Future Learning Environments — a landscape view (part 1)
15th May, 2008Dr Kenn Fisher, when opening a summit on Global Learning Environments recently, presented a compelling body of evidence to support the premise that the learning environment does influence student attainment.
He outlined the need to align pedagogy and space to meet the needs of a new generation of students identified by the Oblingers (Susan Greenfield and others) as the “Net Generation” who are multi-media literate, always connected and expect immediate responses.
He went on to explain that evolving pedagogies require a balance to be struck between explicit teaching and independent learning.
The settings will need to support various learning styles will be multiple and flexible something Kenn describes as “The pedagogy of space”.
This issue has been underlined by the Demos report “Their Space-Education for a digital generation” which highlighted a number of ‘types’:
- Digital pioneers
- Creative producers
- Everyday communicators
- Information gatherers
Demos point out, however, that characterising children in this way is not about identifying good or bad ways of using technology or about fixing young people into certain types (as many young people use some or all of the ‘types’ and combined them in different ways. Instead ,it is a way of describing life with digital technology from the perspective of children.
The next part of this article will look at some Futurelab publications and NCSL’s BSF Leadership Programme.
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Bob Harrison
Dan Sutch
Richard Sandford
Leon Cych
Martin Owen
Tim Reader
May 15th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
[...] In diesem Zusammenhang bin ich (via flux) auf zwei spannende Beitrge gestoen, die den Zusammenhang von neuen Lernanforderungen und Lernumgebungen thematisieren. Dazu heit es in einem Beitrag der American Architectural Foundation: “Unlike the designs for schools and classrooms, which have changed little since the 1950s, advances in digital technologies have revolutionized the way we communicate and access information, solve problems, live, and learn. Todays mobile digital devices, powerful computers, and the Internet have become indispensable tools in business, medicine, government, higher education, and research. These same technologies are also coming into our nations schools and classrooms, and in a selectbut growing number of instancestechnology is changing the way students learn and teachers teach.” [...]