Four years ago, Chris Nagele did what many other technology executives have done before — he moved his team into an open concept office.
His staff had been exclusively working from home, but he wanted everyone to be together, to bond and collaborate more easily. It quickly became clear, though, that Nagele had made a huge mistake. Everyone was distracted, productivity suffered and the nine employees were unhappy, not to mention Nagele himself.
Classrooms are essentially open offices. Well, they’re even worse than open offices since the desks and chairs are usually not comfortable and their is no ownership of what little space the students get.
What’s more, certain open spaces can negatively impact our memory. This is especially true for hotdesking, an extreme version of open plan working where people sit wherever they want in the work place, moving their equipment around with them.
Whoa, that sounds a lot like how classrooms work now!
…if you pick Customer Engagement then the Digitized Solutions will follow to match what your customer wants. An example of starting from the other side is Apple, which followed Henry Ford’s mantra of not asking the people what they want (“people would have asked for faster horses”), but rather built the musicplayingtelephonecameraPC for a public…
Multimedia technologies penetrate into various spheres of educational activity. The spread of innovations is facilitated by external factors associated with the ubiquitous informatization of society and the need for appropriate preparation of schoolchildren, as well as by internal factors related to the popularization of modern computer equipment and software in schools, the adoption of state…
If society learns to value motivation as much as intelligence or leadership skills, it could be an enormous boon for children. Source: Highly motivated kids have a greater advantage in life than kids with a high IQ Intrinsic motivation that is, it isn’t about external rewards such as stickers or money.
Common Core and vouchers down, but many other reforms still popular. Source: Ten-year Trends in Public Opinion from the EdNext Poll: Common Core and Vouchers Down, but Many Other Reforms Still Popular Fascinating data into common core, tenure, teacher salaries, etc. I especially like the differences in responses to questions such as spending and salaries…
When a New Hampshire district found itself struggling with low test scores and high turnover, it made a radical decision: Flip the traditional model and let kids take over the classrooms. Source: What Happens When Students Control Their Own Education? – The Atlantic A multi year process, with a goal of more than just higher…
“All this time, I was doing it wrong.” Since Erin and I released Hacking Project Based Learning this past December, we have been happy to hear from teachers and students who are benefiting from what we wrote. At the same time, we have received several messages that look like the one above. These are messages…
