Page 36 - School Planning & Management, May 2017

TECHNOLOGY { ENHANCING + ENGAGING + CONNECTING }
Making School New Again
Technology is reinventing K-12 teaching and learning.
By Michael Fickes
K-12 SCHOOL ARCHITECTS AND DESIGNERS HAVE been talking about redesigning the basic school classroom for years, but not much has really happened. Some new fur-
nishings have arrived. Whiteboards are replacing blackboards, for instance. Typically, though, the changes have involved replacing one thing with another here and there. None of it has come close to something one would call a new classroom design.
But today, that is changing. In fact, classroom redesign is hap- pening now — by and large, in school districts able to afford the
educational technology that has emerged over the years. Today’s educational technology is the key to classroom rede-
sign. This movement, and it is a movement, isn’t about simply plopping a computer down on every student’s desk. It is, instead, about plugging entire classrooms and schools into a sophisticated technological network and creating something called an active learning environment.
Active learning means learning that is exploratory, creative and largely self-directed. An active learning environment does
36 SCHOOL PLANNING & MANAGEMENT / MAY 2017
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PHOTOS COURTESY OF DES MOINES PUBLIC SCHOOLS