Wide Open (Learning) Spaces

            This week’s topic was about learning spaces. It involved by the physical and technological “space” children can learn in. This article gives a pretty good summary about the physical learning spaces. These flexible learning spaces really do encourage learning and engagement. In this video, the teachers and students discuss how having a room that is adaptable to change has impacted everything for the better. Students being able to collaborate and move around and act like kids while still learning really is making a difference for them. There were several other videos we watched this week that showed different types of learning spaces, and this video showed these massive structures that could be used for all different types of learning, which was amazing to me. I’ve never seen anything like it before, and my dream would be to someday be teaching in a school that allows open learning environments like these and doesn’t just want their students sitting in a desk the entire day. Another video showed a class of younger children, around the age I want to teach (early childhood), and their classroom that can be moved around and adapted by all the individual learners to accommodate their needs. This is a wonderful idea and something I hope I can adapt to my own classroom regardless of the school district I’m in.

            Google Apps for Education is a great resource for the digital portion of a flexible learning. This webpage gives a brief overview GAFE, but it’s basically an education based way of using google apps such as gmail and google docs. I think it could definitely be used in the classroom and help develop learning space. It can be accessed by anyone at any time, which is a difference from the standard eight hour day that students can contact their teacher in now, only while they’re at school. It facilitates a more open, inviting, and accommodating learning environment than ever before.

            As we design future learning spaces, we should question the traditional eight hour school day. I know I did it for 13 years, but the thought of it now exhausts me. Knowing that there are different ways that children learn, there’s a chance that someday, the school day could change. It might still be an eight hour day, but part of it might include distance learning. Even if it is still an eight hour day of school, we should question the structuring of the school day. Like mentioned in the topic video with Brueck this week, is 8 hours of switching classes every 45 minutes necessary? Possibly not. As seen in this video we watched, this is a nontraditional high school that is innovative and doing things in a completely different yet seemingly very successful manner. A full day spent sitting at a desk doing worksheets is just not what the future holds in education, nor should it be.

            As for the University of Akron, I am not on campus for almost anything other than my classes. The more open learning spaces I’ve observed are tables in the library for working with peers, along with the study rooms that one can reserve in the library that you can work with someone in. These are for one’s personal time. In class, there is very little room or even ability to move around and collaborate the way seen in the videos this week. I personally tend to work alone, so I’ve had no issues with Akron’s campus, but someone who needs collaboration could definitely have an issue with the way Akron’s campus and most classes are set up. It’s build for traditional schooling, with a teacher at the front of the room lecturing, not for working together with your peers.