My Reflection on What We Learned About Learning Spaces

Starting with the generic, Dr. Thornburg’s article on his theory of learning spaces made sense to me. .  While pondering (in my cave) about the video we watched in class, I started to realize the connection of the cave and the watering hole (our blogs in this case) are really helping my understanding of the material we all learning in this program. But there was something about the model, as presented in the video, that was bugging me. The first was how my mind looked at the three spaces and immediately thought of sequential steps, based on how the material was presented. Eventually I got through this by realizing the cave/watering hole stages intermix.

The other problem I had went deeper. It seemed something was missing. As it turns out, so does Dr. Thornburg.  In the presented article, Dr. Thornburg adds the Lifespace to the initial model to deepen the understanding by doing. That brought it all together for me. Just in this program, we are exposed to the Life stage through both our field experience classes as well as student teaching. As the parent of a UA Engineering student, I also know this is engrained in this process as the engineering programs require co-op work as part of the curriculum. Without learning-by-doing, education would lose some of the practicality of training for a career.

The challenge becomes ensuring the students are using their cave/watering hole mix effectively. If students see reflective blogs or bulletin board entries as “just a requirement” instead of an integral part of learning, they can tend to just write something instead of really taking advantage of the opportunity. I know I’ve struggled through this with some of the “post yours and respond to 2 others” requirements in previous courses. I can say that as I progress through my program, I am getting more and more out of these non-classroom thinking and sharing opportunities. I can see how the Google G Suite for Education can support these inexpensively in schools. Providing opportunities for students to reflect and share, as we are doing in this class, could certainly enhance learning between students. It didn’t look to me like the package contained a specific blogging app, but it looks like it can happen through the Google Classroom portion of the package. The task and schedule management features of G Suite for Education would be a good tool for students to get used. This would give them experience using systems and processes similar to what they will use in the workforce.

As far as physical spaces, much of what we read this week are big ticket items – complete retrofits or new construction of buildings. While most of the materials show how effective they can be, the whole funding issue needs to be addressed. I don’t want to wade into those waters in this context, so I’ll just hit some things I think schools can do with little problem.

The first is paint. Now, my experience in K-12 classrooms has been limited to my kids’ school district and the two schools I’ve done field experience in, but everything seemed to be the standard white walls with muted, if any, accents and trim. I was struck by the vivid colors that showed up in schools in our videos. Repainting with color would be an almost zero additional cost improvement for schools – they just need to order different paints as the classrooms come up for regular repainting. 

A second change I can see nearly every school being able to pull off is the rolling desks.  This would make it much easier to have the kids all together for some direct instruction then transition to other types of learning activities as we are being instructed to incorporate into our plans. Watching some of the ways this is being done in the schools I observe, I see a bit of wasted time and attention as these changes happen. On the other hand, if the classroom is set up with tables, the kids tend to stick to the same partners when collaborating. It looks to me like the desks with wheels can make the management of movement easier in the class.

The online portion of our learning spaces need to be both developed and challenged. Like I mentioned before, the reflection and commenting portion is adding significantly to my learning. I’m nothing special, so if it is helping me, it can help a lot (probably not all) of people. What I think needs to be challenged, is the assumption that some schools seem to go to that if a little is good, more is better.  As referenced in the KQED article, some administrations see virtual schools as a cost-effective replacement for traditional schools. It’s cheaper to buy computing devices than to construct the big-ticket items shown in the videos. I think Dr. Thornburg makes very good points about how many people need that live interaction to not only learn well, but also to teach well.

My last comment will be another about learning spaces at UA. One great aspect that I’ve taken advantage of is the library structure.  Being able to search, evaluate and either download or read on the screen material I need for classes, all from wherever I am, has made learning significantly better for me. Instead of dreading the research because I had to drag myself to the library and walk the stacks to get a journal article, being able to quickly find and evaluate topics allowed me to focus on the things I’m learning in the research. Making the labor easier is making the learning deeper.

That’s all for now.