'Learning Spaces' of Tomorrow

This past Sunday, Zoe Branigan-Pipe and I had an opportunity to work with teachers at the Science Leadership Academy. Titling our workshop, 'Classrooms of Tomorrow', our intent was to lead teachers to design solutions based on what they'd learned at Educon. Ideally, groups were to develop ideas into plans that could be implemented as soon as... tomorrow.

Zoe and I had spoken many times about how we might capture the conversational spirit of Educon, and in the end, we decided to leverage LiveScribe smartpen technology to archive the conversations of on-site participants. We were also purposeful in engaging our online audience, who also collaborated in the design of a learning space using Scribblar.

A Few EduConversations
The pencasts below are interactive. If you click on a button that says 'plan' or 'conversation', you'll be able to hear the discussion that led up to each group's design solution. Otherwise, you can click on any element in a groups design, to hear their thinking about that particular element. Each group was asked to design a space in consideration of 3 big ideas; so click on any keyword if you'd like to hear the group's rationale or design focus.

Design Team 1
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Design Team 2
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Design Team 3
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Design Team 4
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Although we couldn't capture the audio, our remote group had a conversation that resulted in the design of this space:


In the end, the word 'classroom' proved to limit the thinking of some participants who struggled to think outside of that box. As a result, our conversation is now called 'Learning Spaces of Tomorrow'. Consider this post as the public presentation of the ideas of our participants. What jumps out at you?

Photo Credit: Andy Forgrave