Based on experience design, the user should be able to flow, participate, and feel some sort of emotion based on the experience you are participating in (Chang School 2010). The experience of being in my classroom I would love to say has a flow - to how the class is run, but also how things are set up, students feel that they are participants in the learning and can participate with each other and I hope that all my students feel safe and comfortable when they enter my room. Take a little classroom tour below! I built a 2D and 3D model of my classroom in floorplanner.com so that I could play with the arrangements of my room to see if I could make better use of the space. My room is small and FULL. Most years I have at least one class that has 33 students, so I have to have the extra group of two student desks in the top right corner just in case. And my 15 - 18 year old students often complain about how cramped it is in my room. I can make it as cozy as I want by adding a carpet, lighting, covering up an unused chalkboard and having a space for all of our tools (and sometimes I get compliments from my students on this) but it isn’t always an inspiring or user-friendly space. I have my students in groups permanently because we collaborate on activities so frequently it would be silly to ask students to move their desks together every other day. Some days our activities are hands-on, however some days we need to access desmos.com (an online graphing calculator) to help us find patterns quickly, while taking notes at the same time and their desks are small and can’t always accommodate all of those tools at once. Having this type of collaboration is key to deep understanding and builds on 21st century skills that students need to develop. In the middle of each group I have a caddy holding supplies they may need (ruler, highlighters, scissors, glue, etc) for creating our interactive student notebooks and other activities, but with those plus the closeness of the desks caddies get knocked over often because of long legs. I don’t often sit at my desk- I try to move around the room and assist students or talk to students from different points in the room as often as possible, so in some ways I wish I could just have it in a separate room. The chalkboard on the left wall is unusable as the windows are directly across from it and the sun shines in on it and make it impossible to read, which tends to affect the whiteboards at the front of the room as well so mostly the shades have to stay closed. After taking all of these problems into consideration I started redesigning my room with no budget, only hopes in mind. I would love to have tables with comfortable rolling chairs for each student and an all-in-one computer or tablet for each group for easy, quick access to desmos (or any other web-based tool) whenever we need it. In addition I would like to have the option for students to sit at high-top tables as well, the 6 tables around the outside would be high tops, again with adjustable rolling chairs. Personally, as someone who is tall, the extra space this provides for my legs is so appreciated. I would add white boards all around the room, updated projectors also in multiple locations, and better window coverings so that the sun does not impede students' views of work on the boards or projectors and can still be enjoyed. Also adding in movable smaller whiteboards for students or myself to bring to a group and have them work out problems together or with me. I would love to add all these features to my classroom as we have seen in studies that taking into consideration the space we are learning in as a tool to enhance learning can benefit students greatly, if only we all had the means to do so. Resources:
Chang School. (2010, February 9). Tedde van Gelderen on experience design. [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB4VFKn7MA4&feature=emb_logo Misura, M. (2019) Classroom Tour [Video]. Misura, M. (2021, December 7). Classroom views [Images]. Misura, M. (2021, December 7). Classroom Floorplans [Images]. Misura, M. (2021, December 7). Redesign Classroom [Images].
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AuthorMarissa McGregor, high school math teacher extraordinaire. I love my husband, daughter, and family dearly. Archives
August 2022
CategoriesThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. |