Creative learning spaces

For me, one of the highlights of the Estonian Elearning Conference in Tallinn was listening to Stephen Harris, principal of the Sydney Centre for Innovations in Learning. SCIL is an Australian secondary school that practices teaching and learning within open spaces, where student autonomy and personalisation of learning are top priorities. Under Stephen's leadership, the school enables BYOMD - bring your own multiple devices, which means that students can learn in a number of different spaces and places around the school, using their own familiar tools. Stephen spoke about the metaphors for creative space that are used to contextualise learning:

The Camp Fire: This is a social learning space where students face each other, and in doing so gain an expectation that each should contribute something to the discussion and activities.

The Cave: This is a personal learning space where students can be on their own. Personal learning spaces enable them to reflect on their learning, and create their own learning pathways.

The Sandpit: Sandpits are places where young people can try out new ideas and experiment without fear of failure. They can take risks and ask the 'what if' questions, in a psychologically safe environment.

The Watering Hole: Informal spaces where students can gather spontaneously, either inside or outside the school. Children can meet at the foot of a stairwell or under a tree to discuss anything, whether it is school related or not.

The Mountain Top: Here young people can share their work and ideas. They can publish or broadcast them in a public performance space, or use blogs, podcasts, videos and other technology tools to share their content with their peers and the world. 

Stephen reported that enabling these kinds of activities inside the school, children gained a sense of autonomy they would otherwise not have, and as a result, they also gained ownership over their learning and a new sense of responsibility. The incidences of behaviour problems deminished to manageable proportions. 

Image by Steve Wheeler

Creative learning spaces by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.