School Design Studio

Virtual Worlds, Learning and Games

Constance Steinkuehle, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison known for her work on cognition, learning and literacy in massively multiplayer online games recently published an interesting article entitled "Virtual Worlds, Learning, & the New Pop Cosmopolitanism" in Teachers College Record getting a lot of press.

She states: "American schools largely remain locked within a Ford type factory model of industry and efficiency; games, on the other hand, are forward leaning, recruiting intellectual practices, dispositions, and forms of social organization that are aligned with many of today’s “new capitalist” workplaces."

Game theory folks has been around for a while...its role in learning is well established.

Dr. Steinkuehle is specifically interested in massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) as a way of young people to learn and create "self-sustaining online communities of learning and practice". She suggests, obviously, for any adult parent with a child, that "there is a great generational divide on the matter of video games"; meaning to those of us over 35 video games are a waste of time, and even a way of "introducing our youth to violent, misogynistic themes".

She suggests however; "For those younger, they are a (if not the) leading form of entertainment, a resource for creativity and innovation, and a new campfire around which to socialize.

Apparently more than eight out of 10 kids have video games at home! What a surprise. There is a "huge cultural transformation of “our society’s massive shift toward electronic media”. And you know the whole argument....passive participation...shorter attention spans...etc. Well, Dr. Steinkuehle finds that gamers are engaged in some rather powerful learning that she says "rivals the contemporary classroom"...and I'd bet are probably much much more interesting than school too.

FUN FACT: Did you know that (only) three game titles that she researched had a total population of 9.5 million gamers! We can't ignore this trend!

What does this mean for education? Read Dr. Steinkuehle article...

Children, Youth & Environments

If you haven't done already, you owe it to yourself to visit Children, Youth and Environments, a wonderful site for research on environments for children in a variety of settings, not just school environments. When we think in this culture about kids, we often focus on structured and institutional settings such as schools and child care settings. However, there are many latent environments that I would argue are as important, if not, MORE important for child development such as the home, oudoor environments and all forms of public places.

"Children, Youth and Environments is a refereed publication dedicated to improving the lives of young people. The journal has a multidisciplinary audience of researchers, policy makers and professionals in 151 countries and is guided by a distinguished Editorial Advisory Board."

"In addition to peer-reviewed research articles, on this site you will find field reports, book reviews, a database of individuals and organizations, a calendar of upcoming events, an extensive searchable bibliography, video links, and much more. Our unique combination of information resources facilitates the sharing of knowledge and experience concerning the development of children and youth in different environments."

33 Principles for Educational Design

I have enjoyed reading your "33 Principles of Educational Design". It struck a chord with me because too many times I see designers jumping in and rushing for an 'architectural' result. There are some amazing opportunities out there at the moment, and dare I say it, 'most' are being completely wasted with a lack of proper pre-planning, consultation, and vision. It is very easy to read and understand, and this clarity is obviously intended for its value to educators. I wish that something like this could be distributed to all schools by their respective Departments, just to show what is possible, and what they should expect from their architects.

"Sam Aukland, Principal, Aukland Architecture"

12 Design Principles Based on Brain-based Learning Research

Jeffery A. Lackney, Ph.D.
Based on a workshop facilitated with Randall Fielding, AIA

1. Rich-simulating environments – color, texture, "teaching architecture", displays created by students (not teacher) so students have connection and ownership of the product.

2. Places for group learning – breakout spaces, alcoves, table groupings to facilitate social learning and stimulate the social brain; turning breakout spaces into living rooms for conversation.

3. Linking indoor and outdoor places – movement, engaging the motor cortex linked to the cerebral cortex, for oxygenation.

4. Public places containing symbols of the school community’s larger purpose to provide coherency and meaning that increases motivation (warning: go beyond slogans).

5. Safe places – reduce threat, especially in urban settings.

6. Variety of places – provide a variety of places of different shapes, color, light, nooks & crannies.

7. Changing displays – changing the environment, interacting with the environment stimulates brain development. Provide display areas that allow for stage set type constructions to further push the envelope with regard to environmental change.

8. Have all resources available – provide educational, physical and the variety of settings in close proximity to encourage rapid development of ideas generated in a learning episode. This is an argument for wet areas/ science, computer-rich workspaces all integrated and not segregated. Multiple functions and cross-fertilization of ideas are primary goal.

9. Flexibility – a common principle in the past continues to be relevant. Many dimensions of flexibility of place are reflected in other principles.

10. Active/passive places – students need places for reflection and retreat away from others for intrapersonal intelligence as well as places for active engagement for interpersonal intelligence.

