Classroom makeover

The planning had been done, and it was time to get our hands dirty and make some physical changes to the classroom.

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.

Studios in schools

Reading this article (Get Local) on the Design Mind site reminded me of Emily Pilloton's TED talk about the Studio H Project she and partner Matthew Miller run in Bertie County, North Carolina.

Check out more from Design Mind here.

John Seely Brown: the architectural studio as a model of the classroom

Isn't it affirming when you find reminders that what you've been thinking a out and trying to achieve fits in with what a whole lot of other people have been thinking about and doing too? Over the last couple of days (and likely for the next few too) I've been doing a fair bit of wandering across the web following up interesting links, and it looks like the next few posts I make will be less of my own thinking and more of a collection of ideas our project aligns with and connects to.

This 2008 talk by Jorhn Seely Brown, which I came across in Fast Company's Co.Design post 4 lessons the classroom can learn from the design studio (which is definitely worth reading) seems to sum up and expand on many of the ideas we've based the development of our Curriculum Integration Project on.