Designing Agile Learning Spaces

Yesterday I attended an excellent  webinar called “Designing Agile Learning Spaces”  Presented by Bill Selak, Director of Technology and Ilsa Dohmen, CTE Research Designer and 6th Grade Science Teacher at Hillbrook School. While watching, I did a lot of reflecting around our new pk-2 building (Due Fall 2016), our current buildings/classrooms AND our district’s strategic plan.  There were  many resources provided  by the participants and audience that I am including in this post.  Side note –  I absolutely loved the action research this team did to measure success of these environments!
Webinar – Designing Agile Learning Spaces  (just enter name and email and you will have access) The webinar is an hour – and is very worth it.  Maybe one of the best I have seen in some time!
MLE Furniture

Photo credit – http://elearningclassroom.wikispaces.com

Technology in MLE

Photo Credit – http://elearningclassroom.wikispaces.com

One of the resources provided by the audience, I especially liked, was the Modern Learning Environment Matrix.    I  appreciate the guiding questions for each criteria in each phase.  Scroll to the very bottom and you some guiding questions for measuring the success of these environments including:
  • Ubiquity in Learning
  • Student Agency
  • Connectedness
Modern Learning Environments
Other links worth reviewing and provided in the webinar

Where are you and your district in your journey of designing modern classrooms/schools? Please share any resources you have found to be valuable!

These kids TODAY…

In the history of education, our kids TODAY have more opportunities than ever before to connect, learn, and co create new knowledge with other classrooms, organizations, and experts from around the globe.  Through these connections, our kids TODAY, have more opportunities to make an impact in this world and make it a better place for generations to come.

I see a shift in schools, from being solely “dispensers of knowledge” to, instead,  helping students learn how THEY can apply their learning in a real world context.  I see a shift in schools from focusing solely on test scores – to fostering and measuring the whole child.

In my mind, our challenge is “How do we “do school” efficiently to incorporate these shifts and effectively measure success?”  Its going to take a different school system than we have TODAY as we can not continue to add these new shifts to traditional paradigms.

There is never enough time! TODAY, we need to evaluate and challenge how we currently use our time in education. TODAY, we need to create new ways to evaluate and measure student success – beyond the test score.  And TODAY, we need leaders in our schools with a mindset to challenge these traditional paradigms to support and create a better, more efficient way to “do school” in order to support every learner.

Who is up for the challenge TODAY?

I will leave you with this quote – tweeted last week by @justintarte that really hit home in my thinking…  I hope to use this blog in the weeks to come to share ideas of how we can challenge (and ACT upon) these paradigms.  Stay tuned!

Jefferson Quote