Welcome
Schools, colleges and university are just some of the places where learning takes place but school kids and students can spend a lot of their time in these spaces. There are other places where people learn, some through doing courses at work or online or even learning from others around them in all sorts of situations. The posts here are about learning spaces, writings about learning and technology and thoughts and ideas about all of these.
Posted by
Dave Thomson
at
23:05
There are loads of examples of innovative design on web site, in magazines and presentations - how did those come into being? In the majority of cases where good design can be identified the designers and architects have spent time working with the owners or users of a building to convert their vision into reality.
The fact that there are so many bad designs around would suggest that something has gone badly wrong in such cases. In the case of schools might this be because the users are used to their current buildings and can only envisage a better version or that the designers and architects are unable to convert the requirements into suitable designs? Not sure- but whatever the reason there is a desperate need to spend a long time thinking about alternatives and testing our existing thinking around school design before any real planning begins.
The fact that so many kids are not turned on to schools would suggest that what has become the 'standard' school designs are no longer fit for purpose. As an aid to thinking the issues through there is a useful resource at the School Design Research Studio by one Jeffery A. Lackney from the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has produced a paper entitled 33 Principles of Educational Design. The paper provides some real food for thought when considering the design of any new school.
If these principles should contribute to the creation of a vision for new accommodation or be a stimulus to thinking about what outcomes are required for any building programme then perhaps these slides illustrate the results of such thinking.
Posted by
Dave Thomson
at
22:26
Students in the UK are tracked in their performance in English, Maths and Science from KS2 (age 11) through to KS4 (age 16).
The socio-ecomomic circumstances of each and every student is known based on a number of data indicators that provide an effectve tool to make accurate predictions of outcomes at KS4. This data is used by schools to target pupils whose prior attainment data indicates that they should be performing above their actual performance in an effort to ensure that they achieve their potential.
The graph above shows the outomes at the end of KS4 based on a large population of 14 to 19 year olds where it was possible to map individual data from KS2 to KS4 who were able to interact and collaborate online but where the degree of teacher interaction was very low. The graph shows the data divided into four quartiles based on their predicted outcomes and mapped to their level of activity online. The plot shows the difference in performance in the four quartiles for students who were active online and those that were not.
The outcomes are interesting as they indicate that for each group the students who were active online out-perform those that were not active. Further analysis also shows that these outcomes is nothing to do with the active uses being the more able students. Other analysis shows that the outcomes are not dependent on the level of teacher activity.
What would appear to be the case here is that allowing students to collaborate and communicate freely (subject to ensurance of adherance to an acceptable use policy) may well provide a dynamic that is difficult to create in any other way. The potential of online communities harnessed for the benefits of learning would seem to be of significant importance based on these findings.
While such analysis cannot demonstrate a causal relationship between online collaboration and outcomes it does show a strong correlation and one worthy of further investigation.
Posts
