A physical space can encourage and facilitate certain behaviours. Anna Mitchell looks at how learning spaces, and the technologies within them, are changing in education.
Agile is the word media environments and education expert, Professor Stephen Heppell uses to describe effective learning spaces. He’s careful to avoid the term flexible, saying it generates visions of "hideous folding partitions".For me there is also a clear active and passive differentiation between the terms. Agile is lively, alert and bright; flexible is malleable, taking its shape from outside influences.
The Professor - chair in New Media Environments, Centre for Excellence in Media Practice at the UK’s Bournemouth University and a visiting Professor at Universidad Camilo José Cela, Madrid, Spain – explains: "Agility means bigger spaces, less walls and more breakout areas."
Most integrators, consultants and even the teachers themselves agree that flexibility in teaching areas is key. But how does this impact on the technology that goes into these spaces and what are the arguments for investing when education budgets are squeezed.
InAVate explores these questions in the article ‘Learning space design: Tearing down the walls’. Read now in InAVate Active.