Thomas Deacon Academy in Peterborough UK was one of the buildings created to demonstrate an entirely new approach to the design of schools as part of the UK's Building Schools for the Future programme. The design, brainchild of the well known designer Norman Foster, is certainly nothing like any school I have been to before. The Foster and Partners business has been responsible for some of the most celebrated designs world wide.
The Academy is actually an amalgam of three previous schools to create a school of over 2000 students aged 11 to 18. I visited the school during a typical school day the fact that 2000 pupils were are work there was pretty difficult to believe as the place was not overcrowded, nor were corridors overflowing with the rush of bodies between lessons. First Myth exploded for me was that a school has to look like the schools we all attended.
As with any design there were issues that could have been addressed slightly differently e.g that classrooms were a little smaller than you night ideally want, but they were bright inviting places geared to focused work. Very few straight walls in the design which is often frowned on by teachers as not being suitable for standard classroom use - but these are not standard classrooms with fill glass walls on the interior making classroom activity visible to anyone passing. Two further myths exploded for me were that you have to have rectangular rooms and that working in classrooms that are open for all peer into.
Again this might put some people off claiming that students would be distracted by things going on outside the classroom. I was pretty impressed to see a group of students sitting chatting and laughing outside one of the classrooms sitting on a settee with students inside the room not taking a jot of notice - the novelty had obviously long worn off.
Another exploded myth is that they use thin client systems throughout the school, 1,100 terminals for a school population of 2,200 students! The technical team reported that they were reliable - suffered from some glitches as with any system and had been delivering everything that the students and teachers wanted. There are some fat clients for use with CAD/CAM or some other specific curriculum tasks but everything else is delivered through thin clients.
The concept of floors seems to vanish as although there are levels there are also structures that defy the normal idea of floors - the library is built above the dual lecture theatre but that is buried into the ground so the layout looks very different from what you would normally expect.
All in all the school opens a whole new set of ideas around the notion of what a school should look like - not surprisingly the students seem to love it.
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Forgive me - but "1,100 terminals for a school population of 2,200 students!" - sounds like 1,100 terminals too few! This means that only 50% of the students have instant access to the wealth of information and opinion provided by the web?
I suspect that personal devices like the iPhone/iPod touch (and they'll be lots more soon - more once the other manufacturers raise their game) will make infomation ubiquitous - available to anyone with a mobile phone (more than 50% of students?).
And I wonder if the "50% access to information" statistic will seem anachronistic?
Also, I wonder what how learning will change once students no longer need to be taught facts - but instead the ability to find, understand information and synthesize new facts? This is a much more difficult proposition!
It's been a long time since I was at school (except on a voluntary basis - teaching web programming at my local primary) - but I can't understand why children are taught facts that I'd google.
...perhaps google should be a KS subject?