Essentials Magazine Essentials Fall 2016: EDspaces Edition | Page 7

Clark Hall, an award-winning high school building in Gahanna, Ohio, effectively combines space,
global skills, and technology with the needs of today’s learners.

• how much time they need to finish
their work and do a high quality job
• how their learning should be
assessed
• where they sit — in student desks
or beanbag chairs, at high top tables, on
soft chairs or exercise balls, or even on
carpet squares on the floor
Put another way, schools need
to move from the Boring Age to the
Starbucks Age. Learning no longer has
to be a black coffee in a Styrofoam cup
— it should be a venti, half-soy, double
chocolate, iced vanilla Frappuccino® in
an insulated mug.
With whipped cream on top.

TIP 2:
Teach Global Skills for a Global
Economy
Seen any university libraries recently?

They don’t look like the old, quiet repositories of facts any more. The traditional
rows of brown bookshelves with musty
books are rapidly disappearing. They are
being digitized and replaced by all kinds
of seating options ranging from small
conference rooms to huge open areas
where students can sit in natural lighting
and work at their laptops. The spaces are
designed to let students:
• think critically, either silently or
while engaged with others
• create new products that range
from papers to fully developed,
multi-media projects
• work collaboratively in small
groups to exchange ideas and go deeper
into the assignments
• make presentations to each other
and communicate via the internet wit