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!
Over a period of two years, skateboarder Christian Flores fell down thousands of times, broke boards, went to the hospital twice, and cracked a rib trying to do a laser flip down a triple set of stairs. Source: Landing the hardest trick after 2 years of trying A great example to show students on how to…
Can we get real? There are a lot of well-intentioned assignments and projects that frankly have very little LEARNING that goes with them. Create a poster of the solar system. The kid spends a lot of time (and money on supplies) with the outcome that they can (hopefully) identify the 7 planets. This is a DOK…
I’m much better at controlling myself now than I was when I was a kid. I’m more organized and less impulsive. Why is that? What happened in my brain to make this happen? A study published yesterday in Current Biology could have a clue. Scientists studied the changes that happen in the brain as kids…
As I dove deeper into UX design, I began to question my approach to classroom systems and course architecture. One of the key ideas in UX is to build systems that people will intuitively understand rather than trying to get people to fit into a system. Yet, in classrooms, I had spent hours teaching procedures….
It sounds like a paradox. How can you teach computer programming without a screen? Computer programming is a term synonymous with coding, after all. Text, letters, syntax, arranged in meaningful sequences that give machines instructions. We code with our keyboards and we see code on our screens. But there is a clear distinction between coding…
What a mundane list. Online hand-in is the next big thing? Really? A thinner, screen? Is this what excitement over educational technology has come to – more surveillance cameras? Source: The next big thing(s) My idea for the next big thing? When technology is viewed as a integral component in allowing students to pursue their passion and…