I am flying home today (or last week because it took some time to post) from Kansas City and the EDspaces conference. After touring facilities, listening to speakers, interviewing vendors and testing furniture, it is time for a little reflection.
Mostly conference reaffirms and adds detail to things you already know. For the most part, this conference did just that.
Top Topics
- Flexible Seating – Yes! have more than one type of furniture in a school and in a room. Floor seating, soft seating, wobbly chairs and standing height tables were all over the floor show and discussions on implementation and the educational reason behind the switch were in the sessions.
- Movement – While integrated with flexible seating, this concept was so prevalent that it needed its own bullet point. Beyond the wobble bottom stools, there were various mechanisms for students to rock, tilt and swivel. Moving bodies created active minds and classroom management would be reduced by letting kids move a little was the mantra. Beyond the “in place” motion almost everything was on wheels. Even items that previously had nothing to do with wheels, like booth seating for a cafeteria, now are available with various ingenious locking mechanisms
- Makers Space – Every major manufacturer had maker space tables and storage on wheels. Bins were interchangeable and transferred between storage cabinets and under tables or desks. Chunky butcher block tops, peg boards, wheels and under table storage are apparently a must. The best in show, Edison Table, even included trash and recycling bins under the table. While at least three different workshops focused on the maker space concept.
- Magnet Connections – All things are connected with magnets. Back to the Edison Table, where giant magnets hold up metal stools for cleaning and moving the table with seating. Watch out! I pinched my fingers. Whiteboard panels stick to one another. Magnets are controls on flip-top tables to keep them up or down. Even a set of bookcases can be ganged with magnets; although, when the rep demonstrated the disconnection, the shelves flew out of the side.
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| Edison Table |
- Branding – Breaking down large buildings into identifiable areas by use of color, signage, iconography was completed most of the school tours.
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| The Freshmen Wing |
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| Each wing had a different icon |
- Collaboration – we need it, teachers need it, kids need it, and employers want people who do it….enough said? Let’s provide space for it and furniture to support it.
Underlying the innovation and desire to create dynamic, engaging, collaborative and student-centric environments was the understanding that we need cultural change for it to be successful. Each session which showed successful projects stated the essential involvement of the teaching AND district staff with a heavy dose of professional development. They discussed the long process of visioning and ideation where programs and pedagogies developed. If only I had a nickel for every time someone said “PD.” And we aren’t talking about the Police Department. Even the two keynote speaker stressed this reality of a cultural shift. The first Sir Ken Robinson would like to blow up the educational system and start over. Jaime Casap from Google, however, took a softer approach and suggested evolution versus revolution. He acknowledged the strength of what our educational system has brought to the country, but we cannot stop updating. Every six months a chrome book operating system gets updated why not the next “update” here. Nothing is stagnated, and the work of keeping education relevant never stops.
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| Olathe West High School |
The examples the Jamie gave was about why are expectations and assessments are so off. When presenting to your boss at the completion of a world-changing big scale project you don’t say I completed this by myself, without discussing it with anyone and without testing the idea with a focus group or receiving feedback. I also finished it in one try, and now I am done and will never look at this project again. Also, the steps to that world-changing solution were neatly structured and written out in a book that you just follow as you would a recipe… However, most tests and projects are just that way in school.
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Missouri Innovation Campus
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In the end, this disconnect is the actual difference as I see it. We are not creating this new world of education just because it is cool looking or entertaining to unreasonably unfocused hyperactive children. We need to change because we want different things out our children. We want collaborative, problem-solving innovators ….hmmm doesn’t that sound like the description of the space earlier?
Underlying the innovation and desire to create dynamic, engaging, collaborative and student-centric environments was the understanding that we need cultural change for it to be successful. Each session which showed successful projects stated the essential involvement of the teaching AND district staff with a heavy dose of professional development. They discussed the long process of visioning and ideation where programs and pedagogies developed. If only I had a nickel for every time someone said “PD.” And we aren’t talking about the Police Department. Even the two keynote speaker stressed this reality of a cultural shift. The first Sir Ken Robinson would like to blow up the educational system and start over. Jaime Casap from Google, however, took a softer approach and suggested evolution versus revolution. He acknowledged the strength of what our educational system has brought to the country, but we cannot stop updating. Every six months a chrome book operating system gets updated why not the next “update” here. Nothing is stagnated, and the work of keeping education relevant never stops.
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