For Back to School, Reimagine Classroom Design

Teaching Strategies Lenny Gonzales By Therese Jilek As the school year begins, most classrooms across the country will mirror traditional class design: rows of desks with passive children sitting quietly listening to a teacher in the front of the class. But not at Hartland-Lakeside. Across the Hartland-Lakeside school district in Hartland, Wisconsin, teachers have transformed their Industrial Age classrooms into innovative, state-of-the-art learning spaces. The innovative spaces were a product of teachers changing how they taught and viewed student learning. Teachers realized that they needed to do more than rearrange the room; they needed to start over. As teachers transformed their roles into facilitators of learning, they found that standing in front of the classroom or lecturing was no longer prudent. Students and teachers work together throughout the day in many different ways. This change also reflects the increased use of mobile technology to personalize learning. Therese Jilek

12 Reasons We Need To Reinvent The School Desk Added by Jeff Dunn on 2012-09-27 Students young and old frequently complain about the quality of the desks and chairs provided on campus, yet it remains one of the more overlooked issues. A pity, because poor ergonomics and comfort can actually lead to poor health, and poor health leads to missed classes and heightened medical expenditures once career time rolls around. Maybe it’s about time educators, schools, and districts reconsidered their approach towards how they set up classrooms. Sitting increases the risk of a heart attack : Small children probably don’t suffer from the same risk of heart attacks as their parents, but healthy habits stick better when introduced early. This is a post from our content partners at Online Degrees . Comments are closed.

Sweden’s Newest School System Has No Classrooms There’s a whole new classroom model and it’s a sight to behold. The newest school system in Sweden look more like the hallways of Google or Pixar and less like a brick-and-mortar school you’d typically see. There are collaboration zones, houses-within-houses, and a slew of other features that are designed to foster “curiosity and creativity.” That’s according to Vittra, which runs 30 schools in Sweden. Their most recent school, Telefonplan School (see photos below via Zilla Magazine) in Stockholm, could very well be the school of the future. Architect Rosan Bosch designed the school to encourage both independent and collaborative work such as group projects and PBL. The un-schoolness doesn’t stop with the furniture and layout though. Most of all, admission to the school is free as long as one of the child’s parents pays taxes in Sweden and the child has a ‘personal number’ which is like a social security number to our U.S. readers.