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Technology Is Changing the Way Kids Learn
… And the Classrooms in Which They Do It.

Advertising supplement provided by Paxton / Patterson
By Stephen H. Daniels

One of the criticisms of modular, vendor-supplied curriculum is that mousetrap and CO2-powered vehicles, which all vendors seem to include as part of middle school curriculum, while fun, are of limited educational value. In the case of the more reliable of the modular vendors, however, curriculum is created by educators, or former educators, based on technology standards set by federal, state, and in some cases local jurisdictions.

One of the architectural modules widely installed in U.S. classrooms has students exploring architectural history and comparing architectural styles on Day One of a 20-day program. On Day Two, students are doing simple sketches, mimicking what they have seen the day before. By Day Three, students are interviewing clients and doing preliminary site plans, and by Day Four, they are doing conceptual models and drawing sections and elevations of simple plans. Eventually they will create 3-D models, consider the effects of the sun on a building and environmental site issues. They will design a transit center, have an introduction to AutoCAD, and, at the end, make a presentation to a “client” of a design problem of their choosing. All the while, they have recorded lessons learned in an electronic journal.

Educators refer to two very different teaching theories: directed instruction—lectures, worksheets and tests with specific expected responses; and what is sometimes called constructivist teaching, which focuses on learning through problem-solving and stresses group work in place of individual performance. It is critical that architects understand the distinction, because the classrooms for each are very different. Small classrooms with rows of desks, maybe 30 of them, will suffice for the former.

Clusters, not Rows; Tables, not Desks

But tables are replacing rows of desks in many contemporary classrooms. Display and storage areas are being added, and learning centers are being introduced. These design features are the outgrowth of a growing emphasis on project-based learning. This project-based approach to learning establishes collaborative technology learning environments, or “collaboratories,” that enable project-enhanced science/technology learning. Tables provide space for students to work together in either large, or small, groups. Display areas enable teachers and students to exhibit projects, and storage areas give students a place to house their “works in progress.” Learning centers provide the opportunity for self-directed learning.

In some states—Virginia is one—traditional desks have been replaced by tables in more than one-quarter of all elementary classrooms, Nine of ten Virginia elementary schools have student work stations in their classrooms and 70 percent have special rooms for tutorials and small groups of students. Because contemporary teaching often crosses traditional academic disciplinary lines, many classrooms also now have moveable walls to accommodate student groups that may combine more than one class. One fifth of all Virginia elementary schools and half the state’s middle schools incorporate moveable walls as part of school design.

“More traditional arrangements are being replaced gradually by nontraditional organization of classrooms,” says a recent report on design features in Virginia’s public schools. “Elementary and middle school classrooms organized by grade-level and high school classrooms organized by academic discipline are changing to include thematic, interdisciplinary, and family clusters.”

In each of the three years since 2000, according to the U.S. Department of Education, U.S. new school construction totaled more than $20 billion. The $20.34 billion in new construction in 2000 was the highest in history, and in each of the years since 2000, slightly more than half total school construction spending was on new facilities.

It is interesting to note the elements of that new construction, the extent to which industrial technology and vocational shops were a part of new school designs and the degree of technology support that went into new facilities. The numbers reflect the trend toward advanced technology education.

At the high school level, 35.7 percent of new schools included facilities for industrial technology classes; 26.8 percent included vocational shops. Just over nine percent of all new middle schools included industrial tech facilities; 3.1 percent, vocational shops. Nearly all—98.2 percent—of the high schools under construction in 2002 were supported by local area networks. Nearly 97 percent included fiber optics or cable. At the middle school level, 96.9 percent of all new facilities in 2002 included LANs; 98.4 percent, fiber optics or cable.