Learning Environments

A couple of weeks back, this PLN was assigned to design a 21st-century learning environment. None of us architects, we were fortunate to have had the guidance of Bob Pearlman (through reading, of course, although I would have loved to have had a Skype session with him), mostly from the chapter he submitted for Bellanca & Brandt's edited collection, "21st Century Skills: Rethinking How Students Learn."

For a closer look at 21st-century learning environment designs, I highly recommend clicking the link to Pearlman's site -- there's a wealth of information on it, with numerous links to sites that further the discussion -- as well as the link to his chapter (downloadable in PDF). It's incredible to me how the designs he includes in his chapter align so well with theories for 21st-century learners.

Since this blog is a work in progress, I'm going to keep this discussion very bare bones, acknowledging that there is much, much more to be said and holding the door open for that larger discussion. With that said, I'd like to present the design this PLN did for the assignment with hopes that it will be the spark for that broader discussion:

 

 

 

Please, let us know what you think of the design, in the comments. We built it in the free Lakeshore Classroom Designer program (during one of our PLN Skype sessions), then made a screen shot and pasted the design into Photoshop. There, icons were added through text elements (Webdings 3, to be exact), where we also built the legend for our design.

 

 

Rudimentary, I concede, but it worked and our PLN succeeded well in our first attempt at designing a 21st-century classroom!

 

 

-- Jim McQuiggin