Education Evolution

Sir Ken Robinson posted a link to this video and related website on Twitter recently. I really like the way these students have become advocates for a different type of education, one that is reflected in the learning spaces we inhabit as much as it is by the curriculum. It made me reflect on the role of the beanbag in class, the perceived need for interactive whiteboards at the front of the room and the role that mobile technology should play in learning (in and out of school). It also made me think about how we get the most out of the various learning spaces we will have in the new building, specifically the circulation and public spaces, the in-between spaces, and whether new kinds of furniture might be required to enable informal learning experiences to blossom.

The posts on the project blog are interesting too. The most recent one reveals the trials and tribulations of digital communication. After a brief flurry of interest near the publication of the initial video on YouTube, the class became disheartened that it had not gone viral. However, their message had certainly hit home at a local level, garnering an emotional response from the school's district superintendent. Now, it appears, the video has been picked up and promoted by various folks and is gathering a broader audience.

The construction of an online campaign is a fantastic way for young people to learn about digital tools but, most importantly, provides them with an opportunity to have their voices heard beyond the classroom and/or school where they happen to study. In the process, they can learn about the rights and responsibilities of authors and publishers, the etiquette of the internet, the various techniques for building (and keeping) an audience and the need to support their online campaign with all the conventional features of democracy: meetings, interviews, ballots, speeches, conferences etc.

I really hope this campaign continues to develop and reach educators and young people (and perhaps even politicians) across the globe. I wish the young people responsible for it every success in developing their already considerable skills.

At Home in a High Rise

I promised to provide a few more details about Mark Cowper's photographs of Ethelburga Tower in Battersea currently on show at The Geffrye Museum so here's a link to the website. What I loved about the show was the consistent view of each room and the way the images were displayed firstly around the room, then as a grid of smaller images in the shape of a tower block then finally projected in a space the exact same size as the rooms photographed.

I think this kind of typological appraoch to documenting space and the impact that humans have on adapting their environment might make an excellent feature of our summer project. What if we attempted to photograph all the rooms in the school from a similar point of view and then displayed them in a variety of ways? Would we need the help of a professional photographer to do this effectively? Would it make an interesting document of the building? Would we include portraits of people in the shots or photograph the building empty?

On the subject of photographing buildings, here's another link to the work of a photographer in Birmingham who documented the Longbridge car factory after it had been abandoned. There is something really poignant about these images in my opinion. One of my uncles used to work in the factory and I suppose the images represent the loss, not just of a building, but of a whole culture in that part of the country. We should probably plan to photograph the empty Thomas Tallis before it is finally demolished.