Work in progress - The Educ8 Environment

I promised photos of the classroom and here they are. I've gone with the old fashioned 'Jenny Craig' style of before and after images and not surprisingly I've made sure the second photo looked much better! Actually, that was a mistake but I wanted to acknowledge it before setting you off... oh, and don't forget to click on the images for embiggenment. It's a word!

The room is around two classrooms in length with a wide array of metal posts for that added element of excitement.

The room has been used as a sort of detention centre / restraining room (pleasantly called the 'reflection room') which has now been moved to a less overqualified locale.

The xBox and various other consolely fun machines - and a big open space for kinect fun. I suppose we could also do drama and role plays here...

One of the key aspects of this room was ensuring that nobody could bring a class in here and teach 'traditionally'. In order to force the teacher's hand, none of the spaces can seat an entire class. This, hopefully, encourages teachers to create work that allows for different approaches and/or create lessons that allow students to find multiple ways to respond. At least, that's the plan.

Awesome, huge and bright shield tables to encourage group work and allow easy movement and management - with bonus Langford Tool sheets for extra thinking goodness.

Finally, this is the slowly coming together Problem Base Learning space we call 'The Boardroom'. Students will use this area to solve the many problems we tend to have on this big, bad planet of trouble! I'm hoping to put an Interactive White Board in here when the education fairy waves some sort of magic financial wand. My reasoning is that I don't think an IWB is meant for teacher use, and a multi-touch board would enable many problem solving opportunities.

The Boardroom - where children's lives are shattered by Donald Trump.

Anyway, it's early days - there's much to do - and the iPads are arriving soon too. The walls are still awfully bare compared to my old room but hopefully student work and the Habits of Mind posters I'm working on will start removing the beige soon enough. If you're reading this and wondering if I'd like your opinion, the answer is yes - we're making this up as we go (that's a half truth - substantial amounts of reading have been applied to the decision making process) and every helping hand will be appreciated. Unnecessary compliments will not go astray either!