July 3, 2017
Team Teaching is all finished!
This whole process went really smoothly, and it was really insightful to co-teach a lesson with a fellow classmate, Jana. Our lesson was based off of the section in the NMC/CoSN Horizon Report that focuses on redesigning learning spaces. The NMC/CoSN Horizon Report “examines emerging technologies for their potential impact on and use in teaching, learning, and creative inquiry in schools” (2016).
Since there was so much helpful information in our section, we decided to focus in on how we can redesign our own learning spaces, and why we redesign our own learning spaces. We started off the lesson with introducing “traditional” learning spaces, where all students are facing forward, no flexible seating, and very plain looking classrooms. It was pretty clear that we all felt that traditional classroom designs were not appropriate for our new teaching style preferences.
We split our class into 3 groups of 3, where each group was to design their “ideal” learning space. We discussed what patterns we noticed between all three spaces, how the furniture was arranged, and other visual things.
Then, we got into the discussion of what is the most important aspect in a learning space? By using PollEverywhere, we were able to come up with three different questions.
- What is the most important aspect of a classroom?
- Ranking in order from most important to least important: flexible seating, lighting, temperature, decorations (visuals), and power sources.
- Describe your ideal classroom in one word.
- Word cloud – pictured below. Words like flexible, welcoming, spacious, lit, mobility, comfortable, inclusive, inviting.
- What is one thing you can change in your current classroom to redesign your learning space in a way that is student-centric.
- Different phrases and ideas, such as “Flexible seating arrangements”, “new windows”, and “stools along the counter”.
I really enjoyed using PollEverywhere in the presentation, because we had immediate feedback to elicit new discussions and ideas. Everyone seemed to be engaged with the alternating between polls and discussions. We were able to talk about the importance of redesigning classroom spaces so that learners are able to be more successful.
Our lesson wrapped up in about 30 minutes and we were able to get some great ideas out to our classmates, and some immediate takeaways for all of us to consider with our classroom in the fall.
Adams Becker, S., Freeman, A., Geisinger Hall, C., Cummins, M., and Yuhnke, B. (2016). NMC/CoSN Horizon Report: 2016 K-12 Edition. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.
Helen Fountain 