Tuesday 7 February 2012

Hack your learning space

Friday 3 February - the first day with students participating in the 'project'. A busy and exciting day! We spent most of the day working on our 'Hack your learning space' activity, designing the learning space that we wanted to learn and work in for the year.

Key elements of the designs presented included kitchen space, hooks for bag storage ("like a cloak bay from primary school"), couches/beanbags, table space, and a 'tree-house'. Working within our $500 budget we'll see how much of this we can bring to fruition.

2 comments:

  1. This is an interesting post and quite pertinent to my Year 5/6 class! We are based in Dunedin and are currently desiging out physical and digital learning space. I set up a few ideas for the kids to trial their learning in for the first 8 days of school...these included a lounge looking library corner, bean bags, individual spaces and tables. Tomorrow we meet to discuss how we learn best and which spaces might "distract us" and which ones "inspire us" in different learning situations. We are really keen to see what you come up with and maybe you big kids could mentor my Year 5/6 kids re learning spaces?

    I think I am most keen to see your treehouse and to hear why you have chosen cloak bays like the primary schools!

    Good luck with your space!

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  2. Claire,

    I've just posted a short time-lapse video of our first day of cleaning, sanding and painting. Over the next few days we should have more of the students' blogs coming online, and I expect them to mention some of what they learned from the makeover process.

    We're very pleased with our $15 couch from the 'dump shop', which is currently filling the space that will become the 'tree-house' (once we've overcome some OSH and funding issues). For me, the main benefit of the tree-house is that it's a way of moving our experience of the classroom to another level (literally, but more importantly figuratively). I hope it will help help take the space from a classroom to something a bit more magical.

    I'd be happy to get some of our guys to Skype your class, once we've finished setting up the 'cave' (a re-imagined store room and quiet space/Skype studio).

    I think the 'cloak bay' probably arose out of secondary level students being sick of lugging their bags from one classroom to the next, but it will be interesting to interrogate them further about their thinking on that one.

    Keep in touch.

    Cheers,
    Sam

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