Design Thinking / Innovation / Innovation / Inspiration / Leadership / Learning / Project Management / Space Configurations / Strategic Planning / Teamwork / The K12 School Experience in America Posted on:

Designing A Better World

In August 2019, over 2,200 schools will open doors to students in the state of Georgia. A small number of those schools will be brand new. None like this. Mount Vernon Presbyterian School opens the doors to a brand new Upper School (Grades 9-12) building after a year of construction and years of planning, dreaming, and designing. The building is the physical expression of the School’s mission and vision; innovative, flexible, and relational. Everything is on castors. All desks are stackable and nest-able. Writable walls move up and down allowing disciplinary classes to combine and become interdisciplinary or trans-disciplinary. Smart […]

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PBL: Passion Based Learning / Space Configurations / Student Choice Posted on:

Visiting Brightworks

Visiting Brightworks Arriving a day early for the NAIS Conference in San Francisco, our team took the opportunity to visit the Brightworks school. Greeted by Founder and Education Architect Gever Tully who wrote the book 50 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Children Do, I was immediately struck by the open layout and the sense of freedom and possibility in the school. Students can access tools to construct prototypes of nearly anything one can imagine. The more dangerous tools are placed higher on the wall, if only to give pause to a student before proceeding to utilize.  We were given a […]

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Digital Citizenship / eportfolio / Formative Assessment / Innovation / Learning Measures / Progress Monitoring / Reflective Practice / Space Configurations / Technology / Visible Thinking Routines Posted on:

10 Ways e-Portfolios Increase Learning

10 Ways e-Portfolios Increase Learning In schools, the use of e-portfolios is increasing as a way to enable learning, as well as a means to measure it. See Admissions Revolution (80 colleges and universities move towards use of online portfolios). There are a variety of types and purposes of e-portfolios including workspace, showcase, academic, employment, etc. This post focuses primarily on the blog as student workspace – designed as a tool to accelerate learning at any age, as well as to build capacity for being globally competitive beyond schooling. How might e-portfolios increase learning? 1) Writing – Does the importance of […]

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Innovation / Professional Learning / Space Configurations Posted on:

Reconfiguring Learning Spaces

Today’s #MVMiddle Faculty Meeting might have been my favorite in 3 years. In pursuit of our wildly important goal of “Nurturing Innovators,” our teachers were asked to “reset the space” into 5 unique configurations and reflect on both the physical and mental impact on their learning. How might reconfiguring learning spaces help ignite and nurture innovators in your school? First, teachers reset the space from the room’s typical “horseshoe” configuration to a “cooperative” learning configuration. They were given 60 seconds with a timer projected on the board. When time was up, there was an unmistakable ringing bell sound. Our ethnographers […]

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Gifted Education / Organization & Time Management / Reflective Practice / Space Configurations Posted on:

“My” Classroom Space Configuration 2006-2010 (Part 1 of 2)

Recently, our team was discussing classroom space configurations. Mary and Jim asked about the configurations I used as a teacher. I drew them a diagram (recreated in Google drawings here). We had one type of student desk (yellow seat attached to wooden desk with metal basket underneath). Desks were arranged in two groups of rows. One grouping faced the “front” of the room and the other faced the “side” of the room where the double whiteboards were mounted on the wall. At least 3 factors limited the flexibility of this space…1) the type of desks, 2) the role students were […]

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