- The more glass the better
- small group learning rooms
- cafeteria
- media center
- Small stage in the cafeteria
- Fitness room in the gym
- Do not remember seeing any full lockers
- Garage doors in ELA areas
- Green roofs
- Classrooms with flexible walls
- 5th/6th Grade
- Math
- Science
- Flexible space but not open classroom
- "Comfortable" office area
- Clark
- Hughes was beautiful but it seems most of the money was spent on infrastructure not on redesigning academic spaces
- Did we see any space that caused a transformation of teaching and learning?
Random Thoughts
- Need a to have a "Gym" session on WMS schedule
- How can we take the "Cowboy Bell" concept to 7th and 8th grade
- Need to find a school that is fully implementing STEM
- We must "respect the plast but plan for the future."
- Allowing students time to develop soft skills is a must
- Important to teach/develop the art of face to face communication to students who prefer digital communication
- Use tech to deliver just in time professional development
- The Innovators DNA
- http://www.fastcompany.com/article/innovators-dna-clayton-christensen-jeff-dyer-hal-gregersen
- Common Characteristics
- Associative
- Questioning (assumptions)
- Observing
- Experimenting
- Networking
- How can we can create a learning environment that allows students to fail and learn from the mistakes?
- How much longer can the Carnegie Unit hang on?
- How do we create a culture that expects innovative solutions to problems?
- We need to begin to video tape and discuss lessons to continually improve classroom experiences
- Need to develop a teacher dashboard that aligns IPDP, district goals, professional development, evaluations, teacher reflections
- What is the role of the traditional or electronic textbook in the future?
Our mantra should be like the Disney concept—“Gracefully respect the past while preparing for the future.”
ReplyDeleteFacility
• Garage doors in classrooms (would allow for parallel teaching, differentiation, cross-curriculum teaching)
• Maximize the use of glass (window walls, different configurations of windows like in Taft in lieu of straight line)
• Hub and Spoke Design Classrooms—four cores on the perimeter with a meeting room in the middle so as to allow for cross-curriculum projects/discussions
• Computer Wall (6 computers with a spider or multiple plasma televisions put together)—appeal to all the sense with visual, audio, tactile, and olfactory
• Touch technology table (could advance curriculum—e.g. Biology dissections, art [visualize before create], etc.)
• Two way mirror so as to allow for authentic observations (peer observations, evaluations, etc.)
• Have a GYM space and incorporate energizer breaks because what goes in the space should be hard work
• Glean ideas from other buildings/schools/industries but remember the space must work for one’s culture
• Touchdown seat—a teacher doesn’t have to be chained to their desk or classroom in order to do productive work
• With our emphasis on the arts, would a cafeautorim work in Wyoming? Could we have a stage in the cafeteria but still have the traditional auditorium?
• Fitness room in the gym—not only for school use, but also community use, like in Mason
• Green roof—could allow for some neat service projects
• Although we saw a STEM building and technology school, the P&G site was much more innovative and “prepared” for the future.
• Digital Backpacks
Miscellaneous
• Moving away from “instant gratification/feedback”—a grade—and helping parents and students understand that this is acceptable
• Teaching students that experimenting and creativity is acceptable: not to worry about the grade or failure
• Have flexible time built into the master schedule
• Teachers not only having individual planning time but also team planning; learning and construction of projects and ideas is best done in a group, not in isolation. (Mason releases students an hour early every Wednesday to allow for team planning/teacher collaboration)
• Deployment vs. Do-ployment
• Multi-functional teams with both staff and students
• Help students and staff realize they “are not the sage on the stage, but the guide on the side”; thus, collaboration, in all aspects, is key.
• Emphasizing some of the common characteristics that P&G discussed: associative, observating, and experimenting. Associative—can our current students really see connections between things that seem dissimilar?
• Teaching face-to-face skills doesn’t have to be haphazard; they have programs/organizations (e.g. Toastmasters) that emphasize these concepts
• Could we have homework programs that are adaptive? Webassign for math and science?