http://www.edi.msstate.edu/work/pdf/history_studio_based_learning.pdf
Studio Based Learning
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Category Archives: Conceptual Framework
Lifelong kindergarten
Media Lab and MIT and Lifelong Kindergarten
Documentation Centre – Wheelock College
The Making Learning Visible Project began as a collaboration between researchers at Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and educators in the municipal schools of Reggio Emilia, Italy. They sought to bring together Project Zero’s experience of creating authentic and ongoing assessments and Reggio’s experience documenting the individual and group learning of young children.
The first phase of this project was geared toward better understanding the practices in Reggio Emilia’s municipal schools and the ways they supported learning. Two key practices came to the fore—learning in groups and documenting learning through a variety of media to support learning. These became the two foci of the Making Learning Visible (MLV) Project, which worked in subsequent phases to support these practices in U.S. classrooms preschool thru high school.
Teachers who have participated in the MLV Project are collaborating with the Documentation Studio in a number of ways: they share documentation they are working on, exhibit their work, and share perspectives on the work of others.
For more information about the Making Learning Visible Project, visit their website. For resources developed by the Making Learning Visible Project, visit their Weebly page.
Learning Studios
Active Learning Collaboratories Begin to Define the New Classroom Experience
Classroom facility planning and attendant faculty development to leverage new active learning collaboraties will come into focus in the 2012 calendar. New gold standards for this category of learning spaces are emerging on campuses like the University of Southern California. Rhetorical commitments to bring learning experiences into the 21st century are made possible through an alignment of academic strategic planning, academic technology leadership and focused project planning and partnerships with facilities management — no small challenge on most higher education campuses.
Traditional lecture halls are being replaced by active learning studios. Dialogue cafes with telepresence video conferencing capabilities augment and support experiential learning curriculum focused on cross-cultural and cross-national understanding. Integrated “magic” touch screen panels are enabling geospatial and GIS explorations in a wide range of disciplines from statistics to poverty studies, from history to astrophysics. Scientific visualization walls are working their way into learning spaces to support learning of technique, active discovery and “lab work,” presentations, and collaborative explorations.
Many campuses have a showcase learning space. Relatively few have a systematic approach to building and supporting learning spaces across the campus. While others on campus will continue to romance the value of the nailed to the floor student desk (“that is how I learned”), the time has come to create a new “standards” orientation to different levels of technology-enabled learning spaces informed by a catalog of different teaching and learning approaches. Technology, governance, and focus on student success in the classroom have all matured from the era of the wild, wild west over the past two decades. In 2012, I believe we may see the development of a draft taxonomy of such a new standards orientation developed by a coalition of architects, technologists, instructional designers, students, and yes, even a couple of instructors.
Origin of Good Ideas
http://facultyrow.com/video/where-good-ideas-come-from
The Genius of the Tinkerer – The secret to innovation is combining odds and ends
… ideas are works of bricolage. They are, almost inevitably, networks of other ideas. We take the ideas we’ve inherited or stumbled across, and we jigger them together into some new shape.
Adjacent possible
Stuart Kauffman – the adjacent possible – the linkage between and among first order combinations. The phrase captures both the limits and the creative potential of change and innovation. The adjacent possible is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself.
The strange and beautiful truth about the adjacent possible is that its boundaries grow as you explore them. Each new combination opens up the possibility of other new combinations. Think of it as a house that magically expands with each door you open. You begin in a room with four doors, each leading to a new room that you haven’t visited yet. Once you open one of those doors and stroll into that room, three new doors appear, each leading to a brand-new room that you couldn’t have reached from your original starting point. Keep opening new doors and eventually you’ll have built a palace.
Walltalker
Creative Design Cycle
Creative Design (as described by Mitch Resnick – MIT Media Lab and others)
- IMAGINE
- CREATE
- PLAY
- SHARE
- REFLECT
- IMAGINE, etc., etc., etc. …..
Phased Development Plan for the IL
VISION
To create a classroom space where one can explore, create and experience innovations in pedagogical excellence. Image that space as signaling possibilities by simply observing and participating in the actions / interactions of those teaching and learning within the environment – both physical and virtual.
PURPOSE
To answer the following questions, in a time of substantial change, globalization, and ubiquitous access to information
- What does it mean to teach well?
- What might teaching and learning look like?
- What environments support / foster changes in teaching & learning?
GOAL
- To work with faculty, staff, students, and affiliates to provide appropriate tools and spaces to imagine and explore meaningful innovations and pedagogical practices
- To work with developers and innovators to incubate significant educational tools and learning environments
Objectives
- To support faculty and students to obtain grants and other funding options to support and sustain their innovations
- To provide consultation and leadership in the Okanagan Valley and beyond to pedagogical excellence in a time of change and possibility (e.g. school districts, ministries, NGOs, etc.)
