Innovation in education can look like lots of things, like incorporating new technology or teaching methods, going on field trips, rejecting social norms, partnering with the local community.
It can be a floating school in an impoverished region, like the one in Lagos, Nigeria.
Or it can be a school that’s blind to gender, like Egalia, in Stockholm, Sweden.
Keep scrolling to see what the future of education can, and probably should, look like.
Makoko Floating School. Lagos, Nigeria. The school that floats.
NLE
In the floating neighborhood of Makoko, this all ages school serves as a communal learning space and example for future building projects in Africa’s coastal regions.
Makoko’s triangular frame is three stories high, built to resist rising water levels in the lagoon. At 1,000 square feet, the school (created byarchitecture firm NLÉ, the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the United Nations) includes a play area, compost toilets, and classrooms, all of which can house up to 100 students or residents.
When journalist Jessica Collins visited Makoko in 2013 with photographer Iwan Baan, she recalled the structure “rising like a beacon out of the murky Lagos Lagoon.”
The UN estimates that by 2050, 28 African countries will see their populations double. Considering the fact that Africa currently has the youngest age distribution of any global regions, there is an ever-growing need to help those children who don’t have access to basic services.
Ørestad Gymnasium. Copenhagen, Denmark. The school in a cube.
Mathias Eis Schultz
Ørestad Gymnasium is one giant classroom, where more than 1,100 high school students spend half their time learning in an expansive glass cube — a “gymnasium,” as parts of Europe still call secondary schools — to avoid traditional instruction.
By encouraging students to collaborate in wide-open settings, the school hopes kids will be equipped to think flexibly on diverse topics later in life.
“We want to have teaching where the students make research and work together in solving real problems,” headmaster Allan Kjær Andersen tells Tech Insider. “So we want to be an open school that is in connection with the outside world.”
The open spaces, which are adorned with equally spacious “drums” for a more relaxed learning environment, encourage students to assume an active role in their own education. Kids break off into groups and form makeshift classrooms, sometimes with teachers to guide them. Movable walls and bookshelves create more intimate learning settings.
“It’s not enough to give them knowledge, you also have to give them a way of transforming knowledge into action,” Andersen says. “And that’s very important for us, and I think it is important for modern schools.”
Big Picture Learning. Providence, Rhode Island. The school in the real world.
Big Picture Learning
The Big Picture Learning model breaks down the walls between education and the working world.
From the beginning, k-12 students learn their creative passions will come first. To help stoke those passions, students are paired with mentors who work in the fields the students want to someday enter.
“The most important element of the education at a Big Picture Learning school is that students learn in the real world,” says Rodney Davis, communications director at Big Picture. The system is currently in place at 55 schools nationwide.
To that end, each student completes an LTI, or Learning Through Internship. “The projects are connected to the student’s interests and meet the needs of the mentors,” Davis says, whether that involves starting a business, fixing up cars, or learning the letter of the law.
Egalia Pre-school. Stockholm, Sweden. The school without gender.
Egalia
The Egalia school system is founded on total equality between students. The system is made up of two schools, Egalia and Nicolaigården, which reject gender-based pronouns in the hopes of grooming kids to think of one another on equal terms.
Instead of “he” and “she,” kids are either called by their first names or referred to as “they.” It’s part of a mission to avoid discrimination of all kinds.
“That [includes] gender, religion, age, class, sexual orientation, gender expression, disability,” Headmaster Lotta Rajalin tells Tech Insider. “This approach is imbued in every aspect of our day to day work with the children as well as in how we interact with the parents and each other.”
Kids learn to judge each other on their actions, not stereotypes.
“It is important that the children learn the basis of democracy both in practice and theory in order to be good world citizens who do not discriminate,” Rajalin says. “A good self-belief is the basis for learning and development.”
AltSchool. San Francisco, California. The school of Silicon Valley.
Melia Robinson/Tech Insider
AltSchool is a complete departure from traditional education, shirking the traditional testing model for one that improves technology skills and gets kids thinking flexibly so they can adapt as the world changes.
Kids turn everyday objects into circuit boards and learn 3D modeling to build playhouses, all in the pursuit of feeling comfortable with the future that greets them.
“The school experience can be so much more than consumption of facts and figures,” CEO Max Ventilla tells Tech Insider. “We should be educating children from a whole-child lens where they learn to problem solve, social-emotional learning is prioritized, students should be part of the goal-setting process, and so on.”
AltSchool is quickly growing. The school, which educates kids from ages 4 to 14, began in San Francisco in 2013 and is now expanding to Brooklyn, New York, and Palo Alto, California. In the future, AltSchool plans to go nationwide.
by MindMake via MindMake Blog
No comments:
Post a Comment