Daily Archives: September 1, 2010

Our new BER funded library and classrooms are nearly ready. It has been interesting and exciting to watch them be built, then painted and furbished and go from shells and frameworks to spaces that you can visualise in action. So, there has been quite a bit of talk around learning spaces and re-imagining how we might go about the business of teaching and learning.

I was fortunate enough to go to a recent symposium hosted by iNet that featured Sharon Wright from Creative Wit. She talked at length about the various efforts in the UK to transform their schools and it was interesting to mentally tick the boxes as she outlined driving factors in the change process and how learning spaces were being designed or altered to cater for contemporary learning needs.

So add in the thought provoking ideas laid out by Ewan McIntosh in last week's MasterClass, and I'm trying to work out how I will personally operate in a new learning space. The concept of the classroom as a studio has been written about Clarence Fisher in the past and it is a challenge to get the balance right between whole class instruction, independent project or inquiry work, group discussion and helping individuals grapple with new understandings or knowledge. I know the underlying structures and practice we have at this school are all lined up to make the most of a new collaborative learning space - but any change from the status quo (in this case from my current individual classroom in an old transportable building) to a new environment challenges me to re-imagine how things could be, how new or improved opportunities for my students can open up.

I'm looking forward to it and working with a keen team of fellow educators means that we are re-purposing this new space for our students together.

newclassroom

Projectors going into our new classrooms.