OUR ADVANTAGE
- Driven and nimble
- Supported by academics with a proven record of innovation and pedagogical excellence
- Networked to existing partnerships with ICT innovators / developers in the Okanagan Valley
- Networked with existing academic partnerships / affiliations with national and international universities
COMPONENTS
The ILC is made up of three distinct components (classroom, pedagogical incubator, and design lab) that will be developed gradually and modified regularly as budget and space allocations allow. We recognize the word innovative is problematic, as what is state of the art, edgy and exciting can quickly become traditional and ordinary. We also recognize that without innovations in pedagogical practices, exciting technologies can be used for mundane purposes. Therefore, we are thoughtfully creating an iterative model of development that stages investments of hardware and software in a phased way in order to leverage budget and donations in a thoughtful and creative manner and match and enhance pedagogical endeavors.
PHASE #1
- Acquire furnishings (tables, chairs, etc.)
- Install writeable walls
- Install wireless, short throw projectors x 2
- Acquire Apple TV units to manage projector outputs
- Install adequate power outlets
PHASE #2
- Acquire iPads and Bretford charging cart (display adapters, apps)
- Acquire MAC mini and large LCD screen to use as a maker station and display unit on south wall and to serve as iTunes hub for iPads
PHASE #3
- Acquire remote viewing software and install cameras
- Acquire 2 more MAC minis and large LCD screens to add to existing maker station on south wall
PHASE #4
- Begin to purchase peripheral items based on need / interest as budget allows
The first floor plan
Behind the ILC Design
In 2008 I attended Design and the Elastic Mind at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Images and ideas have stayed with me, prompting the question – What does educational experimental design look like at the intersection of innovation, functionality, aesthetics, and deep knowledge of brain research?
Design is the bridge between the abstraction of research and the tangible requirements of practice (Itrusha & Roberts, 2008). It is “the translation of scientific and technological revolutions into approachable objects [and examples] that change people’s lives” (p. 4). Design helps develop the elastic mind that forms and informs innovation. Bergdoll (2008, p. 10) suggests mental elasticity creates the “flexibility and strength to embrace progress and harness it” and is “best suited to confront a changing world of seemingly limitless challenges and possibilities.”
Now, in an increasing time of substantial change, globalization and almost ubiquitous access to the Internet, literature (Wagner, 2012, and others) suggests we need problem solvers, innovators, and inventors who are self-reliant and can think creatively and logically. People with minds elastic enough to survive and thrive with change and uncertainty. Ironically, at the same time, educators, economists, parents and students criticize existing formal education institutions, suggesting traditional venues are not fostering innovative capacity, encouraging student engagement, and/or integrating technology meaningfully into learning. As we come closer to the end of the second decade of the 21st century, the intent of the ILC is to (1) acknowledge the inadequate models of innovative teaching practice and the limited number of creative learning environments where educators, learners, and industry can design, build, incubate and research imaginative technology enhanced teaching and learning, and (2) to provide some examples of what might be.
The purpose of the ILC is to investigate the look, feel and design of an innovative learning environment within a formal educational setting. It will investigate both physical and virtual elements used to disrupt traditional teaching and support interactive, playful, deep learning in a more studio based way, building on Johnson’s notion of the genius of the tinkerer (2010). Specifically, the ILC, through collaboration, research and practice, will seek existing examples of exemplary institutional design; imagine with educational leaders what might be required; partner with industry and academics with an understanding of design to assemble, use and research spaces that by their very design (furnishing, technology, pedagogy, look and feel) invite changed and enhanced practice.
Findings will inform Canadian companies working at the forefront of (1) educational software design and (2) educational furnishing design to imagine and understand the impact physical space and design of learning environments has on learner engagement and the development of creative potential and meaningful learning for learners – both educators and students. Findings will also inform academics, and educators as to the potential of disruptive learning environments to support innovative practices and suggest ways to design learning experiences suggested by Einstein when he said, “I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.” This research will continue to an understanding of the conditions required to foster and sustain innovations in teaching and learning.
References
Bond, T. (2012). Flipping the classroom with Glogsteredu. iTunes iBooks: California Baptist University & GlogsterEDU.
Johnson, S. (Sept. 25, 2010). The Genius of the Tinkerer. The Wall street Journal – Saturday Essay. Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703989304575503730101860838.html
Wagner, T. (2012). Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change The World. New York: Scribner.
Young, J. & McCormick, T. (2012) (Eds). Rebooting the academy: 12 tech innovators who are transforming campus. Washington, DC: The Chronicle of Higher Education.