70530 21st Century Schools Workshop

The 21^st Century School workshop in Casa Grande yesterday had a grand turnout of 120+ experts from around the state, two excellent speakers and solid output from the four workshop groups. The School Facilities Board will use this output to support their draft report expected to be out for review in August. Their work is in response to the Governor Napolitano’s executive order to modernize the SFB’s policies and process to build 1000 new 21^st Century Schools over the next 20 years.

Wisdom and Knowledge

The speakers Susan Wolff www.wolffdesigns.com and Ken Tanner www.tfpg.org/Arizona07.pdf and http://www.tfpg.org. They addressed wide ranging issues on the design of 21^st Century Schools:

• integrated technology for student use in learning;
• overall impression on entering school;
• effective school size (no conclusive data);

21^st Century Skills (Ken Kay’s work);

• use technology to develop content-knowledge-skills;
• get outside to learn with patios and large window walls in each room;
• caves and pods for individualized and small group instruction and self learning;
• social intelligence needs common areas, wide halls and high teacher-individual student contact; students will low social capital from family and communityi need more teacher contact;
• high informal learning needs whiteboards in the halls (Good Will Hunting);
• flexible-adaptable 50 year buildings;
• totally open library; staff nodes; collaboration incubators; unrestricted flow include food and restroom access;

Unique designs included an integrated Zoo and school; and a 500 student high school that was twice the size needed because half the student time was spent learning by doing in the community.

Optimal Collaborative and project-based learning experience requires six major attribute groups:

1. structural Aspects (flexible, visual infrastructure, adaptable, layered spaces, durable and core-fixed elements);
2. Functional spaces (labs, presentation, practice, classroom, galleries-display, project, home-base, informal learning, collaboration.);
3. Adjacencies ( community access, nested spaces, visibility, people-space connection, resource-storage; furnishings);
4. Furnishings (versatile, display spaces, variable lighting)
5. Psychological/Physiological: (sense of belonging, owning, pride; access to food-beverage [Ted the eD and restrooms?] get away space (zoned spaces, caves, natural light, transportation support)
6. Group Size (variable space size, individual work space, faculty team space)

Learning Environment and Student Academic Achievement:

• Correlation researchi: (provides direction) showing importance of: Context, CPathways; Technology for Students; Outdoor Rooms and Spaces and Overall Impression of school.
• Effects Research: (provides decision support): Movement and Circulation (.038); Day Light and Views (.022); Instructional Neighborhoods (.039) and Large Group Meeting Places (.002). Added together the effect size is .103 or 10% increase in learning. What this means is that to continue to build 20^th century schools we will drag down the academic achievement of our kids by 10%. Letter grade level is means a C student will be a C+ student and a B+ student will be an A- student. Ten percent would certainly move Arizona students out of the 4^th quartile on the NAEPi national competition. [Ted the eD: meta studies show that by providing a full elearningi system for students (elearning process savvy teacher, digital curriculum, technical support, formative assessmenti, 1:1 computing and broadbandi internet) will produce an effect size range from .30 to .45 – a full grade level or more]
• Best practices: Very misleading, pay attention to effect studies instead. Best practices are very much dependent on the local situation, skills and leadership and do not transfer well.

Four Workshopsi Groups:

The Personalized Learning Environments, Water and Energy Efficiency; and Class and School Size workshops groups met and reported. But without notes, I cannot give a report.

I attended and reported out the findings of the Technology Group. This data will be put into the information mix for SFB and are not a definitive statement of new policy.

Overview:

Technology design must be addressed with a systems approach and the center driver is the digital curriculum that is to be adopted.

Only part of the technology system is within the responsibility of the SFB. They must be confident that other policy and operating organizations will step up to and deliver to their 21^st Century School design in a collaborative basis.

School Technology Required from SFB:

• 1:2 to 1:3 computer interface devices per student grades K-3
• 1:1 grades 4-12
• Repair, replacement and upgrades of computers, laptop batteries, and peripherals.
• Both wired and wireless into the foreseeable future
• Presentation system: Projector now, then airliner, interactive white boards; wired for sound with speakers and teacher microphone, infrastructure.
• Wired drops (one group argued for 6 another for 12 – you decide)
• Differential and adjustable lighting
• Power of 20 amps per wall, (80 amps per four walled room, what about a hexagon?)

District Technology Required:

• Voice of IP telephone; wires for alarms, 911.
• WiFi (+ next generation), wireless, cellular.
• Minimize blockage of wireless with concrete walls.
• Data capacity – servers

State Technology Required:

• Cost effective broadband interneti access into every district statewide to match the growth of capacity needs as current population of internet computers grow from 1:8 to 1:1 (120,000 to 1.6 million in 20 years) and internet based rich content usage increases (maybe a factor of 10).

Soft Stuff That Is Not Controlled by SBF Policy:

• eLearning savvy teacher population which is a function of the funding and delivery of state wide system of professional development and curriculum in Arizona Colleges of education teacher preparation programs and
• After hour use in home
• Community support and connectivity
• Technical Support
• Data Systems
• Instructional technology standards

Special Requests:

School by school annual quantitative survey of all school districts on the state of their current SFB technology.

Consider the effects of long range 21^st Century school technology adoption scenarios with financial modeling of the entire cost of educating a student. A typical one would assume 1:1 elearning is adopted, the students learn 30% faster, a very modest percentage of the learning moves into the home and community, M&O funding from the state is changed from 100 day seat time to completing one academic year on the students personal learning plan, the average student completes 13 calendars of schooling in 11 to 12 years, the requirement for new classrooms is reduced by 20 to 30 percent.