“An object imbued with intent has power, it’s a treasure we are drawn to it, we must demand this!”

This quote from John Hockenberry (2012) has resonated with me throughout my journey in INF536. The idea that an object and in my case a Learning Space can be imbued with intent was a light bulb moment. As a teacher I do this with my lessons everyday, I intentional create experiences that allow my learners to create knowledge, meaning and connections with the content and each other.

Now I intentional place objects within my learning space, I critically think about the placement of furniture in relation to windows and doors, I ask questions like how do I create opportunities for serendipitous meetings (Kelley, 2014) , and I take the time to gain feedback form my students. Sometimes this is simply taking stock of the level of their involvement in the lesson and the usage of the different parts of the learning space and the devices and furniture it contains, other times it is a chat about what they think works and doesn’t work.

As a class group we recently redesigned the layout of our classroom spaces (we have 3 different classrooms for one Year group). Instead of the teachers dictating the terms and placement of items, the whole class engaged in a design thinking process, creating a layout and implementing that layout. Next term we will evaluate its effectiveness and see if changes need to be made.

One aspect of this course I struggle with and have done in my previous subjects is the online participation, I spend my weekly hours completing my readings and doing some online research, I read the blog posts of fellow class mates, but my own participation in writing on the blogs has been limited. I have worked in education for 16 years, working collaboratively within school, stage, year group and executive teams willingly sharing my ideas and thoughts, regardless I an reluctant to share my thoughts through the world wide wide (the irony that I am sharing this on a blog post is not lost on me) it is something I am new too and will continue to improve.

References

Kelley, T. (2014, January), Invite serendipity to your café and expect innovation, Wired Magazine. Retrieved from: http://www.wired.com.uk/magazine/archive/2014/01/ideas-bank/tom-kelley

We are all designers. (2012). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti_i-M3pk5M