It's a brand new school with state-of-the-art technology. So why does a piece of furniture grab all the attention? The school is Middleton primary in Milton Keynes, an innovative building that has attracted national interest. Headteacher Jane Miller points out the curved corridors, the laptops, the whiteboards in every classroom - and the podium.
"It was difficult to get these," she says. "It took a lot of sorting." Any US election watcher will be familiar with the idea. Miller's podiums may not have the presidential crest, but the principle is the same - an upright desk with a space at the top for a book or laptop. Miller looked at how teachers worked with a whiteboard and a laptop.
She disapproved of the stooped stance at the teacher's desk, and the way that trailing wires seemed to snake in all directions. She didn't like the way a teachers' desk occupied valuable space at the front of the room, or the fact that the laptop screen was itself a distraction when the teacher wanted pupils' eyes to be fixed on the whiteboard.
She went looking for an alternative - and eventually found one. "Using one of these, the teacher can use the laptop and see all the children," she says. Gale Cook is the school's ICT co-ordinator and deputy head. She is taking year 6, and she would not swap her podium for a desk.
Her laptop sits on the angled lectern at the top of the podium. There are power and data sockets and the wiring is routed inside the podium through to a conduit in the floor. There's a lockable cupboard below the laptop stand for personal belongings and the unit comes with or without castors.
"At first I felt a bit self-conscious," she says. "But it's less of a barrier. It makes it easier for children to come to the front."
And it does. Even with two visitors and the headteacher in the room there was still space for Cook to move around and for children to come to the whiteboard.
Most of the school's furniture comes from Ikea, but the podiums come from Pedder and Summers in Northampton, a furniture supplier that offers several podium designs for around £400-£450.