11. Personalized space – the concept of homebase needs to be emphasized more than the metal locker or the desk; this speaks to the principle of uniqueness; the need to allow learners to express their self-identity, personalize their special places, and places to express territorial behaviors.

12. The surrounding community as the optimal learning environment – need to find ways to fully utilize all urban and natural environments as the primary learning setting, the school as the fortress of learning needs to be challenged and conceptualized more as a resource-rich learning center that supplements life-long learning. Technology, distance learning, community and business partnerships, home-based learning, all need to be explored as alternative organizational structures for educational institutions of the present and future.

Caveats
This list is not intended to be comprehensive in any way. A second caveat to presenting these design principles for brain-compatible learning environments concerns the need to use as many of these principles in combination in the design of a school building as possible. Many principles reinforce each other in providing a coherency and wholeness often lacking in buildings designed around a single concept/fad, like open schools or house concepts. School designs that incorporate a variety of these principles will by definition have the flexibility to accommodate a wide array of learning styles.

See the full paper originally published on Design Share.

Do Facilities Play a Key Role in Learning?

A recent article entitled written by Ese Isiorho a reporter for the Fort Wayne News Sentinel: “Do Facilities Play a Key Role in Learning?” (News Sentinel, Ft. Wayne, IN, 1.4.07) quotes Lackney who has studied the link between the quality of education and older buildings as saying, “If I was to generalize, there is usually a 5 percent lower test score in buildings with lower quality ratings.”

Locally (in Fort Wayne, Indiana) the numbers support his findings. Standardized test scores in FWCS, whose 53 buildings average 52 years old, fall 10 percent below the state average. The average age of school buildings in the United States is 40 years old, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics.

“It is clear that a clean, orderly, uncrowded, well-maintained environment matters greatly,” Lackney said. “There is much research over the past 30 years that bears out the influence of the school environment on student and teacher morale and satisfaction.”

Getting Serious @ Gunma Kokusai Academy

These kids are deep at work trying to figure out what the Sensei wants, and getting it right. At least they get to work in style. Check out this furniture! - wish you had this kind of fun place to work in school when you were seven years old?

This Gunma Kokusai Academy, a private English immersion school in Ota City, Gunma-ken, Japan, one of its kind in the entire country, thanks to a forward thinking City Council and MInistry of Education willing to try something different. This is a demonstration public school in effect; a school able to bypass the existing school regulations and policies with the help of the Japanese Ministry of Education who designated it a Special Zone School with waivers allowing deviations from standard curriculum and approved textbooks. Foreign-credentialed teachers are lead teachers in classrooms and all courses taught in English.

Change isn't easy...Wish them luck!

To learn more about the policies of the Japanese Ministry of Education towards the future of public education, such as the concept of YUTORI (allowing children 'room to grow' without - their words!: "cramming knowledge") and IKIRUCHIKARA (cultivating an environment for a "zest for living") please visit: MEXT

Lost in Translation...

My colleague Kaname Yanagisawa and I were touring a wonderfully new school facility a few months back in Japan and I noticed a strange thing. New school designs have taken to providing what are called "Japanese Rooms" - what I could might rather call a Japanese Culture Studio, an attempt within the school to teach traditional Japanese rituals such as the tea ceremony. However, I noticed something out of place. Viewing through this beautiful traditional Japanese room with tatami mats and shoji screens was a perfect view of...the school parking lot! What is wrong with this picture?

Clearly, if you compare with the picture on the right, there is somthing missing from our new school's Japanese room - a view of NATURE! Could it be that all the focus on teaching kids about tea ceremonies inside the space, educators (and architects) forgot the critical importance of the inside-outside connection in traditional Japanese architecture? Or does it just provide an object lesson in the modern Japanese society? Certainly, the whole reason Japanese rooms have become all the craze in new school design is precisely the sense of urgency in educating their young in traditional ways, before this cultural knowledge is completely lost. Unfortunately, in this case, the design appears to be lost in translation...

Visit Jission Temple

Fresh Start for SDRS

Please note that this new blog site of mine updates and extends my older site http://schoolstudio.engr.wisc.edu. This site continues to reside at the University of Wisconsin.

About SDRS

School Design Research Studio seeks to advance the knowledge of effective physical environments for learning by promoting collaborative design and cooperative research.

We promote collaboration in planning, design and management and action research that, engages children, youth, parents, teachers, and surrounding community. We encourage all motivated designers driven to reflective practice to share their in-process, planning and design concepts in the spirit of research hypotheses. We invite all motivated researchers inspired to share their exploratory thinking in an interactive exchange.