Education Next – Larry Kearns
“Blended Learning uses school time in a unique way, combining online instruction with traditional methods and giving students more agency over how, when, and where they learn. That third variable, the “where,” calls for some serious rethinking of how school space is organized and deployed. In our architectural practice, we have found that design either supports or frustrates a school’s mission—it is never an “innocent bystander.” This is particularly true for blended environments, where multiple activities happen at once: a small group of students might be listening to the teacher review a math concept, for instance, while others work nearby on a team science project, and still others work individually on wireless laptops. In a traditional classroom, this welter of activity would be impossible. Blended schools need a different blueprint.”(more)