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!
Think about the lawyers who’ve been hugely successful doing what they have done for 20-30+ years in law firms. They aren’t seeing the shift to needing to be technically competent, using technology to be more efficient, using social media to connect with potential clients, or restructuring their firm to take advantage of a variety of…
In 2015 Elijah C. Stroud published The Story of My Minecraft Life on Amazon. Available for Kindle and in paperback, it recounts Stroud and his friend’s journey playing and building in the blocky game environment. Stroud followed it up with The Last Day of Minecraft, which came out in early 2016. According to the description…
There’s no shortage of “nature soundtracks,” but how many of them are the actual sounds from a US National Park? To celebrate its 102nd birthday, the National Park Service is offering ParkTracks, a 12-minute mix of sounds from across various national parks. The sounds were captured by the NPS’s (wonderfully named) Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division,…
Scientists at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management have established a causal relationship between failure and future success, proving German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s adage that “what does not kill me makes me stronger.” Source: Science demonstrates that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger: Researchers find that early-career failure promotes future professional success — ScienceDaily…
Despite coming from Nintendo, however, the first batch of Labo kits weren’t exactly great games; they were simple toys without much lasting appeal. If you weren’t into learning rudimentary coding or endlessly fishing a virtual sea, there wasn’t much to keep you coming back. Even with two young kids in the house, my Labo kits…
Over the past decade as many school budgets have remained stagnant, spending in educational technology has climbed to record levels, with no signs of slowing. As schools around the country consider investing in technology as a way to improve student outcomes, particularly for those students deemed “at-risk,” it’s imperative that district leaders understand the methods…
