Tuesday, March 29, 2011

What I Learned Today...Stanford's GSB media:scapes


Recently, One Workplace had the opportunity to be a part of an exciting project at Stanford's Graduate School of Business (GSB). According to Mike Drez, "as Stanford was creating the GSB of the future, they were focused on how to help the student teams collaborate. Collaboration amongst student teams is a real hallmark of the GSB and they wanted to create collaboration rooms that could enhance the rooms that would then enhance the experience."

The GSB team asked Mike and Sandy Kowalchik to review interactive board solutions with them. After an onsite meeting with the team, an opportunity presented itself to add media:scape with eno to a mock collaborative space in the GSB MBA Lab.

Design concepts were reviewed and GSB decided to move ahead with the media:scape mock-up with eno integrated. A live and ongoing mock-up of the solution was implemented, and RoomWizard was added soon after the space went live.

The solution did require some attending to, and Sandy K. spent entire days onsite coaching students on how they could take advantage of the solutions provided in the mock-up. word quickly spread within the GSB MBA student body, and things have been buzzing since!
The mock-up space has been booked 24/7 for close one year now! We requested timing to pull the mock-up out, but the GSB team asked that we please do not uninstall the solution until they are completely moved into their new campus. How could we say no.

How did this impact decisions for their new campus? They decided to change long existing plans for more traditional AV solutions to media:scape in (26) spaces including student group project rooms, faculty meeting rooms, and traditional conference rooms!

Phase one of the overall project installed in December 2010, and phase two is installing March 2011. Thanks to the help and technical expertise of Sandy Kowalchik, this project was installed quickly and seamlessly.

Where do we go from here? Buzz from very high levels within GSB say that they should plan for media:scape to be in all rooms!

No question that the ease of information sharing allows for deeper and faster collaboration to occur in these student team-intensive environments.





Monday, March 21, 2011

What I Learned Today...Revolutionizing Education

Recently, I had the chance to speak with a 21st century Education Consultant about classrooms of the future in Silicon Valley. He emphatically stated that our education system in California is broken. He indicated that we need to revamp our thinking of how the physical space integrates with new styles of pedogogy and new technologies.
The following article from Fast Company gives examples of how the new technology from Apple can help bring about change to the classrooms of today.

How the iPad 2 Will Revolutionize Education

BY Gregory FerensteinThu Mar 3, 2011
New features facilitate remote learning, exploration, and stylish lectures.

"The iPad 2's wealth of new features is a boon for tech-hungry classrooms.
Enhanced Facetime will be great for remote lectures or office hours, high-definition video editing will facilitate exploratory learning and reporting, and real-time image mirroring will stylize lectures in science, history, and geography. Additionally, mobile learning is made possible through the iOS 4.3 hotspot update, permitting Internet connectivity for apple phones, tablets, and laptops. This will be especially valuable for recession-hit school districts, such as Detroit, scrambling for ways to solve ballooning class sizes. Skeptical educators can be relieved that the iPad was deemed classroom ready by Reed College, and that remote learning can be just as effective as in-class lecturing.

Mobile Learning
Educators are eager to break students free from of the nap-inducing prison of concrete lecture halls. Universities, such as Abu Dhabi, are integrating classrooms into mobile devices to keep procrastinating students alert on due dates, keep discussions alive after the bell rings, and promote serendipitous idea sharing. Apple’s new front-facing camera will facilitate interaction between students and teachers as they roam campuses and cities.

Education isn’t restricted to just peers within the same school. For language learning, Marquette uses Skype to connect nascent speakers from different countries. Finding a partner school will likely be even easier with Skype’s new online community for teachers.

Public school districts, such as Detroit, could ease the pressure of crammed classrooms by permitting exploratory research in museums, at gardens, or public libraries. With real-time communication, specific class times could still be maintained, so that all students are learning together for at least some period of the day.
Incidentally, the iPad could spell the end of snow-day cancellations. Sorry, kids.

Lectures and Office Hours
In the near future, lectures will become the homework. The Gates and Google funded Khan Academy found that lectures were more effective when students could listen to and replay lectures at their own pace at home. The iPad's video capture feature will allow teachers to join the movement by pre-recording their lectures as homework the day before a new classroom topic. Additionally, teachers could hold virtual office hours from anywhere in the world.

Duke University has been encouraging professors to hold online office hours for years, so that jet-set professors could keep in touch with students while at conferences and also to encourage their faculty to engage with eager learners outside the university.

Mirror Image Lecturing
Despite the hype of mobile learning, traditional lectures will dominate classrooms for the foreseeable future. Why not spice lectures up? Apple reveals how mirror imaging, which projects images from the iPad to a larger screen, would work inside a classroom.

Google’s new Body Browser would be great for anatomy classes (and, is available now). In the near future, we expect a host of interactive textbooks to augment lectures.
These are just a few of the uses that are immediately obvious. However, the wonderful thing about technology is that investigating new applications is educational in it-self. Tech-happy students will be eager to explore new ways of using tablets and sharing their discoveries with the world" (http://www.fastcompany.com/).

To read the original article, click here.

Monday, March 14, 2011

What I Learned Today...University of Michigan

Recently, Steelcase put together a great video case study about the University of Michigan. As technology changes and learning styles evolve, the school has learned how to incorporate furniture that will allow students and teachers to easily adapt.

"The University of Michigan takes a fresh approach to their classrooms, implementing a strategy that includes engagement, collaboration and flexibility. A variety of classroom set-ups and solutions offer students a variety of classroom experiences. Each incorporating collaborative tools and technology."

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

What I Learned Today...EM Strasbourg and Node

Students at EM Strasbourg in France put together a great video as an introduction to the school. The video was made through the eyes of a student sitting in a Node by Steelcase chair. This fun and innovative video shows the many applications of Node while giving prospective students the chance to check out EM Strasbourg.

Monday, March 7, 2011

What I Learned Today...Stanford's D School

Check out this great video of Stanford University's D School. One Workplace is very excited to have been a part of this awesome project! Read below for more information about the D School.


"Our community culture and personality are strongly embodied by our environment. As you walk around the d.school, you'll notice a few things about the way we work. We're into modularity and adaptability. Most things around here are on casters so they can be readily repositioned. The walls are populated with whiteboards and other surfaces for capturing and sharing ideas. Informal team meeting spots abound, and more formal meeting rooms are abundant as well.

We see our space as a continual prototype to answer many questions: what type of space is best to bolster classroom learning? to support student teams? to foster collaboration? to enhance the student experience? and many more.

The use and manipulation of materials, ranging from walls to furniture, is evident throughout the new building. The architecture purposely exposes underlying material layers in the building to expose how it was constructed, a nod to the d.school’s engineering roots. By building an infrastructure that encourages its community to quickly manipulate space to suit a purpose, the d.school encourages students to acquire a mindfulness of how space can affect collaborative and creative work. Unlike classrooms that support only lecture-style teaching, the d.school’s project-based, experiential classes beckon the creation of an adaptable space" (dschool.stanford.edu).

To learn more, click here.