From: http://www.flickr.com/photos/taedc/6217825860/sizes/z/in/photostream/
A current program I am participating in, just sent me the following question to answer for an assignment. I loved the question so much that I wanted to post my answer. Respond with your own ideas or comments on mine:
Imagine a technological tool or resource that would be really helpful to you and/or your students. What would it do, and why would it be beneficial? For this assignment, think outside (perhaps -way- outside) the box and describe what would be wonderful to have as part of your work. As with your other follow-up classes, you must leave a comment to others’ posts, and I’m hoping there will be plenty of fodder in this assignment for that!
My educational career was inspired by the Stanford dschool, so the tool I want to create revolves around that style of thinking, learning and designing. Additionally, with my background in architecture, I constantly think about how architecture and education are intertwined. There is no reason why schools should look so similar to how they were constructed in the 1920s today, aside from money and bureaucracy. My out-of-the-box educational tool revolves around the alternation of the learning space itself. I feel space has a dramatic influence on the ability of both teachers and students to inspire and to be inspired or on the other hand to feel constrained. Often, I feel stiffened by the space I have, mostly in regards to brainstorm space for students and flexibility for work space. Rather than a tool, I am proposing a company called FlexiLearn. This company would be able to come to a school and then survey the classrooms and the supplies and be able to help, in a cost effective way, create learning spaces that are flexible and effective rather than static and constraining. Hardware that is a part of the company’s development in each classroom would be as follows:
- Rolling Wipeboards—brainstorming is able to stay up
- Tall tables with stools—kids can thus sit or stand
- No desks—too constraining, I want kids to freely move about
- Physio balls—kids with ADD or ADHD or just any normal kid could use them to sit on
My idea would be that the building itself also teaches students about the environment, green energy, and more. Flexilearn would be able to then direct schools to LEED companies that could help schools figure out how to become certified as a green building. Overall I believe that buildings are not only space for us to be inside, but spaces that should inspire us. Just because we need a great number of schools doesn’t mean that we should make them suffer from a lack of creativity. Check out the following schools that have already done this and some companies that are striving to breath life and creativity back into schools themselves:
- Design Thinking Article Edudemic
- Design Thinking Template
- Design Thinking inspired Learning Spaces
- Stanford dSchool k12
- Project Frog based in SF working on innovative modular classrooms
- MK think is redesigning current buildings to work better for the people in them
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