Reimagining Learning Space: Let Spontaneous Collisions Happen!

Reposted from MindShift:

“There’s no teacher at the front,” says Gensler’s Shawn Gehle. “The rooms are like different scenes in a video game. They inspire active learning.

As K–12 schools refocus on team-based, interdisciplinary learning, they are moving away from standardized, teach-to-test programs that assume a one-size-fits-all approach to teaching. Instead, there is a growing awareness that students learn in a variety of ways, and the differences should be supported. The students often learn better by doing it themselves, so teachers are there to facilitate, not just to instruct. Technology is there as a tool and resource, not as a visual aid or talking head.

When it comes to integrating STEM into classroom space, there are real implications for how teachers interact, says Thaler. “When you put math and science teachers together, they can cross-collaborate on lesson plans. If they’re teaching trigonometry or wave properties in math, they know they have to pull in the physics faculty also.” Schools that embrace STEM end up retraining. “They have to stretch their conception of what’s being taught.” They were inspired by facilities that “let spontaneous collisions happen,” Thaler notes, but the takeaway was less a model than a point of view. Gensler documented it in a paper on STEM education. One of its major findings was that, to succeed, STEM and other interdisciplinary programs need to create propinquity—literally, “nearness” – among their participants.

Read More…

Design Challenge Launched to Reimagine School Report Cards

Reposted from Getting Smart:

Calling all designers! The Foundation for Excellence in Education (ExcelinEd) has launched the My School Info Design Challenge (#SchoolInfo), a competition to reimagine school report cards. The design challenge stems from research published today in an accompanying brief, My School Information Challenge: Building a Better School Performance Report Card for Parents & Students. Written for designers and the general public, the brief gives further insight and research about the challenges with school report cards.

Recent research from Education Commission of the States (ECS) and ExcelinEd reveals that many of today’s report cards are difficult to find online and often impossible to understand. The #SchoolInfo challenge is an effort to provide parents with necessary information to make informed decisions about their student’s education, and to inform policymakers with information for reform strategies.

The #SchoolInfo challenge is open to the country’s top talent in design, technology, education, and parental advocacy fields.

Read More…

Visit the official challenge page here.

View the challenge design brief (.PDF) here.

Let’s Reimagine Everything!

Reposted from John Hope Bryant on LinkedIn:

If you want to identify young people who will become the next NFL or baseball star, we have a system for that, and we can tell you who the stars for those sports will be around the same ages.

If you want to identify pure academic IQ in America, we have a proven system for that. It’s called grades, GPA and things like ACT scores.

But if you want to identify the one skill that America needs to continue to rise, grow and thrive — the builder/leader/entrepreneur skill set — there is absolutely no system for that. We just leave that one to chance. No wonder everyone from Bill Gates to Steve Jobs to Ted Turner to Michael Dell, just opted right out of college. My guess is, at some point the experience just wasn’t speaking to them. And it’s not just them.

I don’t remember how tough classes or school was, or even all of the none stop drama that occupied my inner-city neighborhood of Compton, California. I was all wrapped up in my dreams. And here I am today, a businessman running a global enterprise, creating jobs, and meeting a payroll every two weeks. It wasn’t rocket science, it was role modeling.

Let’s actually prepare our kids for both the jobs that actually exist in the world, and the bold aspirations that are locked away in their soul. Let’s reimagine everything!

Read More…