inventions and inventions. Clearly useful ones (like the peeler), partially useful ones (like most), and completely useless ones (like Elon Musk’s anti-zombie flamethrower). In front of me is a wooden box with the inscription “CLASSROOMCUBES”. Inside, a set of colored wooden blocks, a few colored clips, two dice, and a booklet. My verdict after over forty years of teaching: absolutely useful! I had been waiting for this all this time!

It all started in 1971 with “partially useful”. Back then, the heavily school-focused social psychologist Elliot Aronson in Austin/Texas invented the “Jigsaw Method”. The idea was and is captivating: carefully prepared, independent, and cooperative learning by the teacher in very heterogeneous classes. And in such a way that all (!) students without exception acquire a high degree of factual competence in the respective topics or the respective learning goal, simultaneously consolidate their skills as learners and teachers, and at the same time develop skills in knowledge acquisition and cooperation/communication. Incidentally, this corresponds entirely to the concerns of our Curriculum 21.

The catch: the formation of groups and then the setup with two or three rounds in changing compositions was somewhat complicated, required a lot of planning in preparation, and elaborate visualizations in the form of progression graphics and colored slips of paper for the class. And matching control and evaluation documents in each case. Despite the convincing idea, this too often prevented me from using the method. With a guilty conscience, because the effectiveness seemed guaranteed, but the economy (efficiency) stood in the way of the undertaking given the prevailing pressure of material and time.

That was my situation when Brendan Schuhmacher and Cindy Schenk showed me an earlier version of CLASSROOMCUBES some time ago. I thought that nothing could knock me, an old didactic, off my socks anymore; after all, I had already chosen the history of teaching and learning materials as the focus of my doctoral exam in education and in the decades that followed had completed a dozen innovative auxiliary teaching aids, from Cuisenaire rods to LÜK control tools to various group formation card sets and computer-supported programs. But the CLASSROOMCUBES electrified me immediately. Because all the concerns regarding group work that have grown over decades become obsolete here. I critically mentally went through all (?) possible application variants and cases and came to the conclusion that CLASSROOMCUBES has turned into an unconditionally useful instrument. I wish all teachers at all levels successful and deeply satisfying work with it. The learners themselves will experience it that way anyway.

Anton Strittmatter.