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| Planetary Impact in 01:20....hurry! |
The crew of the USS Lynx has one job. Get them out safely before impact.
Around the room, Cadets, Ensigns and Lieutenants are working at their stations, answering questions as quickly as they can. Every crew member has to complete their part of the mission correctly before the evacuation can take place.
At first, things are pretty calm. Students work through their questions. Correct answers come in. One by one, crew members complete their assignments.
Then the timer gets lower. Most of the class is finished.
A few aren't.
And suddenly this isn't just another classroom review. The students who have completed the mission start looking around the room to see who is still working.
“Come on.”
“You've got it.”
“Hurry!”
The countdown continues.
The numbers on the main viewscreen begin flashing. The room gets louder. There are only two or three students left now, and pretty much everybody knows it.
No pressure. Well...maybe a little pressure.
The last students are working through their questions while the rest of the crew watches the time disappear.
:05...
At this point, nobody is thinking about a grade. They're trying to save the scientists.
Someone finishes. One left. The room erupts.
“COME ON!”
The final student submits an answer. But it's the wrong answer!
The asteroid hits. The main viewscreen fills with the impact.
Mission failed!
Scientists lost.
For a few seconds the room is filled with the collective groan of a crew that came that close to pulling it off.
This is Lynx Command. And somehow, this is also my classroom. The strange part is that none of this was the plan. I never sat down and decided, “You know what my classroom really needs? A starship command simulator complete with crew ranks, missions, battles, alien encounters and the occasional extinction-level event.”
It started with something considerably less ambitious.
I wanted a screensaver.
So, How Did We Get Here?
This year, Lausanne opened a new Upper School building, which meant I was getting a new classroom.
New room. New layout. New problems to solve.
Some things were flexible. Some things were not.
One of the things I couldn't really change was the wiring for the computers. Because of where the power and network connections were located, the computers needed to live around the outside walls of the room, mostly facing the windows.
At first, that seemed like a limitation.
Then I realized it gave me something I had never really had before: from one central position, I could see almost every student screen in the room at the same time. That mattered because nearly every class I teach relies heavily on computers.
I should probably also point out that I've never really been a "teacher desk" person. I usually stand at a podium or pull up a chair with the students, so designing the room around a traditional teacher desk was never part of the plan.
As I started arranging the furniture, I pulled a couple of tables away from the wall while keeping them oriented toward the front of the room.
Then I stepped back.
And stared at it for a second.
Six computer stations positioned around the outside of the room. A central position in the middle. A large display at the front.
I hadn't planned it.
But I had somehow built a starship bridge, complete with a Captain's chair in the middle.
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| The Bridge of the USS Lynx, also...my classroom. |
Building the Bridge
Once I realized the room looked like a starship bridge, there was really no going back.
I had six computers around the room that would always be on, so I started treating them like ship stations. Communications. Tactical. Engineering. Science. Operations. Helm.
At first, this was purely aesthetic.
Each station got its own display screen, with graphics and interface elements designed to make the room feel a little more like an actual bridge and a little less like six computers sitting around the edge of a classroom.
Then there was the large monitor at the front of the room.
If the computers were going to be stations, then obviously the big screen had to become the main viewscreen.
All I really wanted was one of those old flying-star screensavers. The kind where stars rush toward you and make it look like you're moving through space.
I figured that would be easy to find.
Apparently not.
So I wondered if I could just make one.
This was one of the first places where AI changed the direction of the project.
Using ChatGPT Work, I described what I wanted: a full-screen starfield with stars moving toward the viewer, something that could run continuously on the classroom display and make the room feel like the ship was actually moving through space.
A few minutes later, it existed.
Nothing terribly complicated.
No battles. No missions. No crew rankings. No interactive systems.
Just stars moving across a screen.
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| The Main Viewscreen |
But standing in the middle of the room, with six crew stations around me and a starfield moving across the display at the front, the illusion suddenly worked.
The classroom felt different.
And that probably should have been enough.
It wasn't.
Why Stop There?
Once the starfield was working, the obvious question was:
Why stop there?
If the screen was going to be on all day anyway, it might as well be useful.
So I added a clock.
Then I started wondering if it could show which class was currently in the room and what we were doing that day.
The solution was surprisingly simple. I created a separate Google Calendar just for the viewscreen, connected it to the app, and used the event title and description to display the current class and daily agenda automatically.
Now the screen wasn't just making the room look like a starship. It was becoming part of how the classroom actually worked.
Then I started thinking about a small problem I'd had for years. Students have an uncanny ability to sense the end of class several minutes before it actually arrives. Bags begin closing. Chargers disappear. Laptops shut. So I added a departure countdown to the lower corner of the viewscreen during the final minute of class.
And because this was now a starship, the rule became:
Nobody leaves until we're at warp.
Of course, if you're going to warp, you need somewhere to go.
So I created a collection of fictional space destinations, complete with names and imagery, and each class would randomly jump to a new location when the countdown reached zero.
Without really planning it, the viewscreen had become a clock, a daily agenda, a classroom management tool and a tiny space exploration simulator.
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| Just one of the possible space destinations. |
All from something that started because I wanted some stars moving across a screen.
And Then It Started Talking Back
At that point, I honestly thought the viewscreen was pretty much finished.
It looked good. It showed the time. It displayed the current class and daily agenda. It handled the end-of-class countdown. It even sent us warping off to some random corner of space when class was over.
For something that started as a screensaver, I was pretty happy with it.
But then another question showed up.
What if the viewscreen wasn't just something students looked at?
What if they could actually interact with it?
Could I use it for a content review?
Could students answer questions from their stations while the viewscreen responded to what they were doing?
Could we build missions around it?
Consequences?
Could the class work together toward one shared outcome instead of simply completing the same review individually?
Could students rank up?
And if that worked...
Could another ship appear on the screen?
Could we communicate with it?
Could it attack us?
Could we fight back?
At some point, the question had quietly changed from:
What can I put on this screen?to:
What can this classroom become?
That was the moment Lynx Command really started.
And, as it turns out, the answer began with something surprisingly simple:
A spreadsheet.
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| What if...bad guys? |
Next: Turning a Viewscreeen into an Interactive Classroom System
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